Main Differences Between Nolan’s 'The Odyssey' and Homer's Poem

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, in worldwide theaters todays, adapts Homer’s poem of the same name. But like any adaptation does with its source material, the director of Inception and Oppenheimer made a few changes in relation to the original text.

Some of these changes are subtle, while others alter certain passages from Homer’s poem. Among them, a few stand out more, such as the absence of the Greek gods. The presence of deities in Nolan’s story is limited to Athena (Zendaya), who appears as a manifestation of Odysseus’s post-traumatic stress after the Trojan War.

Below, Omelete lists all the main differences between Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Homer’s poem:

The beginning of the journey

In the poem, after leaving Troy, Odysseus and his crew lose their way in the land of the Lotus-Eaters, eaters of the lotus flower. This stop is omitted in the film, and the flowers are incorporated into the “spell” that keeps Odysseus on Calypso’s island (Charlize Theron).

The connection between Sinon and Antinous

The film’s flashback linking Sinon’s (Elliot Page) entry into the Trojan War to a plot by Antinous (Robert Pattison) was created for the movie. Originally, Sinon is only described in The Aeneid, by Virgil, as the turncoat Greek who delivers the wooden horse to the Trojans.

Confrontation with Polyphemus

In the poem, the island of the Cyclops Polyphemus has other Cyclopes on it, and it is to them that Polyphemus cries out for help when Odysseus blinds him; the hero outsmarts the Cyclopes with a play on words. In the film, Odysseus and Polyphemus do not debate, they simply fight, and the fact that the Cyclops is Poseidon’s son is only implied, never confirmed.

Aeolus’s island

The entire section in which the Greeks visit the island of the god Aeolus and receive supplies to return to Ithaca (a journey then thwarted by the greed of Odysseus’s men) does not appear in the film. Nolan skips from Polyphemus straight to the Laestrygonians.

Hermes

Hermes, the Greek god of commerce and messenger of the gods, is not in the film. In the poem, this god helps Odysseus with an antidote so he will not be turned into a pig by Circe. In the film, Odysseus discovers Circe’s (Samantha Morton) spell through his own cunning.

Journey to the Underworld (Hades)

The purpose of the journey to Hades remains the same: to consult the blind Tiresias (James Remar) and discover the way to Ithaca. In the film, however, only the spirits of Sinon and Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) speak to Odysseus, while in the poem the dead heroes of the Trojan War (Achilles, Ajax) and Odysseus’s mother also appear to the Ithacan.

Calypso’s island

Odysseus spends seven years on Calypso’s island, where she would seduce him with eternal life if Athena and Zeus did not intervene to secure his release. In the film, Calypso saves Odysseus from a shipwreck and takes him in by granting one of the hero’s wishes, and he then forgets his past by eating the lotus flowers.

Odysseus’s narration

In the poem, Odysseus retells the fantastical stops on his journey in retrospect to the Phaeacians, the kingdom where he lands after leaving Calypso’s island. In the film, the Phaeacians do not appear, and Odysseus recalls his adventure while still on Calypso’s island, when she insists that he recount his past.

The attempt on Telemachus’s life

In the poem, Telemachus (Tom Holland is warned by Athena about the plan to kill him. In the film, it is with the help of a disguised Odysseus that the son manages to survive the plot as soon as he returns to Ithaca after visiting Sparta.

The end of the story

The film ends shortly after Odysseus reveals himself to Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and kills all the suitors. In the poem, the final canto still includes an episode in which the souls arrive in Hades, while Antinous’s father longs for revenge and calls on the Ithacans to go to war, a conflict that Athena prevents in order to restore peace.