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 The Odyssey 2026 film
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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 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.
The bonds between humans and animals are richly represented in both literature and visual arts throughout ancient Greek culture.
Nolan’s Odysseus is a traumatised hero who survives but must live with the cost others have paid for his actions.
Top contributors
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Director, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama; Associate Professor in Classical Reception; Fellow, St Hilda's College, University of Oxford
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Senior Lecturer in Greek Art and Archaeology History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University
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Senior Lecturer in Classics, Newcastle University
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Professor of Psychological Science, Creighton University
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Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, McMaster University
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Professor of Classics and Archaeology, Brock University
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Lecturer in Comparative Literature, Binghamton University, State University of New York