Okay I almost posted this ginormous tome in the comments but I realized it probably just needs it's own fuckin post. So these are the comments that set me off on this (and I'm gonna tag @catching-fire-in-the-wind also, since I'm really agreeing with them here using, as per usual, a whole lot of words)
Of course it is @squishymamasboy, I'm sure it's actually pretty good. Nolan makes good movies that tell good stories, and I like Nolan movies.
But Nolan is also notorious for pretty flat characters with fuzzy and indistinct internal motivations. Nolan's movie characters only exist so that the plot can happen, rather than the plot revolving around the characters' stories - if Nolan could tell stories without using any characters, he would.
It's the difference between, say, Nolan's "The Prestige" and Michael Mann's "Heat" - two stories about (spoilers!) a set of men with a rivalry that eats both of them alive. The difference is that by the end of "Heat" we understand WHY these two men couldn't just let it go and get on with their lives, whereas at the end of The Prestige all we know is that these two guys were really mad at each other and bitter about the whole thing. We never really learn WHY they cared about being The World's Greatest Magician instead of the other guy so much that they were happy to throw their lives away for it. (And no, "my dead wife" isn't a good enough reason on its face. Because it doesn't explain WHY grief motivated the character to destroy someone rather than, oh I dunno, fall into themself and dissolve into an puddle of despair like everyone else. Why one choice and not the other? If the director doesn't explain, then the only answer is "so the plot can happen." That's the kind of storytelling i'm talking about.) They're both excellent movies, I happily own both, but they're fundamentally different kinds of movie. And THAT is the point being made.
The point isn't that it isn't a good movie, the point is that it isn't a good retelling of The Odyssey.
Nolan's is a style that's fundamentally at odds with The Odyssey, which is at its core a story about a person, his physical journey, and what keeps him personally motivated to get home despite literally everything in existence trying to demotivate him - the story being told is not supposed to be "A man goes through a whole lot of crazy shit on his trip home" the story is supposed to be "here's why Odysseus never gives up, even though he has absolutely every right to."
The choice to remove the "Nobody" part of the story is evidence of the fact that Nolan doesn't really seem to get that. Because it doesn't further the action of the plot for Nolan, it is therefore extraneous in his opinion. But it isn't extraneous to the story being told and the man the story revolves around, who canonical sneaks back into the city AS "NOBODY" and relies on that premise to win back his life and his family. Nolan's failure to understand the importance of the pun to the larger story at hand is a huge red flag that indicates he isn't really trying to tell an epic. He's making an ancient-timey adventure movie with explosions and stuff. He may as well have just remade 300 and got it out of his system.
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