Christopher Nolan has revealed why he changed the ending of The Odyssey compared to the original poem.
In Nolan's film, the story ends with Odysseus's triumphant return home and his killing of the suitors, before he and his wife Penelope set sail on another adventure together. Read more in our The Odyssey ending explained.
However, in the original Homer, the story concludes with the same return and slaying of the suitors, but Telemachus hangs a group of slave girls who had been sexually involved with the men. Odysseus and Penelope also do not venture off on another journey.
When asked by Time about the film's exploration of "man as beast," specifically in regards to the Circe sequence and the sack of Troy, Nolan explained: "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."
The Odyssey makes several other changes to the poem, too, including cutting some of the gods, reducing how long Odysseus stayed with Circe, and changing which shades Odysseus speaks to in the underworld scene.
"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."
The Odyssey is in theaters now. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming movies, or our roundup of the best Christopher Nolan movies.
