‘More postmodern than ancient’: why the Odyssey is everywhere, from Oz to Westeros

Christopher Nolan’s take on the Odyssey is set to break box-office records. What made the director so determined to adapt the ancient Greek epic? And why does a poem from 600BC hold a vice-like grip on pop culture? Warning: contains 2,600-year-old spoilers

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey movie has all the hopes of a summer blockbuster pinned to it, and all the promise – as the trailers have showed – of magnificent effects, shocks and thrills. You will be taken inside the cave of the terrifying one-eyed giant, the Cyclops Polyphemus, who likes to dine on human flesh. You will visit the dim and misty shores of the land of the dead, where no warm-blooded human should ever tread. You will flee the pounding tread of cannibals. You will be tossed on stormy seas sent surging by vengeful gods.

And all of this spectacular adventure, for sure, is part of the Odyssey, one of the first great works of world literature, which was written down soon after the Greeks acquired the technology to do so, probably in the 600s or 500sBC. The ancient Greeks attributed the poem to a man called Homer, often described as a blind bard from the island of Chios.
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