Christina Franzen

@Gabino_Iglesias Like why doesn’t he just not buy hardback books. If he hates them so much.

Today in weak, dumb, unnecessary pieces that get platformed for no fucking reason:

@jiwoongnclaudia @ali3ser Lattimore.

@ali3ser what's a better recent translation in your opinion? i am genuinely curious.

I blame Emily Wilson's translation. This started with her, now Nolan is taking it mainstream.

@marcportermagee Humanities subsidizes lots of stem stuff.

What parts of a university run a net surplus? - Large (300+ student) lecture hall classes - International students - Professional schools (MBA, JD, etc) - Executive education programs

@aallleeexxxxxx1 And why do you care?

guy who sat next to me on the train was “reading a book” but never once turned the page the entire 22 minute duration of the ride. so now im just left to wonder what was happening there

@aallleeexxxxxx1 He was spacing out. As book readers are wont to do.

@zenyanna I don’t like Miller either. Ha.

the incredible restraint i show every day of my life not talking shit about madeline miller's writing should qualify me as a hero of myth and legend

@Y40IFRQTTING Can you please explain how Nolan is being disrespectful?

People are hating on The Odyssey mainly because Nolan seems to have contempt for the epic he's adapting. He clearly does not respect or care for it at all, every shot from the movie is devoid of passion.

@kouenhoe I get that you’re scared, but the Trojan cycle will be fine. We’ve been reading it for like 3000 years.

genuinely scared about how this movie is going to determine how society thinks and analyzes the odyssey for the next several decades

@odavies9 This sucks so hard. I’m so sorry. 🩷

So, my university is wiping out all Humanities teaching.

@GC_Strategos So you have a beef with Romans. Take it up with them.

I really don’t like when people say “Ulysses” instead of Odysseus; “Minerva” instead of Athena; etc. Grow up.

@EricRichards22 He’s 100% a liar and sleazebag. You’re right.

In college I wrote a paper on the premise that Odysseus was a grade-A bullshitter and how much the theme of cannibalism ran through the various episodes, that they probably got shipwrecked and resorted to drawing lots This made my professor so irate she wouldn't even grade it

@cherimizi God. Thank you! You’re right.

emily wilson haters always have to go out of their way to blame her and act like she bastardised the original text by making it "too modern" when all she does is add modern context. like how most men translated dog-faced to bitch-faced when it doesn't carry the same connotations.

@ali3ser She is really great at translating (I’m a person who has a PhD in classics). I know Greek and Latin. What is your problem with her translation specifically? I need citations.

@anishmoonka God. Thank you for this.

Part 4. Christopher Nolan had 60 English translations of the Odyssey to choose from. Some were written by giants of English literature. He picked the newest one, by a Penn classics professor named Emily Wilson, published in 2017. The choice changes the entire moral weight of his $250 million movie. Wilson spent five years on the translation. Her version did something nobody had managed in 400 years: it matched the original Greek line for line, all 12,110 of them, written in iambic pentameter, the same rhythm Shakespeare used. The famous test for any Odyssey translator is the very first word used to describe Odysseus. The Greek is "polytropos." It literally means "many-turning," and it has tortured translators for centuries because nobody knows whether Homer meant Odysseus was actively cunning, or passively tossed around by fate. George Chapman in 1614 went with "many a way / Wound with his wisdom." Robert Fagles, whose 1996 version sold over a million copies and is taught in American high schools, settled on "the man of twists and turns." Wilson wrote five words: "Tell me about a complicated man." The bigger change is buried in the bloodiest scene of the poem. After 20 years away, Odysseus returns home and slaughters the suitors who occupied his palace. He also kills the young women who slept with them. Every previous translator had called those women "whores," "sluts," "creatures," or softened the word to "maids" or "servants." Wilson translated the original Greek for what those women actually were under Greek law: slaves. The word in Homer's text just means "female ones," and these women worked for Odysseus's family without pay or freedom. The scene reads completely differently once you know they had no real choice in who they slept with. The slaughter at the end stops feeling like deserved vengeance. It becomes closer to what the Greek actually says: a man returning home to murder fifty people, including young captives who were never free in the first place. There is one more change in the climactic scene. When Penelope unlocks the cabinet of weapons that sets up the killing, every prior translator had described her hand as "thick." Wilson translated the same Greek word as "muscular." Homer used that word elsewhere for the strength of warriors, so Penelope shares vocabulary with the soldiers of the Trojan War instead of being a passive household figure. Nolan picked the version that reads the original Greek hardest, line for line, word for word. The Odyssey audiences will see in 2026 is the Odyssey Wilson rebuilt from the ground up.

Christopher Nolan asked IMAX to build him a new camera. They did. Then he and Matt Damon spent four months filming The Odyssey on the open ocean, on the largest modern Viking longship in the world, with no green screens at all. The shoot ran 91 days, from late February to August 2025. Seven countries: Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland, Western Sahara, and Malta. Aside from one indoor studio in Los Angeles, every shot was filmed on real ground. In Italy, the cast and crew climbed 900 feet up a mountain every morning. Imagine walking up a 60-story building before breakfast. In Iceland, they filmed the underworld scenes by lantern light while rain came at them sideways. The four months at sea actually happened at sea. Damon and the actors playing his crew sailed on a real ship called the Draken Harald Hårfagre, used here as a Greek warship. Nolan called the experience "primal." He said the cast and crew were exhausted in a way he had never seen before. The cameras were the other big problem. IMAX cameras have always been too loud to record clean dialogue, which is why directors mostly save them for big action scenes. Nolan asked IMAX to fix this. They engineered a new soundproof case for the camera, a kind of quiet jacket, that lets the lens get within a foot of an actor's face while they whisper and still pick up clean audio. The new cameras also came out lighter and about 30% quieter than the old ones. To prove it worked, the lead cameraman Hoyte van Hoytema filmed a tight close-up of a child reciting a David Bowie song, "Sound and Vision." Nolan watched the test and called it "electrifying." Damon went all-in on the role. He dropped to 167 pounds on a strict no-gluten diet. He grew a real beard for a full year because Nolan refused to allow a fake one. The crew built a full-scale wooden Trojan Horse and shot the attack scene at an ancient walled town in Morocco called Aït Benhaddou. Nolan himself climbed inside the horse with the cast and his cameraman to get the shot. Across the whole shoot they used 2 million feet of film. That comes out to around 380 miles of it, longer than the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. At about $1.50 a foot, they spent roughly $3 million just on the film itself. The full budget was $250 million, the biggest of Nolan's career. They wrapped nine days ahead of schedule. Tickets went on sale on July 17, 2025, exactly one year before the movie's release. That had never been done before in cinema history. Half of the 22 US theaters offering IMAX 70mm sold out within 12 hours, bringing in around $1.5 million in a single morning. Nolan called the shoot "an absolute nightmare to film, but in all the right ways." He did not destroy a single IMAX camera. He has wrecked several over his career.

@ali3ser Why is her translation a problem. Do you know Ancient Greek?

@cherimizi Also remember the jerk when Wilson’s Odyssey came out who had ONE YEAR of Ancient Greek and criticized Wilson’s translation of the Greek?

@cherimizi OMG!!! These men need to stop! She’s at UPenn for gods sake. Translated six or Seneca’s tragedies which I use and assign regularly in class

@zulkuss @KyronKiranov @JesseCox Thank you for clarifying! : )

@antigonecorpse @KyronKiranov @JesseCox Also, Odyssey happens during Bronze Age, and even the Classical Greece, during which it would be written down, was in the Iron Age and it was much later Celts and Romans who started using chain mail, long before steel was used for plate.

Putting on my old history teacher hat for a moment since my feed is all Nolan’s Odyssey. The original was composed long after the events it depicts. It’s fan fiction and myth. Myths are designed to allow storyteller flair. Don’t get hung up on historical accuracy with it. Enjoy

@Misvillar @KyronKiranov @JesseCox Thanks for clarifying! : )

@antigonecorpse @KyronKiranov @JesseCox The barbarians are the Laestrygonians, you know, the giants that eat people and sink ships by throwing rocks

@bigwalrus18 @ZVeryn96103 @reset_by_peer I see how they act.

@antigonecorpse @ZVeryn96103 @reset_by_peer Why do you know about bugs then

It is an LLM. If you know how LLMs work, this explains it succinctly and thoroughly. If you do not, you should not be opining on AI consciousness at all.