A Harvard University professor has questioned Christopher Nolan on how he would portray Matt Damon’s Odysseus in his movie The Odyssey. The acclaimed filmmaker’s upcoming magnum opus is based on Homer’s ancient Greek poem. It will arrive in theaters in July 2026. Additionally, The Odyssey features Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal, and many more.
Gregory Nagy asks how Matt Damon’s ‘trickster figure’ will be handled in The Odyssey
Gregory Nagy, a professor of Classical Greek and Comparative Literature at Harvard, recently questioned how the Oppenheimer director plans to show Odysseus in his upcoming movie.
In a recent interview with ScreenRant, Nagy shared that Odysseus has done many “questionable” things in his life. In The Odyssey, Matt Damon plays the Greek king. One of the things Nagy recounted was Odysseus killing a kid. Thus, he asked, “What are we going to do with it? Is Matt Damon going to kill a kid?”
The Harvard academician further shared the tale of Odysseus committing the crime in detail. He said that the King of Ithaca considered himself a Trojan War hero in his version. However, he was a “trickster” in reality. When “washed ashore,” Odysseus witnessed a blind singer singing. This is when Odysseus asked the singer to sing about the “tale of Troy.”
Nagy narrated the incident and said, “So, the story is told–and I can reconstruct for you that because we have plot outlines of how that happened–that when Troy finally is captured, Odysseus himself takes the child of Hector and Andromache, who are the nicest people in the Iliad, and he takes the baby to the highest point in Troy and throws the baby to his death.”
The professor conveyed that when Odysseus heard the blind singer singing about this part involving his crime, the King cried. Nagy stated, “While Odysseus was listening to this, he started crying. He was weeping, and weeping, and weeping, just like a captive woman when her child was killed and her husband was killed. The camera, so to speak, moves away from this story within a story, and you see the audience experiencing the same pain that the victim of a war crime experiences. How the hell are you going to do that in a movie?”
According to Gregory Nagy’s comments, the complexity of Odysseus’ nature poses a challenge for Christopher Nolan. Given the rich source material, fans are currently unaware whether he will fully adapt the poem.
Originally reported by Apoorv Rastogi on ComingSoon.net.
