I don’t find the argument that Nolan’s Odyssey is fundamentally anti-woke persuasive. The film may retain the external architecture of Homer—homecoming, order, obligation and the restoration of Ithaca—but at almost every decisive interpretive point it filters that architecture through a modern progressive moral framework. Calling the result “based” because the suitors are decadent confuses the survival of Homer’s plot with the preservation of his moral world.
Sinon is perhaps the clearest example. Page is not playing a “shepherd’s boy” from the Odyssey, because Homer never names or dramatises Sinon. In the wider Trojan tradition, Sinon is a Greek warrior who knowingly participates in the Horse stratagem; Quintus Smyrnaeus has him volunteer to remain behind and persuade the Trojans to bring it into Troy. In Virgil, his story that Odysseus persecuted and intended to sacrifice him is itself a calculated lie designed to win Trojan sympathy.
Nolan turns that lie into the truth. His Sinon apparently does not know that Greek soldiers are concealed inside the Horse, is genuinely deceived by Odysseus and dies because he trusted him. The traditional deceiver becomes the deceived; the willing agent becomes an exploited victim; and the moral culpability that once belonged partly to Sinon is transferred almost entirely to Odysseus and the Greek war machine. That is not merely humanising an old character. It is a direct ideological inversion of him.
Page’s presence therefore functions almost as stunt casting, irrespective of whether Nolan consciously intended it that way. Page’s public identity makes it almost inevitable that critics will interpret Sinon as a contemporary symbol of marginalisation, victimhood and courage—as this essay itself does—rather than ask why the character’s original agency has been removed. The casting “works” precisely because the ancient Sinon has been reconstructed as the film’s conspicuously innocent outsider, betrayed by the masculine violence surrounding him.
Nor can Emily Wilson’s influence be waved away as though it were an incidental choice of wording. Nolan explicitly cited Wilson’s opening—“Tell me about a complicated man”—when explaining his point of entry into Odysseus, describing the character’s cunning, ingenuity and resourcefulness as central to his interest. Wilson’s translation is famous precisely because it does not present itself as an ideologically transparent conduit to Homer: its modern language and treatment of marginalised characters deliberately encourage a more critical reading of the poem’s patriarchal order. One can admire the translation while still recognising that choosing it has interpretive consequences.
The film’s “complicated man” is not simply the traditional polytropos Odysseus rendered in accessible English. He is reconstructed through a modern suspicion of heroic masculinity, conquest and civilisational violence. The Trojan Horse ceases to be primarily the consummation of Greek cunning and becomes the moment when moral evil enters the Greeks themselves. Sinon’s transformation then personalises that indictment: Odysseus does not merely deceive an enemy but sacrifices an innocent subordinate who trusted him.
For the same reason, I do not think the film genuinely “doesn’t take sides.” Its supposed balance is superficial. The suitors may represent progressive decadence, but the film’s deeper moral scrutiny is directed at hierarchy, martial heroism and the violent men who claim to defend civilisation. Sinon is injured by both camps but morally implicated in neither, while Odysseus inherits the guilt from which the adaptation has absolved him.
None of this means Page gives a bad performance, that Wilson is an illegitimate translator or that Nolan has made a bad film. It means the adaptation’s ideological choices should be acknowledged rather than dissolved into the reassuring claim that its casting is “absent any agenda.” This is a recognisably progressive reinterpretation of The Odyssey: traditional agency becomes victimhood, heroic cunning becomes betrayal, victory becomes moral contamination, and the restoration of order is made conditional upon a modern liberal critique of the very masculine authority that restores it. The film may be aesthetically accomplished, but aesthetically accomplished ideological inversion is still ideological inversion.
I don’t know. There’s another way to read Sinon as quite critical on the topic. But more importantly, this is a story about the importance of law and order, the old ways, faith in divine power, and ruthlessness against the society of people who treat grievance as authority. That’s pretty damn based. The film’s only criticism of such things is that you don’t want law and order to turn into hateful tyranny.
Or possibly Page was meant to be Achilles but this got changed due to backlash? Sinon apparently doesn't even feature in either The Iliad or The Odyssey.
Wilson has openly shown contempt for Odysseus though, and is unable to switch off her ideological brainwashing to see the character more objectively. She allegedly even wrote a 90 page thesis on why she made the choices she did, while berating others for not thinking like her. She's a misandrist and woke.
The article is a reasonable interpretation - but the casting choices, the alterations to the written story give away the goals - really to win awards and the only way to do that is to "honor the gods" of the Academy. My take away is that it is a good film and the casing does not interfere, but the casting was chosen for very specific end goals. IHMO, I do not consider the film a masterpiece but it is a fun watchable 3 hours.
I don’t find the argument that Nolan’s Odyssey is fundamentally anti-woke persuasive. The film may retain the external architecture of Homer—homecoming, order, obligation and the restoration of Ithaca—but at almost every decisive interpretive point it filters that architecture through a modern progressive moral framework. Calling the result “based” because the suitors are decadent confuses the survival of Homer’s plot with the preservation of his moral world.
Sinon is perhaps the clearest example. Page is not playing a “shepherd’s boy” from the Odyssey, because Homer never names or dramatises Sinon. In the wider Trojan tradition, Sinon is a Greek warrior who knowingly participates in the Horse stratagem; Quintus Smyrnaeus has him volunteer to remain behind and persuade the Trojans to bring it into Troy. In Virgil, his story that Odysseus persecuted and intended to sacrifice him is itself a calculated lie designed to win Trojan sympathy.
Nolan turns that lie into the truth. His Sinon apparently does not know that Greek soldiers are concealed inside the Horse, is genuinely deceived by Odysseus and dies because he trusted him. The traditional deceiver becomes the deceived; the willing agent becomes an exploited victim; and the moral culpability that once belonged partly to Sinon is transferred almost entirely to Odysseus and the Greek war machine. That is not merely humanising an old character. It is a direct ideological inversion of him.
Page’s presence therefore functions almost as stunt casting, irrespective of whether Nolan consciously intended it that way. Page’s public identity makes it almost inevitable that critics will interpret Sinon as a contemporary symbol of marginalisation, victimhood and courage—as this essay itself does—rather than ask why the character’s original agency has been removed. The casting “works” precisely because the ancient Sinon has been reconstructed as the film’s conspicuously innocent outsider, betrayed by the masculine violence surrounding him.
Nor can Emily Wilson’s influence be waved away as though it were an incidental choice of wording. Nolan explicitly cited Wilson’s opening—“Tell me about a complicated man”—when explaining his point of entry into Odysseus, describing the character’s cunning, ingenuity and resourcefulness as central to his interest. Wilson’s translation is famous precisely because it does not present itself as an ideologically transparent conduit to Homer: its modern language and treatment of marginalised characters deliberately encourage a more critical reading of the poem’s patriarchal order. One can admire the translation while still recognising that choosing it has interpretive consequences.
The film’s “complicated man” is not simply the traditional polytropos Odysseus rendered in accessible English. He is reconstructed through a modern suspicion of heroic masculinity, conquest and civilisational violence. The Trojan Horse ceases to be primarily the consummation of Greek cunning and becomes the moment when moral evil enters the Greeks themselves. Sinon’s transformation then personalises that indictment: Odysseus does not merely deceive an enemy but sacrifices an innocent subordinate who trusted him.
For the same reason, I do not think the film genuinely “doesn’t take sides.” Its supposed balance is superficial. The suitors may represent progressive decadence, but the film’s deeper moral scrutiny is directed at hierarchy, martial heroism and the violent men who claim to defend civilisation. Sinon is injured by both camps but morally implicated in neither, while Odysseus inherits the guilt from which the adaptation has absolved him.
None of this means Page gives a bad performance, that Wilson is an illegitimate translator or that Nolan has made a bad film. It means the adaptation’s ideological choices should be acknowledged rather than dissolved into the reassuring claim that its casting is “absent any agenda.” This is a recognisably progressive reinterpretation of The Odyssey: traditional agency becomes victimhood, heroic cunning becomes betrayal, victory becomes moral contamination, and the restoration of order is made conditional upon a modern liberal critique of the very masculine authority that restores it. The film may be aesthetically accomplished, but aesthetically accomplished ideological inversion is still ideological inversion.
I don’t know. There’s another way to read Sinon as quite critical on the topic. But more importantly, this is a story about the importance of law and order, the old ways, faith in divine power, and ruthlessness against the society of people who treat grievance as authority. That’s pretty damn based. The film’s only criticism of such things is that you don’t want law and order to turn into hateful tyranny.
Or possibly Page was meant to be Achilles but this got changed due to backlash? Sinon apparently doesn't even feature in either The Iliad or The Odyssey.
Wilson has openly shown contempt for Odysseus though, and is unable to switch off her ideological brainwashing to see the character more objectively. She allegedly even wrote a 90 page thesis on why she made the choices she did, while berating others for not thinking like her. She's a misandrist and woke.
The article is a reasonable interpretation - but the casting choices, the alterations to the written story give away the goals - really to win awards and the only way to do that is to "honor the gods" of the Academy. My take away is that it is a good film and the casing does not interfere, but the casting was chosen for very specific end goals. IHMO, I do not consider the film a masterpiece but it is a fun watchable 3 hours.
This is a fascinating and thought-provoking essay.
Thank you... ☝🏻😎
I just wish Hollywood would stop remaking the same stories all the time, spend that kind of resources on something new.
I do hate how derivative everything has become, but I am okay with this one, being a fan of the source material.
"but I decline to be so brittle"
Perfectly stated.