Christopher Nolan explains how the Dark Knight trilogy prepared him for ‘irrelevant’ Odyssey back...

“You can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.” Christopher Nolan explains how the Dark Knight trilogy prepared him for ‘irrelevant’ Odyssey backlash “You can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.” By Wesley Stenzel :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/WesleyStenzelauthorphoto32b61793a2784639af623f2ae091477e.jpg) Wesley Stenzel Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at . He began writing for EW in 2022.

“You can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”

Christopher Nolan explains how the *Dark Knight trilogy prepared him for ‘irrelevant’ Odyssey *backlash

“You can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

EW's editorial guidelines

July 11, 2026 1:21 p.m. ET

Matt Damon in ‘The Odyssey’; Heath Ledger in ‘The Dark Knight’. Credit:

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures; Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros.

- Christopher Nolan said that controversy “comes with the territory” when adapting well-known stories like *The Odyssey*.

- The filmmaker said that after spending a decade on the* Dark Knight* trilogy, he knows “you can’t worry about any of that.”

- He also said that pre-release conversations about his movies are “always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”

Christopher Nolan is no stranger to internet controversy.

The *Inception* filmmaker remains unconcerned with any perceived controversy about his casting and broader creative decisions in *The Odyssey*, as he’s already survived the wrath of annoying fanboys throughout the *Dark Knight* trilogy.

Prior to its release, Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic has faced some backlash, which has come in the form of racist condemnations of the casting of Black actors like Lupita Nyong’o and Zendaya, as well as arguments from pedants decrying a lack of historical accuracy (despite the fact that Homer’s story features a cyclops and a good deal of magic). Nolan told *The Guardian* that this kind of response “comes with the territory” before noting, “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.”

He added, “But remember…I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman.”

Christopher Nolan in 2025.

Frazer Harrison/Getty

Nolan went on to reflect on how helming his own version of DC’s shadowy superhero inspired now-forgotten internet backlash — after all, many questioned the filmmaker’s decision to cast Heath Ledger as the Joker in *The Dark Knight* before being blown away by his Oscar-winning performance.

“When I came on to *Batman Begins*, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents,” Nolan said. “And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”

Tom Holland — no, not that one — says ‘The Odyssey’ is ‘the best’ movie adaptation of a Greek myth

Anne Hathaway hopes that her kids grow up to be as ‘wonderful’ as this ‘Odyssey’ star

Nolan thinks that his *Batman* films, which collectively earned over $2.4 billion at the worldwide box office and are widely considered among the strongest comic book adaptations of all time, prove that audiences appreciate a visionary storyteller putting their own spin on a familiar narrative, even if they don’t fully understand every creative decision before seeing the movie.

Christian Bale in ‘Batman Begins’.

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

“In the end, fans of the property — even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done — enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could,” he said, noting that he’s taking the same approach to *The Odyssey*. “All I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It’s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that’s what adaptation is.”

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*The Odyssey* also stars Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, Charlize Theron, John Leguizamo, Samantha Morton, Travis Scott, Elliot Page, and  Benny Safdie. The film hits theaters on July 17.

- Superhero Movies

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Source: Superhero

Published: July 13, 2026 at 03:38AM on Source: PRIME TIME

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