Classics professor Emily Wilson doubles down on ‘The Odyssey’ criticism: “We need more”

Classics professor Emily Wilson has continued her criticism of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, accusing the blockbuster of using “massacres as spectacle” and being “emotionally empty”. READ MORE: ‘The Odyssey’ review: cinema may have peaked with Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster epic Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, published an acclaimed English translation of Homer’s epic poem in 2017 that Nolan has cited as an influence on his adaptation, particularly its opening line: “Tell me about a complicated man.” However, last month she gave a scathing new review for the London Review Of Books, where she said the filmmaker had failed to capture the complexity of Homer’s characters and ideas. In a new essay for The Atlantic, the academic expanded on that opinion. When discussing the film’s Trojan Horse design, she wrote: “The physical horror of people being trapped inside as the seawater rises is brilliantly and terrifyingly evoked. But on a narrative level, Nolan’s horse is light as air.” She later said of the film: “It gestures at a critique of xenophobia and violence, but it focuses primarily on the perspective of the guilty, traumatized warrior...