Are we the baddies? With classicist Jack Mitchell on Nolan's The Odyssey

The ins and outs, the twists and turns

I had a great pleasure of chatting with Jack, a Twitter mutual, about Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster.

Dr Jack Mitchell (PhD, Stanford) teaches Classics at Dalhousie University and is the author of, among many other titles and translations, The Odyssey of Star Wars (2021, Abrams Books).

Does Nolan re-tell The Odyssey through a Christian perspective? What of the missing gods? Does Zeus' Law make sense in a godless universe? Do Homeric heroes get PTSD? Why is Helen here a trophy wife full of remorse? Why was the sexy time with Circe and Calypso erased? And are we the Sea People all along, is the call coming from inside the house?

This was fun and I’ve learned a lot. Make sure you stay till the very end when my interlocutor reveals his favourite translations of the epic.