Christopher Nolan Defends Cutting Cyclops Scene Pun From The Odyssey

This article contains spoilers for The Odyssey.

Christopher Nolan has defended his controversial decision not to include a rare moment of humour from the original text in his adaptation of The Odyssey.

The Oscar winner’s big-screen epic has received near-unanimous praise since its release last week, featuring a star-studded cast led by Matt Damon as Odysseus, who embarks on a mammoth, years-long trek home to Ithaca at the end of the Trojan war.

Along the way, he survives life-threatening conditions and encounters a range of weird and wonderful characters, among them a cyclops who he and his crew must outsmart to save their own lives.

It’s this part of Homer’s original epic poem, on which Nolan’s The Odyssey is based, that the “joke” in question occurs.

The source material depicts Odysseus introducing himself to the cyclops as “Nobody” (or “Outis” in Ancient Greek).

When the central hero shoots the cyclops in its eye, the commotion draws the attention of other creatures, who ask their compadre who has put them in danger.

However, when he replies “Nobody”, they assume he means it literally, so don’t intervene (this use of “Nobody” also pops up later in the text, but it’s this moment of confusion that people have taken exception to Nolan omitting from his screen version of The Odyssey).

Earlier this month, the Oppenheimer director made an appearance on The Daily Show, where host Jon Stewart asked him about this directly.

The comedian explained that he’d attended a screening of The Odyssey with “someone who has actually studied those texts in Greek” and “to be frank, would probably be a pain in the ass to watch The Odyssey with”.

Stewart then pointed out that his colleague “loved it” but did have “one note”.

“OK, it’s a little late…” Nolan quipped, to which the presenter continued: “Apparently, there is a joke that Odysseus makes with the cyclops. He was very upset that that was not in the movie.”

“I understand,” Nolan conceded, before adding: “It’s a pun. Puns in translation are tough… I tried. It was not possible to work it in.”

Later in the interview, the director said that his experience directing The Dark Knight trilogy prepared him for adapting a pre-existing property that people already have their own opinions and preconceived notions about.

He recalled: “When you take on the character of Batman as we did in the Dark Knight trilogy, you are dealing with, at that time, 75 years of history with a beloved character who’d been worked on by these incredible writers and artists.

“What we learned in that experience is that if we made the best film we possibly could, if we put as strong an interpretation on the character as we could, the fans felt the respect and the love for the source material, even if we weren’t doing exactly what they would have done.

“That was what was important, to be respect the material. And I think the same very much applies to Homer.”

Nolan has also spoken candidly about another tough aspect of the cyclops sequence – more specifically, bringing the mythical being to life on screen without having to rely too heavily on CGI.

The Odyssey is in cinemas now.