Beware of Geeks Bearing Grifts: Nolan’s Cowardly Betrayal of The Odyssey and the Greek People

By John Kass

Sunday July 26, 2026

The Odyssey of Homer is an intensely  personal book for me, the most important book of my life. It is the foundation of the Western cannon, and like a trail of breadcrumbs can show lost men  and women of the West the way home.

Some pilgrims latch onto the Bible for their journey, but as a boy, sadly I was not drawn to the Good Book. Instead, I was drawn to the sacker of cities, the cunning man of many devices, the Son of Laertes, Noman, the Man of Wrath, Odysseus.

I stole a children’s version of the Odyssey—Odysseus the Wanderer by well-known classicist Aubrey deSélincourt—from another child’s desk when I was 11-years-old years old. I never apologized. And I never looked back. Many immigrant sons were falling into the great melting pot when the national epic of the Greek people fell to me. The kid I stole it from was Irish. I figured that Zeus put it in my hands.

I am a Greek. I deserved it.

Loyal readers know that I was a boy when the Oak Lawn tornado tore through the Southwest suburbs of Chicago. Thirty-three people were killed that afternoon in 1967, buildings, homes, and schools were destroyed. Our parish, St Nicholas Greek Orthodox church opened its extra classrooms to the Roman Catholics in need. The Odyssey compelled me to go to down to the sea alone when I was a boy of 19, to the jungles of Guyana, the crowded violent chaos of Lagos, Nigeria,  to see the flying  fish bursting silver and red from the Atlantic, the oil fires red against the gray low-hanging sky.

I have treasured it since that time.  And though I have suffered several strokes and now must use a claw foot cane to walk, if the original owner showed up at my door angrily demanding a return of the book  I would happily fight him in the driveway.

But now there is a movie version  based on a woke feminist translation  What do I think? It is a coward’s version of a great story that has been cheapened and diluted with corporate fear. It is far worse than I feared or  expected. From the race swapping of important characters to satisfy Hollywood race/diversity police, to the imposition of a gender confused female actor portraying a thoroughly gender confused and tiny man pretending to be a woman or Greek warrior. Whew.

It is feminist trash from a woman who hates the Greek warrior class for their male egos and male rage. Wilson despises the king of Ithaca. And I’m not the only one to say this about her. It sucks.

Both Homerically and epically.

 

 

 

What is missing from Nolan’s Odyssey? Almost everything, including this exchange between Odysseus and the hero Achillies.

“I would rather be the slave of a landless barbarian than king of the underworld,” says the specter of Achillies.

Much has been made about the race swapping for the role of  Helen of Troy. And I am supposed to say that hers is the face that launched one thousand ships? Not bloody likely. Casting directors could have found many beautiful accomplished actresses to play the role who had actually read the epic poem unlike N’yongo who was busy flaunting her illiteracy during the publicity promotions for the movie.  There was not one Greek actress or actor in the entire main cast.

And what was the medieval armor on the  7 foot giants all about? It serves as the breaking of the fourth wall, for moviegoers-the fourth wall being the suspension of disbelief necessary for the audience to buy into the fact that they are seeing events from 700-800 B.C .

This mish-mosh is a result of Nolan falling in love with Emily Wilson’s feminist antiheroic translation of the epic. Viewers would have been better served if Nolan had reached out to Victor Davis Hanson America’s greatest classical historian alive today. The entire movie is depressing because it begins by stripping the heroic out of it, there is nothing to inspire men of the West in this Odyssey. And that is why ultimately it fails. There is nothing memorable about it except the gyrations of critics desperate not to be pinned in with racists for opposing the ridiculous casting decisions.

 

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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Comments 59

    2. John,

      I’m looking forward to Elon’s version. I, too, was present at the Oaklawn tornado and I, too, read both the Iliad and the Odyssey while in grade school. Twice, in fact, as I also read it at St. Laurence H.S.

      All in all. Nolan screwed the pooch but sadly many young people are going to the movie without having read the classic and think it’s “compelling”.

  3. Read the book in high school. I am going to reread it now, doing the companion Hillsdale College online class at the same time. Then, I will see the movie.

    Revisionist history is the Marxist way

  4. This is an epically brilliant take-down of the gobshites who have destroyed Western Civilization. My compliments, Sir! Worthy of Cuchulainn, Achilles, Aeneas, Hiawatha and Siegfried, this cudgel of a critique should be wielded by every literate soul . . .especially us guys!

    Thank you, John Kass!

  5. Glad to see you back writing again, hope you are well. I won’t bother to see the film. In truth, the 1950s Kirk Douglas version “Ulysses” is still by far the best. We would show it to our students while they were reading “The Odyssey”. It also conveniently left out some parts so we could see who actually read it by the tests. Most Gen-xers and Millennials did, few Zoomers though. They seemed to lack the concentration needed to read ANY novel. Lock-down still haunts them.

      1. That scene, up through the battle in the hall, and the Cyclops cave were favorites with my students, me too! I just gave it another view this afternoon.

  6. What modern Hollywood has managed to accomplish for me is I literally never pay attention to any of it. Seems, like all good woke organizations, they screw up everything they touch.

  7. I could tell by The Trailer it would be a Hollywood re-write of history. So have and will avoid it. Besides, Clooney’s “O Brother Where art Thou” version was at least funny.

  8. What I missed was the cyclops scene. There wasn’t any deception by Odysseus giving his name as ‘Noman’. And where was the wine? If I remember correctly, Odysseus got the cyclops pretty drunk right before gouging out his eye. Missing.
    At the risk of sounding like a racist, casting a black woman as Helen of Troy was a mistake. Pure and simple.
    The thing he did have correctly was the scene with Argus. It brought a tear to my eye when I first read it back in ‘65. I was wondering how I’d react this time. Tears again. Oh well…

  9. I saw the movie too. It’s god awful. The action scenes are like any other movies of recent past. You think your watching one of Raiders of the Arc films. And then there is the casting. We got a Shvartze Greek, a Taco Greek, a Weakling Trans Greek and even……are you ready, a Chinaman Greek!!!!!!
    I couldn’t find any in the cast that are Greek!
    Plus way to long for a movie that’s repetitive and dull.

  10. I’m sorry you didn’t like the movie. I likely will not see it as I enjoy older movies much more than any of the new ones.

    Victor Davis Hansen is highly paid for his conservative views. He glossies over brutality, that of the sainted Greeks too. He accurately points out war crimes committed by Barack Hussein Obama and Clinton to justify what the current administration is doing in Iran, and never mentions how they spit on Christians in the Holy Land and are stealing their land.

    A previous commenter crudely referred to rape of the enemy by Greeks. Rape is a tactic employed during war, and the Greeks used it as well. They would rape the wives of their enemies, and sometimes the male combatants and non combatants as well.

    War turns men into animals. This is why to should be a last resort if used at all.

    2. Only you, with your “both sides do it” crap can inject the names of Obama, Clinton and the current administration into what’s supposed to be a critique of the Hollywood bastardization of one of the classics of Western Canon. It’s obvious you’ve never read any Victor Davis Hanson because he never speaks of the “sainted Greeks,” he speaks truthfully about them. Try reading A War Like No Other, The Western Way of War or Carnage and Culture, where he talks about wars of annihilation being the western standard and started by the Greeks

      VDH is one of our greatest living historians, head and shoulders above Howard Zinn or the boobs that put together the 1619 project and you lie about him because you think he’s excusing the current administration. Pathetic.

      1. Hey Lee, little Bobbie Maitino in a gasbag. He has nothing of substance to add. His tired argument is no matter the topic of discussion: “both sides do it.” He repeats this over and over regardless of the topic. I guess that what happens when you have no friends and live in your Mom’s basement.

        1. I’m pretty sure he’s older. This is what happens when kids no longer hang around on your lawn. Coming here and yelling at us is better than yelling at clouds.

          1. No doubt “he’s older.” That’s what makes it so sad to – metaphorically – still be living in Mom’s basement. But yeah, I agree. Better yelling at us, as opposed to Grandpa Simpson yelling at the clouds.

    3. I made a bologna sandwich with lettuce and mustard for lunch today. I’ll buy chips and two ice cold Coca-Colas at work. Now here is where it gets interesting : I only eat the sandwich on first break with one Coke. THEN on second break I eat the chips with the other Coke. Sometimes I will go back up to the vending area and buy a candy bar and ANOTHER Come to have on last break. These are things I’ve learned to do over long periods of time. I used to eat my whole lunch at once!!!!!!

      1. Robert Maitino, I made a bologna sandwich with lettuce and mustard for lunch today. I’ll buy chips and two ice cold Coca-Colas at work. Now here is where it gets interesting : I only eat the sandwich on first break with one Coke. THEN on second break I eat the chips with the other Coke. Sometimes I will go back up to the vending area and buy a candy bar and ANOTHER Come to have on last break. These are things I’ve learned to do over long periods of time. I used to eat my whole lunch at once!!!!!!

  11. Hollywood spends $250 million to make a muddled DEI version of a great epic of Western civilization — and yet! On a summer Sunday, a well-read Greek with a long memory gifts us with the actual “Odyssey,” and we take that great adventure again. (We also enjoy a good laugh over Nolan’s festival of diversity.)

    Can’t wait until some nitwit, his Malibu paradise destroyed by the conservationist wildfires, produces his blockbuster of “Paradise Lost.” Adam is played by a sullen Sean Penn and Eve is a trans Nigerian actor/actress who flirts with him. Satan, of course, has ominously blonde hair and orange skin. He posts on Truth Eden: “Better to reign in the White House than to serve in Heaven.”

  13. Yianni,
    Good to hear your voice again! And thankyou for sparing me the punishment of watching this feeble attempt to resurrect an epic Greek saga. The wokes have taken over Hollywod long ago, and more and more of the flicks they subject us to, have the same underlying, subliminal messsaging. White men are bad, suffering from their ingrown masculinity, and have wrought all the ills upon the earth and humanity! What a bunch of BS. But folks are buying it, and have gone in droves thus far to see this travesty of history. God help us! Stay well…

  14. John, I wondered when you were going to take Nolan to task as for abusing such an important part of Western Literature and Civilization! I have not watched it, and do not plan to do so, as it will nowhere near do it justice, as so many Hollywood productions of historical literature do, to the book it is supposedly derived from! I do want to encourage you to go back and read the book of Genesis in the Bible, as its human storylines are just as gripping (and also real history) as Homers. The only positive with Nolans’ work I see is at least some people will know that a Greek guy named Homer wrote an ancient tale, which is more than they teach in most Woke college English courses!

  15. John, you nailed it. Nolan portrayed Ulysses as if he had PTSD! I had to see the movie to see if it was as bad as I thought it would be. It was! The casting was a ridiculous bow to DEI, the script taken from a feminist “translation” was insipid, the 16th century armored giants was laughable. People left the theater with a big “Meh!” It will surely take many. Academy Awards because of its wokism. If Nolan had written the original it would never have become a classic. I would not recommend people spending money on this atrocity of a movie.

    1. Greg, I really think that’s the point. How can one criticize the movie if you don’t see it? Well that’s a valid point. So if you want to take down Nolan and his wokeism you got to see it. And of course all the woke lapdogs will go and praise it to high heaven. So from a commercial POV Nolan gets the wokesters and the folks who hate that stuff to shell out good money to see his faux epic. It reminds me of what Muhammad Ali said decades ago (I paraphrase): “the more folks hate me, the more they want to see me get beat, the more they come and pay to see me.” That is what is going on here. Nolan, like Ali is a marketing genius.

  16. Mr. Kass, well said.
    I have long consigned any movie made to represent history or any literary piece to the proverbial trash bin. When Hollywood makes a movie they use focus groups, consult activist historians ( black Cleopatra????) and the like just so they can expect a profit. That is all. Oh…and of course they don’t have to deal with things like copy right and ownership of intellectual material of Homer, Plato, Arrian.
    But there is a bigger issue as well. In our times we have a black Charlotte of Hanover, a black Cleopatra, watch any documentary and it becomes a politically correct piece of dreck. Our younger generation are having their heads filled with the woke and warped version of history and literary pieces which in the long run can only spell a monumental failure when reality hits.

  18. John

    I was an investor in and had a cameo in the Reagan film with Dennis Quaid. Facebook refused to run ads for the movie because apparently they didn’t like Reagan. The Academy Awards refused to even consider Reagan for any award because it wasn’t diverse enough (there went by chance for an Oscar :)) I guess Nancy Reagan should have been portrayed by Oprah or Tip O’Neill by Denzel. it’s not racism; it’s history…..

    John Roberts – when we stop discriminating based on race, we’ll stop discrimination based on race.

    Nolan is apparently interested in an Oscar….

  19. Loved the book as a youngster in Mythology, so I won’t waste a dime on this. I trust your judgment on this one, John.
    Can you imagine what they would do in a remake of Gone With the Wind?
    The DEI Po Lice would go nuts.
    Stay safe and have a great day.

  20. I used to love movies. I wanted to be transported to another place and time. I wanted to fall in love with the characters. I wanted to cheer for the good guys and boo at the bad guys.
    Now all I see is slop. And the required DEI standards of Oscar nominated movies is BS.
    I won’t see this movie. But I am predicting many Oscar nominations.
    Take care of yourself John.

    1. Yes Linda I completely agree. A frequent complaint about
      “representation” from the whiners is “.. I want to see someone who looks like me in the movies”. NOT ME. If I go to a movie I want to see a Cary Grant. Ava Gardner. Paul Newman. Sofia Loren Sean Connery. All impossibly good looking people. People who look like they belong on a big screen. Movie stars. The people in this version of
      “The Odyssey ” look like dweebs. Charlize Theron is the only one with any “movie star” good looks. If I want to see someone who looks like me I can look in the mirror…

  21. Thank you John and all of the. Commenters for their sage takes on revisionist DEI history. Won’t waste a dime on it TYVM. Was watching something on FB about JFK assassination. Ice poison bullets and other such nonsense. DRECK. As a senior in HS my memory pretty vivid. I also know two of the forensic scientists that were part of the Warren Commission investigation. Where does this stuff come from. Like the left — say it often enough and the masses bow down And believe.

  22. I guess the movie is just trying to be inclusive. But look at who is doing the including. Why cant I do the including. What’s it take to become the one chosen to do the including
    How many different ways do you need to sell out.

    Sell out enough and you can even be Knighted.

    We never stood a chance, during the early debate over separation of church and state, Madison understood Tolerance to be the counterfeit of Intolerance. Same for inclusion. Same for this flick Ill happily avoid.

    Never stood a chance, better off to have never been born than to sell out.

  23. Thanks John Kass for exposing this Hollywood sham. The film embraces the same elitist strategy as Obama’s lakefront monument to woke obsessions.

    Nolan uses leftwing gimmicks similar to Super Bowl halftimes : embrace fringe groups while snubbing independents & conservatives. His opus magnum appeals to every culture except Greek-Americans. Of the ten producers, only Kostas Raftopoulos is Greek-born.

    In the Guardian newspaper, Chris Cotonou wrote “What the Hellenic! Why is Christopher Nolan’s new Greek epic entirely devoid of Greeks?”
    Cotonou says “The cast has been selected to ‘represent the world’. Fair enough – except that one key country seems to have gone completely unrepresented” and “There isn’t a single Greek in the film.”

    Nolan received over $ 7.5 million in funding from the Hellenic Film Center for 3 weeks filming in Greece ($350,000 per day.) Instead of Hellenic talent, Nolan hired numerous liberal activists including Senator Elizabeth Warren’s fundraiser Matt Damon.

    Other woke types include Zendaya , hip-hop mogul Travis Scott , trans activists Charlize Theron & Elliot Page, abortion enthusiast Anne Hathaway and John Leguizamo who posted January 28 “If you follow ICE, unfollow me. Don’t come to my shows, and don’t watch my movies.”

  25. I agree 100%. I will not see this film. I loved the Washington film. And just to show you how upside down everything is today: I suggested that a church senior program where movies are shown for free, should show Young Washington and the man who chooses the films told me he would have to think about it and he did not think it would go over well with many of the people there. It is a sick world out there.

  26. Got in late to the column, not to sound like a cookie cutter, but isn’t this part of the plan by the Left, or socialists or communists if you prefer, to destroy our culture, along with our language and nuclear families. Great column John and great follow up comments except by the usual suspects who I used to respond to but now let the die on the vine. We are the real resistance, keep the faith.

  27. The media pandering and gaslighting to the American public for this movie is absolutely astounding. One Chicago paper referred to it as ” the movie of the century! “. A local TV segment called it ” this year’s most highly anticipated movie. I would compare the overhype for this bomb to the disastrous campaign to get Kamal Harris elected. Yes, the bullshit is that deep. Anyone who has already seen it has seen it and that’s about all of the audience it’s going to get. Elon Musk is correct when he said the bizarro casting was made to stick it to the Acadamy who has placed DEI requirements on movies for them to be considered for Oscars. Maybe this rotten egg is Christopher Nolans idea of a cosmic joke. If you drop twenty bucks on this bomb you’re the one who’s getting the egg on your face…

  28. My oligarch is better than your oligarch. We exalt these clowns because they have money? Christ threw out the money changers from the temple. Usury is illegal in Iran, but here, we’ll load you up with debt, give you payday loans, take your house if you miss a tax payment, put you in the poor house if you get sick.

    We put weapons in the hands of children in foreign lands, bomb their families, kill young girls in a school, the first responders and their parent too. We cheer this b cause they are Amalek, and then recoil in horror, when those very same weapons are used against us.

    You’ll allow Barack Hussein Obama and Clinton to be branded war criminals, but the current fools taking orders from the military industrial complex are engaging in a just war.

    Intellectual contortionists.

    Morality, ethics, and conscience for thee, but not for me.

    All, with God on our side.

    People start complaining?

    Look Trans!

    1. It’s a just war. The CIA needs to be shut down. All of this foolishness has got to stop. We must stop being agents of death, disease and horror and try to start healing.

      Money is the God of our leaders and most people here in the USA. But the money is only well spent if it’s for bombs to drop cowardly on people in distant lands. If they have a darker skin, and worship Allah, all the better.

      You exalt the US constitution, the Bill of Rights, say nothing of the surveillance state that is being erected before our very eyes. Snowden, Assange arrested for telling the truth. Epstein is ignored. The current POTUS is enriching himself obsecenely, and you bitch about ther Biden Crime family.

      We allow these sham parties to be used to divide us, rip us oof and push death in our name.

      Why do they hate us?

      I need to watch Fox News and read VDH so I know what to think.I need to ignore that we are creeping back to the Gilded Age, our food is poisoned, our rural hospitals are closing and food and gas prices keep going up.

      Let Them Eat Cake!

      1. 200 words asshole. And if you have nothing more to contribute to these discussions than your repetitive mantra of “oligarchs, oligarchs” you should do us all a favor and shut the F up.

  29. As is the case with epics, the book is always better than the movie.
    I’d rather watch O brother where out though again than waste hours of my life on seeing the current release again
    Perhaps some people will be encouraged to read Homer. Apparently, Helen of Troy opened the book though it sounds like to no avail.

  30. Great column John Kass. God bless you.
    Being of part Irish via my parents, I have no problem with your confession. Te absolvo….I probably mis-spelled that, but you know what I mean.
    I must report that my wife and I have NO plans to leave our abode and pay homage to the movie theater locally to see this tragedy of greed and ignorance of history.
    Getting tired easily these days, but your words always bring me back. God bless and keep you and yours well. As always in Faith Family Freedom, I am,
    Tom

  31. Thank you John for enlightening me. I was planning on seeing it, but now that I know that it is based a on feminist rewrite, I will not waste my time and money. Better to see the Kirk Douglas version.

    If the AWFLs will rewrite The Odyssey, they will rewrite anything. Next up will The Godfather and Star Wars.

  33. The fundamental problem with Nolan’s Odyssey is that it is NOLAN’s Odyssey, not Homer’s Odyssey. The Odyssey exerts a powerful hold on the human imagination after 2,700 years because it offers a window into Greek civilization, the foundation of our Western civilization. As for Christopher Nolan’s philosophical preoccupations, who cares? Will anyone be viewing and thinking about Nolan’s Odyssey in 20 years (let alone 2,700)? No. The film is not re-watchable; no one will be revisiting it even 5 years from now. (Cf., Gladiator, Master and Commander, Ben Hur, Cleopatra, a Man for All Seasons, Amadeus, etc.) Nolan neuters Odysseus, who is portrayed as a schlub, not the daring trickster /warrior of Homer. This is in line with the Wilson translation which is not particularly faithful to Homer. Nolan goes even further, modernizing both the characters’ speech (e.g., Telemachus’ repeated “my dad” references to Odysseus) and philosophical / moral perspective. No Greek of the period suffered from overwhelming (or even modest) guilt for having bested his enemies. Glory and honor were uppermost. And “Zeus’ Law” was not a thing — the concept of xenia notwithstanding. Whereas Homer’s Odysseus is heroic, Nolan’s Odysseus is pitiable, pathetic. A very modern PTSD-suffering wretch.

  34. Those wanting to encounter the authentic Odysseus should read one of the faithful English translations — Pope, Lattimore, Fagles, Mendelsohn. The introductions offered in the Fagles (by Bernard Knox) and Mendelsohn volumes are an education in themselves. In translation, the Odyssey is an easy read, and thrilling. Should the GROK version not materialize (or even if it does), the 2024 film “The Return” with Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus is worth seeing.

  35. Enough with this Odyssey! When is the movie ever as good as the book? I can;’t list any of the top of my head. I’m not Greek, thank God, but I read it in HS too and I enjoyed it. I loved George Clooney’s O Brother Where Art Thou, loosely based on the Odessey, but he’s a Dem supporter and I’m not supposed to like him: WOKE!

    Ukraine is bombing Iran now too. Our Peace President has literally set the world on fire.
    You memory hole Butler PA. The widow of the firefighter who was killed that day says SS talked to her 1 year later.
    You stay away from Epstein with a 10 foot pole.
    You cry about deficits when Dems control, but say nothing now.
    Propose no reforms other than voter ID, which I agree with BTW.
    Charlie Kirk? That case stinks to high heaven.

  36. Tucker Carlson interviewed Rutgers Bregman, Dutch Historian and author when he was still with Fox. The interview never aired, one of his staffers must have leaked it. But Bregman said media types like Carlson are millionaires paid to espouse the views of Billionaires. Carlson lost his cool and swore at him. It was pretty funny.

    He was right! VDH has gotten very rich apologizing for war mongers and romanticizing war. VDH is almost as bad as Rachel Maddow, who shamelessly pushed the Russia Hoax against Trump.

    Coincidentally, Trump has renewed the FISA process that Obama used to railroad him
    He has not reformed the Deep State other than fire as many Dems as he could and stop inspecting food so illnesses are breaking out all over!

    No reforms, no proposals to reform. Just keep spending our money on war.

  37. Thanks for the authoritative scoop on the movie. You better than practically anyone are in a position to document its shortcomings. You saved me time and money. I refused my wife’s suggestion that we go to the movie. She will now go with her sister and my mind will go unpolluted with this trash. You also reignited a desire to re-read the original, unedited version of the tale.

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