According to Wilson, Nolan’s “Odyssey” is “not interested in social or psychological questions of how people deceive and are deceived.”

She sees dissonance between the director’s script and his direction. The screenplay “grandly insists on the importance of human kindness, while the camera shows us an entirely different set of values,” she argues, explaining that Nolan’s direction is mostly concerned with the “mechanical challenge of moving objects through space,” be it the Trojan Horse or ships or more.

“What matters cinematically are the logistics: the rolling of the horse uphill and the claustrophobic, waterlogged interior. Once the ambush of the Trojans begins, the camera lingers repeatedly not on the human actors but on the enflamed, toppling buildings and the great gates of the city, whose slow-moving mechanism is observed at great length,” Wilson writes. “The script tells us loudly that people matter, but the camera shows us that what matters is the mechanical challenge of moving objects through space.”

“Nolan’s Odyssey is itself a kind of Trojan horse,” she continued. “The script grandly insists on the importance of human kindness, while the camera shows us an entirely different set of values. In these times of hatred and misinformation, we need more than the ‘apparent magic’ of deceptive images. We need art that is truthful about the costs and the necessity of compassion, and that recognizes that a sense of spiritual superiority may not protect us from lies. These lessons are legible in Homer and Virgil, but are elided by Nolan’s visually stunning, emotionally empty film.”

Wilson, who is also a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, originally criticized Nolan’s adaptation for lacking “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth.” The author said the movie has “nothing convincing to say.”

“Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ lacks many of the elements that make the poem great,” Wilson wrote originally. “It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbors. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”

Wilson’s criticisms were also derided by author Joyce Carol Oates, who slammed her on X for attacking Nolan’s movie.

“Rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner, this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan’s film, speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers,” Carol wrote. “One would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.