It’s a communicative we conscionable can’t look to quit. From antiquity to outer space, lit and movie are filled with scrappy adventurers struggling to get home.
This week, Christopher Nolan cashes successful connected that harmless communicative stake with a caller Odyssey starring Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway. We whitethorn statement the occurrence of this latest epic. But 1 thing’s for sure: Homer’s communicative isn’t going anywhere.
Speaking of stories—of the dozens and dozens of adaptations, it’s besides existent that immoderate Nobodies are amended than others. Here’s an irrefutable, wholly nonsubjective and technological database ranking odysseys for ye discerning adventurers.
10.
Michael Caine’s AI-dyssey (2026)
The histrion Michael Caine precocious licensed his plummy voice to a ample connection model, truthful present a robot avatar tin work you the tale. This sucks for several reasons. But contiguous my favourite is: AI narrators decision the point of storytelling.
If the idiosyncratic ostensibly speechmaking the epic aloud to you was excessively lazy to really work the epic, what are we adjacent doing here, friends? Last place, with a bullseye.
9.
L’Odissea (1968)
In a caller New Yorker letter, the professional David Denby explored wherefore The Odyssey has bested so galore adaptors. As lawsuit successful point, helium revisits an eight-part Italian miniseries successful which Ithaca is rendered reasonably dull.
Denby dismissed the series—which you tin presently watch successful French connected Youtube—as highbrow 60s kitsch. “As the camera roams the ruins of Troy, we get a stern humanities lecture, followed by heavy populated scenes of actors lasting astir talking oregon gazing retired to sea. The moviemaking is faithful, literal, and dead.” Ouch.
8.
The Odyssey (1997)
Did you cognize determination was a glossy Odyssey mini-series released in 1997? (And that it starred Eric Roberts and Vanessa Williams?!)
This epic didn’t look to instrumentality successful the culture’s craw—even though per Variety, connected it release, it was “on a minute-to-minute ground the astir costly TV play ever made.” This communicative was critically dinged for the aforesaid occupation Denby identified above. Though its escapade scenes were praised, the publication lacked the “insight oregon depth” of the root material.
7.
Ulysses (1954)
This archetypal large Hollywood rotation connected the communicative was besides epic successful scale, but knocked successful The New York Times for a technicolor tawdriness and casting.
And alas, mediocre Kurt! Critic Bosley Crowther yearned for “someone a trifle much transcendent” successful the pb role.
6.
George Chapman, The Odyssey (1616)
Though non-scholars whitethorn find the 1616 mentation a small roomy successful the elbows, Chapman’s Odyssey brought the epic to English-reading shores. And hey, firsts are important.
His task wasn’t wholly faithful to the Greek, though. Writing successful the Los Angeles Review of Books, historiographer Richard H. Armstrong noted that Chapman’s translation is “surrounded by punchy commentary and chaotic claims, some for Homer’s genius and his ain bona fides arsenic a translator.” Ego follows ego, I suppose.
5.
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
I know, I know. It’s hard to marque abstraction for deviant adaptations. By this metric, we mightiness besides see Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, oregon Scorsese’s After Hours, or [insert astir immoderate adventure/return communicative here]. I instrumentality your quibbles connected the chin.
But I’d beryllium remiss to disregard Ulysses’ astir nonstop literate descendant. Here, Dublin is Ithaca, and the timeline is compacte. But thing tells maine Homer would approve.
4.
L. Frank Baum & Victor Fleming, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
While we’re successful the vicinity of slant adaptations, here’s my lawsuit for Oz. In this odyssey, we find a cardinal rotation connected the hero’s journey. Dorothy Gale is not present to beryllium humbled; nor does she get connected the country arsenic assured arsenic her antecedent. Her odyssey is astir stepping into power, not abdicating it. Which makes this voyage location all the much poignant.
(See also: The Wiz.)
3.
Emily Wilson, The Odyssey
Called “brisk and understated” connected its 2018 release, Wilson’s Odyssey enactment the epic backmost connected the representation for a wide modern audience. According to critics similar Annalisa Quinn at NPR, the classicist winnowed down the “nostalgic detritus” that makes older versions of the communicative consciousness stodgy.
Wilson besides rendered the yarn successful “friendly iambic pentameter,” which immoderate readers felt recaptured a conversational bushed suitable to a communicative designed to beryllium work aloud.
2.
Robert Fitzgerald, The Odyssey (1961)
Scholars tin statement translation merits conscionable arsenic agelong arsenic movie nerds. Do we excavation the world Lattimore, oregon the cinematic Fagles? This caller Mendelsohn looks exciting. But what astir Cesar Pavese?
Speaking from the nationalist schoolhouse of which-book-got-you-personally-hyped, I’m a Fitzgerald instrumentality meself. Writing successful a 1974 New York Review of Books, the professional D.S. Carne-Ross praised this beloved translation of The Odyssey for its unparalleled poetry: “No erstwhile rendering was wholly satisfactory.”
1.
Coen Brothers, O Brother Where Art Thou (2000)
When asked to deliberation astir singularly American creation works past week, this romp done a Depression-era Mississippi sprang outta my caput similar Athena. In the Coen brothers’ film, we person foibles, jailbreaks, sirens retired of Appalachia, and a South that tin beryllium arsenic dapper arsenic it is violent.
As Denby reminds us, “Odysseus is simply a warrior with wit and intellect, a con antheral and fabulist who perpetually reinvents himself.” Clooney’s Ulysses (…Everett McGill) reps the 2nd portion of that description, highlighting the warfare hero’s under-praised flair. It takes an inventive man, aft all, to whip up a chart-topping ear-worm astatine a moment’s notice.
Whichever your muse, Nolan oregon Joyce, whitethorn you not rotation excessively long.
English (US) ·