Joyce Carol Oates Slams Wilson Over Nolan 'Odyssey' Critique
SkimNews Take
Oates's attack illustrates how defenses of popular adaptations now recast scholarly critique as partisan hostility, placing classicists on the defensive when they question a film's interpretive choices.
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- Joyce Carol Oates attacked Emily Wilson on X for her London Review of Books essay calling Nolan's The Odyssey lacking 'psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth,' accusing Wilson of speaking in 'the crude language of Maga folks' rather than disagreeing collegially.
- Wilson declared the film featured 'grandiosity and superficiality,' adding that 'the writing is abysmal' and 'none of the characters has a convincing motivation for their actions or words.'
- Nolan told Empire magazine he used the opening line of Wilson's landmark 2017 Homer translation — 'Tell me about a complicated man' — as a key reference for his Odysseus character, making her verdict on the character's one-dimensionality especially pointed.
- Oates had previously compared Nolan's film unfavorably to a 1997 Hallmark Channel version by Andrei Konchalovsky, praising the TV movie's Circe-Odysseus dynamic and its 'so manly, so fully human' Odysseus.
- Universal has stressed Nolan was linked to an Odyssey adaptation before Wilson's 2017 translation was published, disputing claims the director was 'inspired' by it; no royalties from the $683M-grossing film went to any writer other than Nolan.
- TGJones reported a 1,560% rise in UK searches for the Iliad this month, even as the film it ostensibly promoted earned $683M globally on a ~$250M production budget.
Why it matters: Nolan's $683M blockbuster now sits awkwardly between two literary heavyweights publicly tearing at each other on its behalf — with the only defender of substance (Oates) attacking the very critic the director once credited as inspiration. Universal's insistence that Nolan was attached to the project before Wilson's 2017 translation contradicts the marketing narrative that leaned on her phrasing, while UK Iliad searches are up 1,560%.
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