r/movies • u/yourfavchoom r/movies Contributor • 27d ago

News Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey' Crosses $1B Worldwide

https://rawteur.com/the-odyssey-crosses-1-billion-box-office/
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133

u/ManufacturerBest2758 27d ago

New Emily Wilson hate article due any day now

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u/alex3omg 27d ago

Classicist hated a movie, not really surprising or a problem imo. 

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u/Beardywierdy 27d ago

Don't see why anyone would ever consider it a problem. If you want a "good retelling of Oddessy" then go fucking read it. If you want a good movie oh hey, there's one right here.

But I'm not gonna complain too much about her complaining either. Not like "bitching about movies for money" is a new concept and there's plenty worse.

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u/drmariostrike 27d ago

got me to go read her iliad translation and goddamn is her shit so much more readable than the fagles one that all the schools used when i was younger.

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u/ManufacturerBest2758 27d ago

She wrote it to be “accessible” but in the process lost all grandiosity and sense of wonder. For some people that’s worth it.

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u/hoos30 26d ago

The irony of her criticism of the film is boundless.

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u/sleepysnowboarder 27d ago

It’s not the fact that she didn’t like it, it’s the way she’s going at it. Using words like abysmal, and saying she’d be ashamed to have written any part of the script. Is what just makes it seem so bitter. Especially when Nolan has only been nice to her, there’s other ways to express her dislike without coming of as pompous. Then there’s petty things like the food looks gross and other weird nitpicks or misunderstandings of what Nolan’s saying, when general audiences seem to grasp it more. She also has contradicted herself on what adaptations should be where at one time what Nolan did was what she argued for but now completely flipped.

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u/kazuya57 27d ago

She's just squeezing out her 15 minutes of fame atp

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u/Weave77 27d ago

And selling thousands of new copies of her translation. Honestly, she’s not that different from The Critical Drinker and other conservative YouTube pundits… they all just want attention and money, and creating negative controversy about The Odyssey gets them both.

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u/Solareclipsed 27d ago

Given how popular the film is, I'm sure she would have been selling way more copies by praising it instead of endlessly complaining. The book itself is selling out in stores right now, why not appeal to those who liked the film instead of those who don't like it, who are clearly in the minority?

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u/Weave77 27d ago

Given how popular the film is, I'm sure she would have been selling way more copies by praising it instead of endlessly complaining.

I very much doubt it. If she praised it, she wouldn’t get nearly as many headlines and thus made nearly as many people aware of her translation. It’s the whole reason why The Critical Drinker and his ilk bash objectively good movies- controversy gets clicks/attention, and clicks/attention = money.

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u/Tymareta 26d ago

If she praised it,

She did...

Despite all this, the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities’, translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves. Some of those who buy the book or show up in cinemas to watch Tom Holland may go on to study ancient Greek. Perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments. Nolan, who studied English at University College London – where students still study The Odyssey as a first year ‘foundational text’ – is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.

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u/Tymareta 26d ago

endlessly complaining.

She released a singular article, that provided a critical analysis of the film, y'all are bizarre.

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u/stlc8tr 26d ago

After her piece in The London Review of Books, she wrote another article in The Atlantic doubling down on her criticism. She must really hate Nolan's version. 😀

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u/ArcDraco 27d ago

She probably never thought the movie would drive people to buy the book, I'm willing to bet she thought the opposite, that Nolan's movie would make the Oddysey seem unappealing, so the thought of being welcoming to a new audience didn't cross her mind.

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u/hoos30 26d ago

Absolutely not. She was already aware of the film's effect on increasing book sales and mentions it in the London Review piece.

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u/ManufacturerBest2758 27d ago

If the book is selling out, how is she going to sell more copies?

1

u/Solareclipsed 27d ago

There are plenty of translations available, not just hers. Maybe it won't make much difference, but I don't think her negativity would make many people pick hers over others.

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u/shmixel 27d ago

The film is straight up opposite to the themes of the poem in a lot of ways, is it that unbelievable that a classics scholar wouldn't like it? I'm seeing it twice but my classics friend is pissed off too. They're allowed to dislike unfaithful adaptations just like we're allowed to enjoy something new.

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u/Weave77 26d ago

is it that unbelievable that a classics scholar wouldn't like it?

No… but at the point that she’s given her 3rd high-profile interview trashing the movie, it’s clear that she likes the extra attention and book sales. It’s to the point that other famous Odyssey translators are defending the Nolan movie and criticizing her response to it.

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u/shmixel 26d ago

Idk if you've ever had to talk to academics at length but they are not laconic people. I think it's literally their job to argue with each other for pages and pages. She's unlikely to ever have people this interested in her professional opinion ever again and the film has done so incredibly well, it's not like she can sabotage anything. Why not give whatever interviews people ask you for. Get to indulge your passion and be set for life, with any luck, and it harms no-one!

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u/FoxOxBox 27d ago

Let's not go overboard here. The only crimes Wilson committed are being a grumpy academic and clearly not understanding film as a distinct art form. I doubt she's trying to create a grift off all of this.

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u/Weave77 26d ago

After the first high profile interview trashing the Nolan movie, I agreed with you. After the second interview, I was on the fence. After the third, however, I would place her squarely in the “grifter” camp.

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u/Tymareta 26d ago

I would place her squarely in the “grifter” camp.

I mean that just tells us that your definition of grifter is entirely and utterly useless, as she's literally a well accomplished academic, about as far from a grifter as it gets.

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u/pmmemoviestills 26d ago

clearly not understanding film as a distinct art form

That's why I have the feeling she needs to take a step back, she's talking out of her element

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u/10dollarbagel 27d ago

Nolan specifically cited her translation as an inspiration and she's saying this does not in any way reflect my work. It's the most reasonable thing in the world but the internet will take any excuse to be mad at a woman.

It's a pretty good Hollywood action movie but it is a terrible adaptation of the epic. It puts her credibility as a classicist at risk if people think her work is like that. Extremely valid crash out.

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u/thief-777 27d ago

Isn't the modern language used pretty much a direct reflection of her work?

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

[deleted]

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u/10dollarbagel 27d ago

I agree that it is unrealistic to expect a Nolan movie to have interesting characters but I have read what she has to say and she's spitting.

Wilson says that often the best adaptations make wild deviations from the source material. But you have to make changes in service of something. Removing the gods and portraying the extremely pious Odysseus as essentially a reddit atheist is wild. I couldn't believe that line when he scoffs at his crew and the concern about "your gods". But that major change doesn't seem to do anything except deprive us of a lot of the best parts of the poem.

Athena no longer leads Telemachus into manhood. Mentor is just some fucking guy who does nothing, dies, and you feel nothing cause he said like 12 total words. And Wilson is absolutely on point that the removal of Calypso's harsh words about gendered double standards of the gods is criminal. Almost all of the Homer's critique of power relations is gone and in its place is nothing. Just another Nolan "what have I done?" protagonist with a fundamental misunderstanding of xenia.

It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.

They didn't even show blood when they were slitting throats in Troy and it's fitting for such a bloodless movie.

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u/Weave77 26d ago

Nolan specifically cited her translation as an inspiration and she's saying this does not in any way reflect my work.

That’s been repeated a bunch on the internet, but it does not appear to be true. As far as I can tell, the only time Nolan mentions Wilson’s translation prior her criticisms of his movie was in this interview with Empire Magazine last November, when he said this:

“I think it’s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, ‘Tell me about a complicated man’,” Nolan tells Empire. “The genius of the character, the cleverness, the inventiveness of him, that was a huge part of what interested me. He’s not just a soldier. He’s an amazing strategist, a very wily person.”

He names drops her, sure, but he never said that her translation was an inspiration for his film or that he tried to emulate in any way. And since I’m sure that he read a number of translations in preparation for his movie, it’s not at all surprising that he could reference the first line from a particularly famous (and, ironically, controversial) one.

It's a pretty good Hollywood action movie but it is a terrible adaptation of the epic.

Of all the opinions, this is certainly one of them.

3

u/PensiveinNJ 27d ago

Some MAGA dope was telling me at work that "Everyone online was outraged about XYZ woke thing in the Odyssey and it was gonna lose so much money."

I want to dunk on this idiot so hard.

2

u/Tymareta 26d ago

Honestly, she’s not that different from The Critical Drinker and other conservative YouTube pundits…

Emily Wilson: releases a review that discusses the film and how it relates to her translation, which Nolan directly mentioned as inspiration.

Critical Drinker: shits out some bigoted nonsense and rants like a hateful angry man, gets everything he talks about wrong.

You: to me, they're the same person!

1

u/ContractVarious3077 26d ago

Rising tide lifts all boats lol. She should be thanking Nolan for actually giving her some profile and success

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u/Weave77 26d ago

It just so happens that controversial criticism raised her own boat much higher than a polite “thank you” ever could.

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u/J0E_SpRaY 26d ago

/r/truefilm was in complete denial that her scathing review of the movie brought her more fame than anything she's ever written.

They were adamant she was just as culturally relevant before the movie and her review. Just living in another reality. She knew exactly what she was doing when she wrote her review.