On Tuesday evening, students and faculty gathered in Howell House to discuss the relationship between Homer’s “The Odyssey” and Christopher Nolan’s 2026 film adaptation.

The conversation was led by Senior Lecturer in Classics Michael Nerdahl, who attributes the tale’s endurance through time in part to its straightforwardness.

“You have a person who’s trying to get home after years away. He’s got loved ones at home who care about him or are under threat, and he has to make it back before the things at home are disrupted and destroyed forever,” Nerdahl said. “It’s very simple. It’s a very lovely story.”

Though the epic’s simplicity may be responsible for its 21st-century appeal, Nerdahl noted how Greeks favored its sister, “The Iliad.”

“In antiquity, the Greeks absolutely adored ‘The Iliad,’ and they thought ‘The Odyssey’ was just kind of fun,” Nerdahl said.

Nerdahl contrasted this ancient preference to the modern reception of Nolan’s film. While classicists largely denounced the 2004 film “Troy,” which was loosely based on ‘The Iliad,’ Nerdahl stated that “half or more of classicists are actually into [‘The Odyssey’]” despite prominent translator Emily Wilson’s highly publicized criticism of Nolan’s movie.

“I think Nolan takes [‘The Odyssey’] for himself and he gives it meaning that is really, really important to him,” Nerdahl said. “I think it has a lot of repercussions and connotations for us today, and I think explains why so many people like to watch it today.”

For Nerdahl, Nolan’s take on the epic exemplifies Professor of Latin and Greek Barbara Weiden Boyd’s belief that the relevance “The Odyssey” relies on its representation in ways that are “personal, individual and evocative.”

Nolan’s depiction of Odysseus as a traumatized survivor of war rather than a clever trickster explains several departures from the poem, including the absence of the gods and the famous “Nobody” exchange between Odysseus and the cyclops Polyphemus.

“I think he went [with] a more traditional horror style as opposed to a clever folk tale motif,” Nerdahl said. “That was interesting, and it kind of upset me at first, but then with the whole trajectory of the rest of the movie, Nolan was very clearly going for a different sort of thing, and so his Odysseus is much more traumatized and trying to recover and get home.”

Nerdahl’s main reservation about the adaptation was the slaying of the suitors in the great hall. Whereas Homer’s Odysseus requires divine intervention to stop his rage, Nolan’s Odysseus ends his own violence.

“The whole ‘Iliad’ is all about the circle of violence and what that does to us as humans,” Nerdahl said. “In ‘The Odyssey,’ the same thing starts happening. [But] it’s not Nolan’s Odyssey because Odysseus intentionally stops and puts a cap on it, which I think is an important message that he’s trying to say. We have to do it ourselves.”

Nolan’s interpretation also highlights xenia, the Ancient Greek concept of hospitality, and the dangers that arise when Odysseus and his crew expect to be welcomed everywhere. Nerdahl connects this theme to the larger role of the Iliad and the Odyssey within Greek culture and identity.

“Once they got written down, it’s really impossible to overstate just how important these poems [‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’] were,” Nerdahl said. “Greek school children … one of the sentences that they first learned how to write was ‘Homer is a god and not a man.’ School children learn to write the alphabet for [this], and it was unbelievably important to Greek identity. You weren’t Greek unless you knew ‘The Iliad.’”

Other topics within the discussion ranged from the identity of Homer himself and the portrayal of female characters to the role of the gods, the casting of Matt Damon and the arc of Odysseus’s loyal hunting dog, Argos.

Elliot Akst ’29, an attendee who read “The Odyssey” in his first-year writing seminar, was unsure how the poem would translate to the screen.

“I was hesitant,” Akst said. “I didn’t feel that the movie would represent the book very well, and that changed slightly. I think it was a very enjoyable movie, but I just still don’t believe that it carries the same weight as the book.”

Nerdahl ultimately attributed the changes in Nolan’s adaptation to a commentary on modern society.

“He turns it into this, ‘Oh, we’re the sea people, we’re the ones who are actually destroying our own civilization because we’re not doing anything,’” Nerdahl said. “‘We’re not doing what we should. We’re losing our morality. We’re lost. We’re losing our humanity.’”