Danish classicist Marcel Lysgaard Lech says much of the criticism aimed at Christopher Nolan’s new film version of “The Odyssey” misses what Homer’s text actually says.
Nolan’s nearly three-hour adaptation has divided commentators, even as about 450,000 Danes have seen it in cinemas so far, DR reports. Lech, a lecturer in ancient and classical studies at the University of Southern Denmark, argues that several of the complaints are wrong on the texts.
He made the case on DR’s P1 program “Skønlitteratur”. In two weeks he publishes a new Danish translation of some of the 24 songs about Odysseus’ ten-year journey home from the Trojan War.
According to DR, critics have called the film “woke” and said it turns the 2,800-year-old epic into an anti-war story. Some also say Matt Damon’s Odysseus is too sensitive. DR notes commentary along those lines in The New York Times on July 22, 2026, and in The Guardian on July 25, 2026.
Lech says both “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad” already contain anti-war elements, not politically, but in showing what war does. He describes “The Iliad” as a long massacre that hides nothing about spears, wounds and death. He suspects some critics have read only highlights of the poems.
On the claim that Greek heroes do not cry, Lech points out that Odysseus weeps the first time the reader meets him, with the nymph Calypso. He says both Odysseus and Achilles cry a great deal in the original texts.
In Homer’s version, Odysseus is unfaithful several times, and 108 suitors are killed when he returns home. Nolan’s Odysseus is not unfaithful and spares more lives. On P1’s “Anmelderne”, specialist in ancient culture Sander Funch says that makes him a Christian hero, self-sacrificing and merciful.
Lech agrees the screen Odysseus has become softer and milder. He rejects the idea that the original hero stands beyond good and evil. Per Lech, a moral law runs through the whole of “The Odyssey,” binding people to divine knowledge.
The two also disagree about the Greek hospitality concept of xenia, which required hosts to feed and shelter strangers first and ask questions later. Funch says the film inflates xenia into something close to Kant’s categorical imperative. Lech counters that the Trojan War itself begins with a clear breach of xenia, when Paris takes Helen from Menelaus.
Lech notes that Menelaus repeatedly complains in “The Iliad” that Zeus, the guarantor of xenia, withholds his victory. His own main objection to the film is its ending. He calls the happy conclusion too Hollywood-like, and says the film, though visually striking, was a little boring.
