Everyone is buzzing about the release of the much-anticipated Christopher Nolan adaptation of The Odyssey. The epic poem is notoriously difficult to adapt, but who better to do it than the Oppenheimer director? Known for his huge cinematic scope, troubled main characters, and towering budgets, Nolan is the right man for the job, and the movie has been many people’s most anticipated film release of the year.
But before you try to grab a pair of those sold-out IMAX tickets, there’s a big question. Should you read The Odyssey before watching the movie?
As the Good Housekeeping books editor, I’m always encouraging people to read more rather than less. I’m also frequently on team “the book was better than the movie.” But do you have to read the epic poem before you see the film? My take is no—and that I might even recommend watching the movie before reading, if it’s your first time encountering the text.
Here’s my thought: The movie has a lot of very clear exposition, so you won’t be lost watching it without having the background from the text. The poem is called an epic for good reason. It’s huge in scope, and there’s a lot that Christopher Nolan couldn’t fit in the movie, even with three hours of runtime. There’s plenty left to discover if you read after seeing the film. (The movie lost a lot of detail with Polyphemus the cyclops specifically, although I may be something of a cyclops sympathizer.)
If you don’t typically read capital-L Literature for fun, the movie will be a more accessible entry point to the story and history. Then when you are ready to read the text, with a little less brain power spent on following the narrative, you can better enjoy the beautiful figurative language The Odyssey is known for, alongside the interplay of mythology, hospitality, and violence that shapes its story.
It’s also worth remembering that The Odyssey began as an oral tradition. It was never meant to be read but to be performed and shared via storytelling. True, the Greeks were not getting their eardrums blasted out by booming sound effects or having their retinas seared by the towering glory of IMAX. I also doubt Matt Damon was involved. But sitting in the dark and listening to a story together is inarguably closer to the way the Greeks experienced The Odyssey than reading the text alone at home is.
I’m won’t wax poetic, Nicole Kidman-style, about the magic of the movies. But there is something to be said for the shared experience, especially when a bucket of popcorn is involved. One could argue that the movie is an equally valid translation of The Odyssey as the text set permanently to paper in English is. The movie itself hints at this approach with the casting of rapper Travis Scott as a bard telling the story of Odysseus. The implication is that rap is the closest thing we have today to the role of bards in ancient history—and that a modern approach may look very different in style but still be faithful in substance to the spirit of the original.
If you still want a high-level overview of The Odyssey before you go to the theater (or maybe a refresher if the last time you read the text was in high school), a podcast or YouTube video is a lower-investment way to get the introduction to Odysseus’s trials and tribulations.
The Odyssey is 100% worth the read; it’s considered a foundation of Western canon for a reason! If you missed it in college or high school, it’s well worth circling back to it. Reading the original will also give you new insight into the adaptation. Sinon, played movingly by Elliot Page, is not originally from The Odyssey but from The Aeneid, and the ending of the movie is different from the poem in some pretty important ways. Both changes help further the themes of guilt and shame that Nolan highlighted in the adaptation. As a director, he’s known for guilt-ridden protagonists like Oppenheimer and Batman, and reading the original Odyssey really highlights that approach to the adaptation.
So although you definitely should read The Odyssey, there’s no need to feel rushed to do it before you go see it in theaters. After all, it’s been around for thousands of years—the story will wait a little longer for you to dive in.
