Christopher Nolan remakes 'The Odyssey' as an Anglo-American imperial fantasy

Christopher Nolan remakes 'The Odyssey' as an Anglo-American imperial fantasy Submitted by Hamid Dabashi on Mon, 08/10/2026 - 05:40 Homer's epic emerged from the eastern Mediterranean, but Hollywood's latest adaptation continues a long tradition of appropriating ancient Greece for an invented western identity Matt Damon, Christopher Nolan and Anne Hathaway attend the New York premiere of 'The Odyssey' at AMC Lincoln Square Theater on 14 July 2026 (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images via AFP) On By sheer serendipity, I watched Christopher Nolan's new film, The Odyssey , far from the madding crowd of Hollywood hype, in a small Greek town called Markopoulo Mesogaias. A historic little municipality in the East Attica region of Greece, it is a 15-minute ride from the temple ruins of the fifth-century BCE Sanctuary of Artemis at Vravrona (ancient Brauron), dedicated to the goddess of wild nature and childbirth. Artemis is also the name of the cinema where we sat to see Sir Christopher Nolan's new film, located right behind the splendid Saint John Orthodox Church of Markopoulo, built in 1904.