Instead, they pull from Homer’s other classical poem, “The Iliad,” and the bloody story of the Trojan War. Like its source material, Nolan’s film is an epic tale of men, monsters, duty and sacrifice, and his screenplay rarely strays from the story as it was first shared 3,000 years ago. Nolan tries, here and there, to bring nuance to these Characters (with a capital C), but he is more concerned with staying faithful to the source material. That isn’t a dig, except to say that the source material has always been about Mankind, not individual people, and each tragic vignette is better at telling than showing. It confirms the director’s interpretation of the Odyssey, and why one of our greatest living directors felt compelled to tell these old stories yet again.