I talked to famed translator Emily Wilson about Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, in a wide-ranging conversation about shifting norms of translation, the strangeness of Homer's world, and the online discourse about the movie Here's what she said about the film: - "It is a big spectacle, and it is a fun time at the movies. My teenagers really loved it, and it was fun to go with my teenagers. It’s a fun summer action movie." - "I don’t think it’s a complicated movie. And I don’t think it’s even about a complicated man. I think it’s a quite simple action hero movie about an action hero who feels bad about being an action hero." - "When the casting was announced, it was The Talented Mr. Ripley that gave me hope in terms of where this might go with Matt Damon as Odysseus. Homer’s Odysseus is a complicated man, polytropos ... [But] Matt Damon in the film is traumatized Jason Bourne." - "There’s no Cyclops trick. There’s no comedy. Matt Damon isn’t required to be be scheming. We don’t even see him building the Trojan Horse, which I thought was an interesting choice. We have this tech hero, but we don’t see him building his tech. We see him agonizing about the results of the tech." derekthompson.org/p/emily-wi…