Christopher Nolan Explains Why He Changed THE ODYSSEY's Dark Original Ending
Christopher Nolan took on one of the oldest and most influential stories ever written with The Odyssey, but he wasn't interested in bringing every page of Homer's epic to the screen exactly as it was written.
While his adaptation stays true to the spirit of the legendary journey, Nolan made a few major changes, including completely reworking the ending.
In Nolan's version of The Odyssey, Odysseus finally makes it home, defeats the suitors who have overrun his kingdom, and reunites with Penelope. But instead of ending there, the film sends the couple off on one more adventure together, giving audiences a much more hopeful conclusion.
The original poem goes in a much darker direction. In Homer's version, after the suitors are slaughtered, Telemachus executes a group of enslaved women who had been sexually involved with the suitors by hanging them. The story also ends with Odysseus and Penelope remaining home rather than sailing off together.
Speaking with Time about the film's themes, particularly the exploration of humanity's more savage instincts through sequences like Circe and the sack of Troy, Nolan explained why he left some of that material behind.
"Circe articulates it well in the film. I love the way Samantha [Morton] has played the part. Talking about choices of adaptation, the end of the poem is so grim and so misogynistic, I had to exclude some of that material. But I didn't want to completely take it off the table in terms of what it is saying about men and the way they wage war."
It's an interesting balancing act. Nolan wanted to remove elements that he felt wouldn't serve his version of the story while still preserving the larger ideas Homer was exploring about violence, war, and the darker side of human nature.
The ending isn't the only place where Nolan made adjustments. His adaptation also trims the number of gods who appear throughout the story, shortens Odysseus's time with Circe, and changes which spirits he encounters during the journey through the underworld. Those kinds of changes are almost inevitable when adapting a sprawling ancient poem into a feature film.
Of course, any time a filmmaker tackles a literary classic, especially one as iconic as The Odyssey, there's bound to be debate over what was changed and what was left out. Nolan has already addressed the conversation surrounding his creative decisions.
"Comes with the territory," Nolan has said previously of backlash to the movie. "But look," he added, "these conversations that happen before people see the film – they're always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet."
Whether fans agree with every change or not, Nolan approached The Odyssey with a specific vision. Rather than recreating every detail of Homer's poem, he shaped the material into a story that reflects the themes he wanted to explore while giving audiences an ending that feels earned for his version of Odysseus's journey.
The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.