Nolan changed Homer’s script and a '4 ft 6 in' stuntwoman’s biceps went viral

In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus doesn’t fight the giant, man-eating Laestrygonians, but in Christopher Nolan’s, he does.

That made a hell of a difference for a woman, a four-foot-six-inch Canadian stuntwoman named Devyn Dalton, whose biceps have now become world-famous, especially after Matt Damon spoke about her in a recent interview.

In Book 10 of The Odyssey, Odysseus, the central figure of the ancient Greek epic, does not fight the Laestrygonians. When the giant cannibals launch a sudden ambush, hurling boulders from the cliffs, destroying 11 of his 12 ships and devouring his men, Odysseus - also called 'Odysseus of many devices' for his cunning - cuts his own ship loose and flees.

These are a few paragraphs narrated by Odysseus himself in The Odyssey:

“She at once called her husband Antiphates from the place of assembly, and forthwith he set about killing my men. He snatched up one of them, and began to make his dinner off him then and there, whereon the other two ran back to the ships as fast as ever they could. But Antiphates raised a hue and cry after them, and thousands of sturdy Laestrygonians sprang up from every quarter - ogres, not men. They threw vast rocks at us from the cliffs as though they had been mere stones, and I heard the horrid sound of the ships crunching up against one another, and the death cries of my men, as the Laestrygonians speared them like fishes and took them home to eat them. While they were thus killing my men within the harbour I drew my sword, cut the cable of my own ship, and told my men to row with all their might if they too would not fare like the rest; so they laid out for their lives, and we were thankful enough when we got into open water out of reach of the rocks they hurled at us. As for the others there was not one of them left.”

“Thence we sailed sadly on, glad to have escaped death, though we had lost our comrades, and came to the Aeaean island...”

Nolan, on the other hand, has Odysseus and his crew fight the Laestrygonians in his adaptation of The Odyssey.

That scene, in which Matt Damon stands facing the giants, has become famous for his biceps, which are not his but Devyn Dalton’s. Damon said in the interview that on the first day he met Dalton and hugged her he immediately noticed that she had “the greatest arms” he'd ever seen.

This was what he actually said: “My double was a woman, a female stunt performer who had the greatest arms I’ve ever seen.” Although he didn’t identify her by name in the interview, word soon spread that it was the 34-year-old Dalton who stood facing seven-foot-tall stuntmen playing the Laestrygonians, and Dalton got calls in New Zealand, where she is currently working on a project, according to reports in the Canadian media.

Devyn Dalton’s Instagram account has seen a lot of frenetic activity since then and according to reports, her phone doesn’t stop buzzing. All thanks to Nolan turning a moment of helpless escape into a dramatic confrontation.