DEFY THE GODS.

The attacks on Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem ”Odyssey” kept building over the months leading up to the film’s premiere. There have been plenty of female critics in the past who’ve never liked Nolan on account of his weak portraits of women, but this was something new: the far right campaigning against the movie because it has the audacity to feature a Black woman as Helen of Troy, and a trans man (Elliot Page) as a brave soldier. Add to that people who were upset because the film wasn’t ”historically accurate” and because it has an all-star Hollywood cast and no Greek actors. A perfect storm.

Had The Odyssey not been a triumph in the end, the attacks on it could very well have sent the whole project into an oceanic whirlpool.

After the Trojan War
King Odysseus (Matt Damon) has been gone from Ithaca for many years; he and his crew went missing some time after the Trojan War. Left in Ithaca are his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) – as well as a group of suitors who are eagerly waiting for Penelope to accept her husband’s death and choose one of them as her new husband. As Telemachus plans to travel to the King of Sparta, hoping to find out more about his father, we learn that Odysseus and his men encountered many dangers after sacking Troy, including storms, monsters, witches, spirits and sirens.

Old-fashioned touches
Some of those who attacked this film before seeing it made a comparison with Troy (2004), as if both films are equals artistically. Nolan’s ambition is clearly higher, but the films do have something in common: a few old-fashioned touches in their approach to tell a great story of adventure, such as a cast of Hollywood stars and a muscular, stirring attitude. Troy also serves as a sort of prequel to The Odyssey, albeit one without gods. Nolan doesn’t shy away from the fantastical, including all the sights and sounds from the epic poem, front and center in some of the movie’s most engaging scenes, from the battle with a mighty Cyclops to the encounter with the witch Circe (a terrific Samantha Morton) who has a ghastly surprise for Odysseus’s men. There’s an element of horror in that sequence and it keeps reappearing at other times, capturing our imagination and holding us at the edge of our seats; the visual effects are magnificent and imaginative.

The film goes out with a bang, a final showdown between Odysseus and the greedy suitors.

It’s a long movie, and there are bound to be stretches that tries the audience’s patience. Some knowledge of Homer’s work helps keep track of names and events; die-hard purists will find things to complain about, as they should, but on the whole Nolan pays a lot of respect to the source material while making sure as a filmmaker to use every trick in the book to keep audiences entertained. As a writer he revisits themes from earlier films, such as the allure of homecoming and the devastating effect of warfare. The film goes out with a bang, a final showdown between Odysseus and the greedy suitors, accompanied by Ludwig Göransson’s intense music score (which at other times employs novel instruments like gongs and the lyre to great effect).

Damon is solid in the lead, a great leader albeit less complex than in the original poem; other memorable performances include Hathaway as a severely tested Penelope, John Leguizamo as Odysseus’s blind, old servant, and especially Robert Pattinson as a cowardly, wicked suitor.

Nolan won’t convince his detractors, but the rest of us will enjoy a masterfully staged retelling of a classic story, dark and brooding like so many other films by this director, but capable of stirring emotions and delivering great thrills at the same time. 

The Odyssey 2026-U.K.-U.S. 173 min. Color. Widescreen. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Poem: Homer. Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema. Music: Ludwig Göransson. Editing: Jennifer Lame. Production Design: Ruth De Jong. Cast: Matt Damon (Odysseus), Tom Holland (Telemachus), Anne Hathaway (Penelope), Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, John Leguizamo, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Elliot Page, Benny Safdie, James Remar, Mia Goth, Travis Scott. 

Trivia: Co-produced by Nolan. The story was also told in Ulysses (1954) and The Return (2024).

Last word: “The more we talk about it, the more it feels like it was a some sort of Herzogian ordeal but that’s really not my bag. In truth, it’s just about ‘The Odyssey’. You need things that you haven’t seen before. I get bored on sound stages and sets, not because I wouldn’t want it to be difficult. It’s because nature and the real world gives you a scale and a set of options and serendipity that you can’t achieve in the studio. But yeah, it was daunting physically and there were times where I felt like maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew.” (Nolan, The Guardian)