Christopher Nolan has done it again. His latest epic, The Odyssey, has stormed past the $700 million mark at the global box office in just 12 days — and it’s showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. To put that into perspective, the film is on track to surpass the entire lifetime earnings of Nolan’s own Oscar-winning blockbuster Oppenheimer in under two weeks. That’s not just impressive — that’s historic.
Audiences around the world have clearly been hungry for a cinematic retelling of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, and Nolan’s vision has delivered in a massive way. The film’s stunning visuals, massive scope, and Nolan’s signature mind-bending storytelling have drawn crowds in droves, cementing it as one of the biggest theatrical events of the year — possibly the decade.
But not everyone is celebrating without reservation. While fans are losing their minds over the spectacle (one viral reaction described the experience as a “10/10” that only Nolan could pull off), some scholars and literary figures are raising eyebrows. Emily Wilson, the celebrated translator who produced a widely praised modern English version of The Odyssey, has been vocal about her belief that Nolan should have collaborated with an expert rather than writing the screenplay entirely on his own. Her concern? That adapting one of the most complex and culturally rich texts in human history is a task that deserves more than one brilliant mind.
It’s a fascinating tension — the unstoppable commercial force of a Nolan blockbuster meeting the careful, considered world of classical scholarship. Critics and intellectuals, including writer Daniel Mendelsohn in a thoughtful piece for The New York Review of Books, have been weighing in on what Hollywood gains — and potentially loses — when it takes on ancient literature at this scale.
Of course, audiences voting with their wallets seem largely unbothered by the academic debate. The film’s momentum heading into its second and third weekends suggests it could become one of the highest-grossing films of all time. Whether you’re a Homer devotee or just someone who loves a visually stunning epic adventure, The Odyssey is clearly the movie moment of 2025. The conversation around it — both the praise and the critique — might just be as epic as the story itself.
