Christopher Nolan Explains Why He Cut a 3,000-Year-Old Joke From ‘The Odyssey’

‘The Odyssey‘ has spent the past few weeks dominating the entertainment news cycle, and not just because of its scale. Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem has drawn attention for its IMAX Film Camera production, its sprawling ensemble, and its willingness to modernize a nearly 3,000-year-old text for a contemporary audience. That willingness to update the material, though, apparently only went so far.

Nolan sat down with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show this week to promote the film, and the conversation eventually turned to one specific piece of source material that never made it to the screen. Stewart, who said he watched the film alongside a colleague who had studied the original Greek text, relayed a complaint on that colleague’s behalf. He noted that the person loved the movie but had one lingering note.

Stewart explained that Odysseus makes a particular joke with the Cyclops in Homer’s original telling, and that the absence of it in the film had genuinely upset his friend. Nolan responded with some self-aware humor of his own before getting into the reasoning. It is a pun, he said, and puns in translation are tough, adding that he tried, but it was not possible to work it in.

The joke in question is considered one of the oldest and most famous puns in Western literature. In Homer’s version, Odysseus tells the murderous Cyclops Polyphemus that his name is Nobody, or Outis in the original Greek. Later, after Odysseus blinds the creature with a stake, the Cyclops screams for help and the other Cyclopes come running, only for Polyphemus to cry that Nobody is attacking him, which sends the confused rescuers wandering off.

The trick mirrors the deception of the Trojan Horse later in the story, and additional layers of wordplay build on the joke once the reader gets deeper into the original Greek. Because so much of the humor depends on that specific linguistic sleight of hand, Nolan found there was no clean way to preserve it once the dialogue moved into modern English.

Stewart was not the only one interested in how Nolan handled the Trojan Horse itself during the same conversation. The director explained that he had long wanted to depict the horse half buried in sand near the shoreline, rather than the more traditional image of it being wheeled up to the gates of Troy. He said that image had stuck with him for decades, ever since he was briefly attached to direct an earlier film based on the Iliad, and that finding a believable way to present it became something of a guiding principle for the entire production.

Fans and critics reacting to the exchange online have largely found Nolan’s honesty refreshing, with many pointing out that trying to force a Greek pun into English dialogue could have easily read as forced or distracting on screen. Others have simply enjoyed watching two prominent Nolan admirers, Stewart included, nerd out over one of the most analyzed texts in literary history.

‘The Odyssey’ opened in theaters on July 17, following preview screenings the night before. The film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Bill Irwin as Polyphemus, Samantha Morton as Circe, and Charlize Theron as Calypso, with Robert Pattinson playing the suitor Antinous and John Leguizamo playing the loyal servant Eumaeus.

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