If you’re online, then you know The Odyssey has been having a real moment over the last few years. Obviously, a poem like that has stood the test of time, but it’s really prominent right now. Christopher Nolan’s film is smashing box office records, and the musical concept album EPIC: The Musical is beloved by fans and has been greenlit for an animated movie.
It is a great time to be a fan of Greek mythology and The Odyssey in particular. Even Percy Jackson and the Olympians is hot right now with the television series. But in that, a debate has sprung up about EPIC and Nolan’s film and where the popularity really lies, and who is responsible for what. The entire thing is just plain silly.
Debating EPIC vs. The Odyssey Is Not Worth Doing
As someone who decidedly does not like EPIC: The Musical, this is going to sound like hating, but it’s not. The concept album from Jorge Rivera-Herrans may not be for me, but it is for a lot of people. Millions of people listen every month. It’s not pulling in the numbers of the most popular artists, but it’s not totally unheard of. It’s pretty popular on social media, if nothing else.
And for an adaptation, it does a pretty solid job of condensing down a long, dense, and repetitive story into easily digestible songs. It’s a good thing that it’s being produced into a full-fledged animated movie. But it is not the reason Christopher Nolan adapted The Odyssey into a movie, and it’s not serving as inspiration for Ludwig Goransson’s score.
Jorge Rivera-Herrans has just over three million monthly listeners, and EPIC: The Musical pulls in over 2.5 million, according to Spotify numbers. Goransson is a composer, meaning all of his music is instrumental and a little less accessible since it’s meant for film, but he pulls in well over three million monthly listeners.
And he has three Oscars for his work and several other awards (soon to be four Oscars after The Odyssey). With all possible due respect to EPIC, neither Nolan nor Goransson is likely aware of the musical concept album. The composer literally reverse-engineered thousand-year-old instruments to create an authentic and high-quality score.
The fact that four notes (with tweaks) from “Trial of the Bow” that play in the most crucial moment of the film are similar to four notes from “I’m Just a Man” from EPIC is a coincidence. It’s a fun coincidence, but it’s just a coincidence.
Those four notes are not solely unique to the EPIC track, and the notes are slightly different anyway. It is pretty interesting that two themes centering around Odysseus have similar musical motifs, and it’s awesome that diehard fans of EPIC can do the Leonardo DiCaprio Rick Dalton pointing meme when they hear it.
But this has sparked a debate that has no business happening. Some have suggested that Rivera-Herrans ought to sue for copyright infringement, or that the popularity of the musical concept album helped push Nolan to make the movie. The latter is borderline impossible.
The first album from Jorge Rivera-Herrans came out in 2022. The first snippet of a song came out in 2021. Yes, The Odyssey came out in 2026 and was in production during the peak of EPIC‘s fame. But movies take a long time to get into production, and Nolan has reportedly been chewing on this idea for a very long time.
According to Culture Crave, Nolan has been thinking about parts of this film for decades. He said he had been inspired by seeing the original Planet of the Apes movie to have the Trojan horse half in the sand like the Statue of Liberty in that movie. He was also briefly attached to Troy in 2004, and he’s been toying with the idea ever since.
Love what you love, even if I don’t love EPIC: The Musical. It has a place in the vast number of adaptations of Homer’s original tale, and I’m happy for the people who do like it. You can even like it more than the movie, which is a masterpiece, but I digress. It’s just a little silly to think that Christopher Nolan, a two-time Oscar-winner, and Ludwig Goransson, a three-time Oscar-winner, were influenced by a fairly niche concept album that’s prominent on TikTok.
