Ancient Historian Reviews Nolan's ODYSSEY

There have been a lot of reviews of the new Odyssey movie, and as an ancient historian, people are probably expecting me to weigh in. I saw it this past weekend with my brother and sister on the regular screen, not IMAX. But first, let me just say that if you're expecting me to assess the historical accuracy of the movie, you'll be disappointed. When it comes to modern adaptations of ancient literature, historical accuracy is not very relevant. After all, the original is not historically accurate, and reflects elements from different time periods. And while there may be a historical kernel of truth to Odysseus' voyage, though I doubt it, there's no evidence of it ever happening. Now, it's far more appropriate for me simply to assess how well the film adheres to the original text. When I say that Homer's poems reflect different time periods, I mean that on the one hand, they're set in the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaean period, during and after the Trojan War. But the epics were composed about four or five hundred years later in the Iron Age, Greece's early Archaic period. This created a story full of anachronisms, elements from the Late Bronze Age, the subsequent Greek Dark Age, and the early Archaic period. So for example, in Homer, the heroes fight with bronze weapons and armor, fitting the Bronze Age setting. But iron appears for tools and implements. And iron is used in metaphors of strength, showing a world in which iron was common for everyday use, and bronze was used mainly for prestigious heroic arms. That's not an accurate portrayal of the Bronze Age. A genuine boar's tusk helmet is mentioned in Homer, and long spears, like we see in Mycenaean art. But Homer also describes round shields, more typical of later periods. Homer is aware that the heroes of old used chariots, but he doesn't know they were used for archers on the battlefield. In Homer, the chariots are used as taxis to ferry warriors to battle, and then when they get there, they dismount them and fight on foot. Heroes, like Patroclus, are cremated on pyres, with ashes collected in urns. This is a standard Iron Age practice. Mycenaean Greeks primarily buried people in tombs or shaft graves. The politics are anachronistic, too. Homer depicts relatively modest kings that resemble those in Iron Age aristocratic society more than the Wanox rulers of the highly centralized bureaucratic Mycenaean palace economy. The Homeric epics portray an illiterate heroic world. But Mycenaean Greeks had writing. The religious practices in Homer align more with later Greek norms than what we see in the linear B tablets of the Mycenaean world. So numerous are the anachronisms that scholars generally see the epics as post-Bronze Age in their depictions, with only isolated relics from earlier times. Can a movie based on a historically inaccurate tale be historically accurate? It can't. What it can do is follow the story, anachronisms and all. I think one of the big misunderstandings that some people have about the Odyssey is that its purpose is to recount history. And I guess considering the fact that it purports to relate events from the past, I can understand why some might think that. But it is, in fact, a legend. Legends are set in an indeterminate time in the past. A long time ago, in the age of heroes. You don't need to know an exact year. And they feature many supernatural characters and elements. But let me be clear about my position. Even though many scholars today, mostly classicists, still doubt that there was a Trojan War, I think there is a historical basis for the Trojan War legend. I get the impression that Hittitologists, those who study the Hittites, are also more inclined to think there is a historical kernel of truth in the war story. But the Odyssey is not a story about the Trojan War. It's the story about a journey that takes place many years after that war. The Odyssey in ancient Greek contains about 87,000 words, and I would estimate about 1-2% of those words are concerned with historical events at all. And 0% of the historical events have been verified by independent archaeological or primary source material. The historical bits are background atmosphere, or distant echoes, and nothing that can be confirmed. There are names in Hittite records that some people have tried to link with characters in Homer, such as Atreus, the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, Priam and Paris of Troy, and Helen, but all of these are speculative in nature. Even if these connections were solid, and they're not, simply because a historical event or events, or historical persons, are mentioned in a legend, this does not turn the legend into a history, especially when the legend only mentions the event in passing. No contemporary records name Odysseus, or confirm his specific adventures. The majority of the places that Odysseus visits on his travels are mythical. I realize that people have made concerted efforts to try to link many of these places with real sites in the Mediterranean, but all of these are also highly speculative. Most importantly, they rely only on physical descriptions alone, and must discard all information concerning the inhabitants and what goes on there. The only way to make a case that these places existed is to edit out a large part of how Homer describes them. If we need to destroy his descriptions in order to make it work, it's a valueless enterprise. Believe me, I've tried it myself. The most reasonable position is that these places are not real, or that if they ever were, information about them became so garbled by the time they reached the epic poets, that they might as well not be real. One YouTuber even went so far as to argue that since both the Iliad and the Odyssey are interconnected, whatever that means, and the Iliad is based on a historical event, the Trojan War, therefore the Odyssey also must be historical. This reasoning is logically fallacious. Two books by the same author cannot simply be assumed to have the same level of historicity. Each book is an independent work with distinct focuses, styles, and themes. It's not even agreed among classicists that the two works were composed by the same author. There are linguistic and dialectal differences, stylistic and narrative differences, thematic and theological differences, and even cultural differences that suggest significant time has passed between the compositions of each one. Anyway, to argue that Christopher Nolan must try to make the Odyssey historically accurate because the Odyssey might be based on real history makes no logical sense. If Homer mixes myth with history, then why hold Nolan to a higher standard than Homer? This is why it makes more sense to assess the film by how well it follows the text. And as someone who highly respects this ancient epic poem, and who has taught it and its themes to college students for the last 20 years or more, most often in my Western Civilization course, I place the greatest importance on whether a modern adaptation maintains the actual themes of the original. Capturing the essence of the characters and their motivations is important too, though we do run into the issue of the characters becoming unrelatable or unlikable to a modern audience. It's hard, for example, to show Odysseus actively cheating on his wife with other women without a care while Penelope remains chased at home and convince a modern audience to respect him. Following the plot faithfully also is important, but considering the time factor, this is not really possible in a movie. Something needs to get cut. When it comes to fidelity to the text, least important are the aesthetic elements, because for the most part, those are superficial. Thus, for example, when Kenneth Branagh did a movie version of Hamlet and set it in the 19th century, Shakespeare lived in the 17th, it didn't bother me much, because the film was generally faithful to the text. Heck, performances of Shakespeare, even on the stage, have a long history of experimentation with the aesthetics and the casting, and no one really bats an eyelid. They certainly don't claim it's an insult to Shakespeare or to the English people. So even if someone were to make a film adaptation of The Odyssey that is set in the 1960s, for example, and everyone is dressed like hippies, I wouldn't care as long as the story and spirit of the original was there. So I give a lot of leeway to adaptations. You would think I'd be more of a stickler about this, but I realize this is entertainment. After all, an adaptation, by definition, adapts a work for a present-day audience. A movie is a piece of art, and it reflects to some degree the vision of the artist. In this case, Nolan's interpretation of The Odyssey. Remember, an adaptation does not replace the original. It's not the new official version. It doesn't replace all the other adaptations either. It simply exists alongside them. But I am a stickler for how well the adaptation adheres to the text in the most important ways. For this reason, I have had many criticisms of film versions of The Odyssey over the years, going all the way back to Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas. All of the films to date have mangled the original text in one way or another. Most commonly, this would be the removal of huge sections of the story. It has been very common to focus primarily on books 9 through 12, 4 of the 24 books, and give hardly any time to anything else. This, I believe, shows some disrespect to the original. After watching Nolan's version, I can honestly say that his version adheres to the original better than any other English film version so far. Perhaps this is because he simply had more time to include oft-neglected parts of the story, but there's more to it than that. Nolan also shows that he understands The Odyssey and what The Odyssey is about more than any previous movie director. He really did his research. So often, when watching older versions, I've exclaimed, This writer misses the whole point! But Nolan gets it. This doesn't mean he gets everything right, or that he doesn't make alterations to the original. Oh, he does. Every adaptation makes changes for dramatic convenience, or to make the story relevant for a present-day audience. But he captures the spirit of the original very well. So, for example, the concept of Zinnia, a central theme of Homer's versions, is portrayed very well in this movie, and is rightly made the core of it. This honors the original. Mind you, Nolan has to simplify it somewhat for the popular crowd. He calls it Zeus's Law for convenience, and he focuses more on the Trojan horse as the point where Odysseus himself violates this principle. The original highlights the Cyclops' experiences when Odysseus violates this principle instead. Maybe Nolan thought the focal point needed to be grander, I don't know. But the spirit of the original is there. Now, personally, there are parts of Odysseus' character in the original that I think should have been more prevalent, such as his concern for his honor and restitution. But Zinnia is, without a doubt, the most important theme in Homer's version. I've heard some people claim that Nolan ruins Odysseus' character by giving him PTSD from the Trojan War, framing PTSD as somehow a woke concern. But I saw no evidence of that. In fact, Nolan's Odysseus seemed way more stoical to me than the one in Homer, who frequently cries. He weeps on Calypso's Island because he longs for a home. He weeps when he hears a bard recount the Trojan War, covering his head with his cloak to hide the fact. Homer says he wept like a woman. He weeps a couple more times when he tells his tale to the Phaeacians. When he finally meets his son, they both weep together. When Odysseus and Penelope reunite, they weep in each other's arms. I can't remember him weeping a single time in Nolan's version. There are subversions in the movie, to be sure, but these are consistently on the superficial level. Agamemnon's armor design is ridiculous. But it doesn't change the story. Helen's scars are not in the original, but again, this is just dressing. The use of a few people who do not pass as Greek is also a significant change. I mean, one could argue that it's plausible people from other parts of the ancient world have come to Greece. But for me, the casting is a problem overall. Not because it dishonors Homer's poem, but because it reduces the suspension of disbelief and causes dissonance that negatively affects the tone and distracts from the story. This miscasting is across the board, including all skin colors. Matt Damon is a fine actor, but I had some difficulty listening to his American accent and accepting who he was supposed to be. John Leguizamo was also miscast. Charlize Theron, William Lee, several others. It really seemed to me that Nolan chose all of his friends, or actors he thinks are the hot thing right now, in the hope that they would be a box office draw. This is not how to cast a movie like this, in my opinion. But maybe it brought people in. Some people were bothered by the casting of black people in the movie. But not me, because it was more believable than East Asians being there. Why? Because there's an ancient Greek tradition of sub-Saharan Africans participating in the Trojan War. Have you heard of Memnon, king of the Ethiopians? The Greeks called Africans who came from south of Egypt Ethiopians, meaning burnt-faced. Memnon comes with his troops to assist the Trojans in the Trojan War. There was another Greek epic poem, now lost, called the Aethiopis, which was one of the early epics, roughly contemporary with Homer's works, that related this part of the tradition. We even have Memnon portrayed in archaic period vase paintings. For that reason, I could suspend my disbelief and accept that maybe some black people had assisted the Greeks in the war, and some may have immigrated to Greece afterward. And Homer himself mentions Memnon in the Odyssey, saying he was the most handsome of all men. The Greeks believed Ethiopians to be very good-looking. And I can't help but think that Nolan, who's well-versed in Trojan War lore, may have known about the Ethiopian reputation for attractiveness, and thought it might be cool to make Helen, the most beautiful of all women, one of them. In the Iliad, Helen is called white-armed, a term for nobility in women, so this doesn't seem to fit. But there's no description of her physical appearance in the Odyssey. And the Odyssey can rightly be treated as a standalone text. Nolan has reiterated in interviews that the principle of xenia, respect for strangers, permeates his movie as it does the original. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Greeks are portrayed as having strangers in their midst who are treated as equals. Someone might ask me, yeah, but if positions were reversed, would you accept it if white people were cast in a movie about Africans? My answer is yes. If they showed a couple of white people living in an African society at a time when there was contact between the two cultures, I would accept it. All things considered, I give the movie an 8.5. Not perfect, but very good. Now, a word to those who have politicized this movie, making it a battlefront in their culture war, the ones who don't like feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video games, movies, and other forms of popular culture, the ones who decided they hated this movie ever since they saw Lupita Nyong'o was going to be in it. Look, I understand that you are on a mission to rescue pop culture from what you feel is a dangerous woke agenda, and you made a valiant attempt to do everything you could to get this movie to flop so that it would send a message to Hollywood to stop doing this. And when your anti-woke brethren in Greece joined your chorus, a distinct advantage presented itself. You could make this about sticking up for the Greeks and not about yourselves. It was identity politics, but a good strategy. The problem is, it only works so far. If the movie's too good, the maneuver fails. And clearly, that is what happened here. Even Greeks generally like it. So, you lost this particular battle. But I have a request to make of you. Don't politicize ancient history. Yeah, yeah, I know your claim is that Nolan is the one who politicized it. No, he didn't. You did. Your movement assumes that any and every movie, game, and TV show that casts people of color in traditionally white roles, or trans people in traditionally cis roles, or unattractive women in traditionally gorgeous roles, is doing so to meet some kind of quota, or DEI, or woke agenda. You rarely, if ever, point to any evidence for the motivations of the directors, producers, or showrunners. You just assume. You reject any and all other explanations, including creative choices, box office draw, favoritism based on personal friendship. No, it's got to be the woke agenda. We can clearly see that the casting problem in the Odyssey movie is seen across the color spectrum, which means that your explanation fails. But you won't accept it. You need this to be political so that you can fight your culture war. You politicized it. And you have done so at the expense of your own conservative values. I'd like to share with you a post by Tyler Norris I saw on X the other day. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey may be the most pro-Western civilization film Hollywood has made in decades. Not because it flatters the Greeks, but because it understands civilization as a moral achievement rather than an ethnic position. The identitarian far left and far right share a premise that the Western canon is ethnic property. One side condemns it on that basis. The other guards it on the same basis. Nolan refuses the premise, populating Homer's world with various identities while treating the story with absolute seriousness. That's not a repudiation of the canon, but evidence of its triumph. Homer can be inhabited by and speak to anyone. The film's deepest commitment is to individual moral agency. Odysseus cannot hide behind Greece, military orders, or victory. His choices are his own. And so is his guilt. No collective cause dissolves individual moral responsibility. His final heroism lies not in conquest, but atonement. That principle extends to hospitality. Treat the stranger as you would wish to be treated. When the Greeks violate it, they become the barbarians they fear. Penelope's devastating realization, you're the people from the sea, underscores that the enemies of civilization are sometimes its self-appointed defenders, exempting themselves from the principles they claim to uphold. This is Western civilization at its best. Not an ethnicity or a triumphalist myth, but a tradition built around the dignity of the individual, moral responsibility, and atonement. And a civilization strong enough to preserve stories that judge its own heroes remains a civilization worth defending. The fact is, this movie will make Greeks proud to be Greek because it captures the heart of what the Odyssey is about. It's the message that matters. All the other stuff is aesthetics. You might like my little e-booklet, Why Ancient History Matters. It's designed to persuade people that the subject is important, even in the modern world. You might also wish to use it to help spread the word. So feel free to share it with someone you know. It's free for anyone who wants it. I've left a link in the description box below the video for you to grab a copy. Catch you later.