Christopher Nolan has done it again. Or so says Nikki Gemmell in her glowing five-star review in The Australian. According to her, he has achieved what filmmakers have long feared: successfully brought Homer's 2,800-year-old The Odyssey to vivid cinematic life. The result, she declares, is a gift to the world: visually audacious, emotionally universal, and possibly the film of the year.
I'm not convinced.
Don't get me wrong. Nolan is a formidable director with a rare ability to marry intellectual ambition and mass-appeal spectacle. His films often look and sound extraordinary, and The Odyssey appears to be no exception: pounding scores with reconstructed ancient instruments, no heavy reliance on CGI, muscular practical effects, and striking imagery of the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, and the underworld. Technically, it sounds impressive.
But the review reads like classic auteur worship, enthusiastic to the point of evasion. Gemmell praises Nolan for streamlining a "knotty, non-linear text" into something clear and gripping. She celebrates his portrait of a weary, "opaque" Odysseus (Matt Damon) as a complicated, flawed man of middle age. She highlights strong supporting turns, particularly Samantha Morton's Circe and Anne Hathaway's Penelope. All of that may be true. Yet the review sidesteps the two elephants in the wooden horse: the film's cultural choices and the sheer implausibility at the story's core.
Let's start with the Trojan Horse. This has always been one of the weakest links in the myth, and no amount of cinematic wizardry can make it believable. After a ten-year siege, the Trojans, battle-hardened and paranoid, supposedly accept a giant wooden "gift" from their enemies without thoroughly examining it. Dozens of Greek warriors hide inside for hours with no detectable sounds, no movement, no breathing issues from lack of air, and no basic reconnaissance from the defenders. It strains credulity in the original poem, where it functions more as legendary shorthand. In a hyper-detailed, three-hour Nolan blockbuster aiming for immersive realism, it risks looking absurd no matter how stunning the shots are. Mythic symbolism is one thing. Literal presentation in a modern epic is another.
Then there's the casting. Lupita Nyong'o plays Helen of Troy (and her sister Clytemnestra), while Elliot Page appears in a significant role. Gemmell mentions this almost in passing, as if it's incidental to the "universal human themes." But in a story deeply rooted in ancient Greek culture, ethnicity, and mythology, these choices are not neutral. They stand out. Helen, whose legendary beauty sparked a decade-long war, is reimagined with a Black actress. A key masculine role goes to a trans actor. You can call this bold reinvention or colour-blind casting. Others see it as deliberate woke disconnection from the source material's cultural specificity. Either way, it pulls many viewers out of the ancient world Nolan is otherwise trying so hard to render authentically, and back to this woke Leftist world.
The review also notes approvingly that Nolan "cleans up" Odysseus for contemporary audiences by removing some of his more brutal or colonial aspects (looting, violence against slave women). This is telling. Rather than letting the ancient hero remain uncomfortably alien, the film sands down the rough edges to make him more palatable. Homer's Odysseus is a liar, adulterer, and cunning survivor. Nolan's version, per the review, becomes another troubled male simp protagonist in the director's trademark style, opaque, weary, and magnificent in a very modern way.
At its best, the film sounds like it captures something real: the cost of war, the longing for home, the complexity of marriage and fatherhood. Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon as Penelope and Odysseus reportedly share an electrifying chemistry. The non-linear storytelling and multiple narrators (including Travis Scott as the Bard) nod respectfully to the oral tradition. These are genuine strengths.
Yet the overall package feels like peak contemporary prestige filmmaking: take a foundational Western myth, pour enormous technical resources into it, update the casting for today's woke sensitivities, soften the harsher elements, and present it as profound and universal. The result may be visually stunning and entertaining, but it struggles with the tension between mythic strangeness and modern expectations.
Nolan has not done the impossible. He has done what many big directors do, bent an ancient story toward our own age. Sometimes that produces something fresh. Sometimes it exposes how far we've travelled from the original worldview. The Trojan Horse remains a creaky plot device. The cultural updates raise fair questions about fidelity and coherence. And the five-star hype risks mistaking impressive craft for unassailable greatness.
The Odyssey might still be worth seeing for its spectacle and ambition. But let's not pretend it's beyond criticism. Ancient epics deserve honest scrutiny, not just cinematic worship. In the end, this feels less like a pure revival of Homer and more like Nolan's Odyssey, technically masterful, philosophically familiar, and, in places, implausibly woke.
https://counter-currents.com/2026/07/why-i-am-not-reviewing-christopher-nolans-the-odyssey/
"Nolan isn't really in charge of his Odyssey. Instead, he's been possessed by the woke Zeitgeist, which is as evil a spirit as has ever stalked this world. …
There are better things you can do with your time. Why not actually read The Odyssey? That's my plan. In the time it would take for you to watch this movie, plus watch all the ads and previews, plus commute to and from it, you can read nearly half of Homer's original. I recommend the Robert Fitzgerald and Robert Fagles translations. But I am planning to try out A. T. Murray's revised Loeb Classical Library translation.
Once whites finally come home … and reprise control of our destinies, we can commission a film adaptation that does justice to The Odyssey. In the meantime, stick with Homer.
That's what Odysseus would do."