The person Christopher Nolan publicly credited as an inspiration for his blockbuster film just called it "abysmal."
Emily Wilson, classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the first woman to publish an English translation of Homer's Odyssey, has published a lengthy, unflinching takedown of Nolan's adaptation in the London Review of Books. Her verdict is not gentle.
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What Wilson actually said (and it's a lot)
Wilson opens with a grudging concession: the film is easy to follow, and her teenagers had a reasonable time watching it. That's about where the goodwill runs out. She describes the movie as "a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display, and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth."
From there, the review escalates. Wilson writes that the film's "vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped" to deliver on the big ideas it gestures toward. She singles out Matt Damon's Odysseus as unconvincing, saying the character isn't "complicated or wily or artful" in the way Homer's hero demands.
Her sharpest line lands near the end of the review: "I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."
The full list of what she says is missing reads like a checklist of everything that makes the source poem worth studying. "It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior's glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbors. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible."
That last line is genuinely funny, and probably intentional.
Why this particular critic carries unusual weight
Here's the thing: Wilson isn't just any academic weighing in on a blockbuster. Nolan himself cited her translation of the Odyssey when speaking to Empire magazine ahead of the film's release. That makes her criticism land differently than a standard literary scholar's hot take.
Wilson had already flagged concerns before the full review dropped. Last week she said she worried Nolan "was trying to pack everything in while missing themes that were essential to the poem." The London Review of Books piece gave her space to lay out exactly which themes she had in mind, and she used every word of it.
This is, in storytelling terms, a callback with teeth. Nolan borrowed from her work, name-checked her publicly, and now the source of that inspiration has written a formal, published rebuttal.
Box office vs. critical legacy
The film's commercial performance makes Wilson's review all the more interesting as a cultural document. The Odyssey opened to $264.1 million globally in its first weekend, then dropped only 19% in week two to add another $215.3 million. By any box office metric, this is a massive hit.
So the gap between popular reception and Wilson's scholarly assessment is enormous, and that tension is exactly what makes the story worth paying attention to. Audiences are clearly connecting with the spectacle. Wilson's argument is that spectacle without psychological substance is a missed opportunity on a text this rich.
The film is rated R and has been playing in theaters since July 17, 2026. Whether Wilson's review shifts any critical consensus is unlikely given the box office momentum, but it adds a layer of discourse that blockbusters rarely attract from this kind of source.
What this means for the gaming-adjacent crowd
Nolan's films consistently influence broader pop culture, including games. The Odyssey's themes of navigation, homecoming, and mythological monsters are already present across titles like Hades, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and LEGO Fortnite Odyssey. If the film pulls new audiences toward Homer's source material, that cultural ripple tends to show up in games eventually.
For now, if you're spending time in mythological worlds through games rather than theaters, the LEGO Fortnite Ninjago: Embers of Chaos complete guide is worth bookmarking for your next session. And if you want to stay across everything else dropping in gaming right now, the full gaming guides hub has you covered.
Wilson's review is already generating significant discussion in literary and film circles. Whether Nolan, famously without a smartphone, has read it yet remains an open question.
