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Fox News analyst Kat Timpf and the ‘Gutfeld!’ panel discuss ‘The Odyssey’ actress Lupita Nyong’o saying that she would scold Greek poet Homer over a lack of female speaking roles.
The author of a controversial translation of "The Odyssey" that helped influence Christopher Nolan’s adaptation panned the film in a scathing review.
Emily Wilson, who wrote what some call a feminist translation of Homer’s "The Odyssey" that helped influence the film, panned director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation for missing the spirit of the original heroic epic. The film has also been criticized for the casting of certain characters, using modernized American dialogue, reshaping the warlike Odysseus as a traumatized rather than heroic figure and for removing many of the mythological aspects.
"As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter," she said in her review titled, "An Uncomplicated Man." "In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script."
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Jimmy Gonzales is Cepheus, Matt Damon is Odysseus and Himesh Patel is Eurylochus in "The Odyssey," written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. (Melinda Sue Gordon © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.)
This is the latest of multiple critiques from Wilson, having previously gone viral for stating during a 92NY panel, that this version of Odysseus struggles with guilt over his actions in the Trojan War and tries to "process them in a very modern, psychiatrised way — and struggling to process them needs drugs to do so! And he seems to feel bad about being a warrior, and we never actually see him get to do much warrioring."
She added further, "I kept looking in vain for a sense that this is a film about glory, because the film that has some interest in shame, but I don't think it has any interest in glory.’
Wilson went on to write in her review that the film’s writing is "abysmal" for a wide variety of reasons.
"Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great," she wrote. "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 neighbours."
"It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth," Wilson added. "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."
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Matt Damon is Odysseus and Zendaya is Athena in "The Odyssey," written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. (Melinda Sue Gordon © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.)
She also contrasted how Odysseus’ use of the Trojan Horse to win the war was portrayed as a clever trick in "The Odyssey," but as a villainous deception in the film that showed the moral decline of Greek civilization. This involves an entire subplot with the character Sinon, controversially played by transgender actor Elliot Page.
"This muddled subplot is foisted on the film in order to make Nolan’s relentlessly didactic point about the contemporary Anglophone world: that the lies and xenophobia of the war on terror and Brexit began a cultural decline that is now destroying the values ‘we’ hold most dear," Wilson wrote.
The controversial casting of characters like Helen of Troy, Athena, and members of Odysseus’ crew was something highlighted by many conservative critics. Wilson, however, criticized these same castings from a left-wing perspective.
"The race-neutral casting of Nolan’s Odyssey was inevitably deplored in some quarters. But there is nothing progressive about it. Most of the non-White actors — Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott — play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist," she wrote.
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"The Odyssey" has been a box office success, but fans and critics are divided over this film from Christopher Nolan, one of modern Hollywood's most beloved directors. (Satish Bate/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
Wilson also called out the lack of many gods who played a major role in the original text.
"But the film wants to have it both ways. There are no gods, and yet shipwrecks and death are presented as the inevitable consequence of blinding the son of Poseidon and devouring the Cattle of the Sun. Zeus’ law is portrayed as being crucially important, and yet there is no Zeus," she wrote. "Nolan’s vision of the world is not quite big enough to include either real gods or real people who might be different from us."
Nonetheless, Wilson’s silver lining was that she is at least glad that the film is renewing interest in "The Odyssey" and the ancient Greek world.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Nolan and Wilson for comment but did not immediately receive responses.
