What Christopher Nolan Couldn’t Bring Himself To Do

Amid the controversy over Christopher Nolan’s odd diversity casting, the director’s biggest change to “The Odyssey” has been ignored. This is not the Odysseus of Homer. He is a man shaped by the later Western tradition, especially Christian ethics and Machiavelli’s vision of human agency. That shift may make him less recognizable to scholars of ancient Greece, but it turns him into a hero today’s audiences can understand.