Click to view the trailer. Photograph: Universal Studios
Christopher Nolan takes Homer’s 3,000-year-old Greek poem The Odyssey and turns it into a storm-battered blockbuster.
It’s a historical epic, a sword-and-sandals film in a risky category where even some of the best in the business have spun out—Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004) and Riddley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) both failed, landing abysmal review scores and diminishing box office returns in the process.
But the British-American director rides a different crest. Nolan doesn’t soak stories in syrup or lull audiences to sleep with paper-thin characters.
Nolan’s The Odyssey is nearly three hours long (normal for him), but the time machine hurls you to the end of the Bronze Age, making the runtime feel like a breeze.
Homer’s poem is a cornerstone of civilization, shaping storytelling, psychology and the way we talk about identity. Yet it’s still oddly hard to swallow.
Plenty of readers bounce off the old translations and their “O goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak as thou will to us.” The opening drags, the action takes its sweet time and suddenly that 300-page brick is getting folded shut in favor of The Hobbit.
Even listening to a modern audiobook translation by Emma Wilson, ruefully narrated by Claire Danes, I felt drained following for over 13 hours the perilous passage from war back home.
Nolan, however, “fixes” the plot. He plants setups before the payoffs: a man kicks a dog; the man must die. It’s instant karma with seat-rattling action!
The cavalcade of fine actors—from Matt Damon (Odysseus) to Anne Hathaway (Penelope), from Tom Holland (Telemachus) to the filthy Antinous (Robert Pattinson)—commands the screen. Their performances collapse the distance between the audience and the era.
In Nolan’s The Odyssey, the man is small; his sword is a mere toothpick against a gigantic Cyclops. The locations feel real because Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema can light Iceland to look like hell.
The whole experience is shot with an IMAX 70mm film camera setup that takes six men to carry, packing the big screen with ridiculous depth and detail—and later expanding to fill your TV without the black borders. Composer Ludwig Göransson’s lyre becomes the pluck of Odysseus bow, sending shivers down your backbone.
All for the love of cinema.
British-American auteur Christopher Nolan (left) and his Dutch-Swedish cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who has collaborated with him on four previous films, from ‘Interstellar’ (2014) through ‘Dunkirk’ (2017), ‘Tenet’ (2020) and ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023). Photograph: Universal Studios
FILM DETAILS
Title: ‘The Odyssey’
Running time: 173 minutes
Cast: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, Charlize Theron
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screen writer: Christopher Nolan
Premiere: July 17, 2026
