Some critics have bemoaned the flattening of a complex character. But Nolan’s film echoes a literary tradition of reimagining Circe as a survivor, a truth-teller and a figure of female empowerment.
Articles on Christopher Nolan
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The women of Homer’s Odyssey were cunning, desiring and powerful. Nolan’s adaptation turns them into figures of suffering, sacrifice and regret.
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey has been criticised for simplifying its complex characters – particularly women. We asked an expert to fill some of the film’s gaps.
Christopher Nolan turns Homer’s legendary warrior into a case study of moral injury, a condition that often appears in war veterans who struggle to forgive themselves.
Judging this version against an apparent ‘original’ misunderstands both the ancient poem and how myth actually works.
Nolan’s Odysseus is a traumatised hero who survives but must live with the cost others have paid for his actions.
The magic flower is used by the nymph Calypso to purge Odysseus’ trauma.
When Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca he doesn’t walk through the door and say who he is. Here’s why.
Hollywood has a habit of rendering complex literary heroes into one-dimensional figures. Nolan’s The Odyssey dodges this trap.
The Sea Peoples are widely blamed for the collapse of the interconnected world of the Bronze Age. But what’s the evidence say?
Is Christopher Nolan’s adaptation a definitive film version of Homer’s Odyssey? No, it isn’t. In fact, it can’t be.
Accurate adaptations of canonical texts are few and far between – but these films and miniseries stand out for their fidelity to the source material.
The Odyssey hits cinemas in July 2026. But will it celebrate Odysseus as the clever hero – or finally confront the wreckage he leaves in his wake?
Morocco is entrenching its control of Western Sahara, or what it calls the ‘Southern Provinces’.
The Dark Knight trilogy explores the discomforting idea that institutions may be flawed but necessary – and that stability sometimes requires myth, not truth.
For all its praise, the film furthers the dominant narrative of the bombs as a morally fraught but necessary project, with American anxieties playing a starring role.
From Mean Streets to The Exorcist and Badlands, 1973 was a year that showcased the audacious talent in Hollywood that was experimenting with darker themes and new film techniques.
The Christopher Nolan film ‘Oppenheimer’ is set to become a summer blockbuster. But one of the featured sites in the movie is a sobering reminder of the horror of nuclear war.
As my seat shakes from the stereo effects, nobody in the nearly-full cinema flinches. The teenagers to my right are as used to explosions as J. Robert Oppenheimer himself.
Christopher Nolan’s film is the latest of many portrayals of the famous theoretical physicist. Here are five of the most intriguing.
Top contributors
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Research Associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen
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Professor of History, Michigan State University
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Casual Academic, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University
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Associate Professor, Film Studies, University of Sydney
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Postdoctoral fellow, Victorian literature and magic, University of Portsmouth
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Lecturer in Screen School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland
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Professor of History, Australian Catholic University
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Senior Lecturer, Media Studies and Production, University of Southern Queensland
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Research Associate, Curation and Communication, University of Tübingen
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Associate Professor in English and American Literature, Nottingham Trent University
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Post-doctoral researcher, Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney
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Professor of Creative Writing, University of Technology Sydney
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Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, Canada
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Head of Film & TV, University of South Wales
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Senior Lecturer in Creative Practice and Public Humanities, The University of Melbourne