Christopher Nolan defies the odds & the gods

Movie reviews

Christopher Nolan’s film eschews the gods in favor of telling a surprisingly human version of “The Odyssey,” with everyman Matt Damon as the film’s anchor.

Written by Kevin Slane

July 16, 2026 | 12:25 pm

4 minutes to read

At the beginning of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” viewers are brought to a windswept beach, where Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his men are hidden inside the infamous Trojan Horse. It’s a surprising opening note in the film; The famous myth is barely mentioned in Homer’s poem, which begins 10 years after Odysseus and his men jumped from the horse statue and sacked Troy.

And this isn’t the only choice Nolan makes that sets his Odyssey apart from the original. But the scale, spirit and spectacle of the original film remain intact, even when the director (who also wrote the screenplay) deviates from the source material. There are giants, sirens, soldiers, and suitors; Swords and Sandals, Storms and Giant. Every bit is stunning, especially in Nolan’s favored IMAX format, and you can easily enjoy the film just because of the beautifully realized, hands-on filmmaking.

But somewhere in the second half of “The Odyssey,” all these little tweaks crystallize into a revelation: Nolan urges viewers to watch a fully contemporary “Odyssey,” a story more concerned with the humanity of Damon’s doomed hero than with its mythology of gods and monsters.

Like many of Nolan’s previous films (Memento, Interstellar, Inception, Tenet), The Odyssey uses a non-linear narrative to manipulate time. Setting out from Troy, Odysseus and his men decide to separate from Agamemnon (Penny Safdie) and the rest of the Greek army by taking a “shortcut.” (Famous last words, whether on a family road trip or sailing the Aegean.)

Back at his home in Ithaca, 10 years in the future, his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) and his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) are hosting the world’s worst dinner party, full of greedy suitors who won’t leave until Penelope marries one of them. It’s not actually 10 years; It’s 20 years, with Odysseus spending the first 10 years away from Ithaca plundering and conquering on behalf of the Greeks, which we sometimes see in flashbacks like the Trojan Horse scene.

“How long have I been here?” Odysseus muses as he chews a mind-altering lotus offered to him by the nymph Calypso, played by the ethereal Charlize Theron. (Spoiler alert: It’s been there a long time.) It’s to Nolan’s great credit that “The Odyssey” rarely drags on nearly three hours long and with three temporally different narrative threads, even as Odysseus and his men seem stuck on a never-ending journey.

In the thousands of years that The Odyssey has been retold, retranslated, and reimagined, Odysseus has always been viewed as a trickster. It would be unthinkable in Greek mythology for a human to defeat so many gods by strength alone, so the solution was often superior intelligence. In Emily Wilson preached Translation 2017 However, in Homer’s poem, Odysseus is initially described not as someone who relies on “tricks and contortions” but rather as a “complicated man”.

Nolan has followed Wilson’s lead, portraying Odysseus as a more ordinary man. He is skilled with a bow, well married, and initially beloved by his men. But although he has his share of clever ideas, he also makes mistakes, and his pride almost falls. In one of the most memorable scenes, Odysseus and his crew escape the cave of the Colossal Cyclops (Bill Irwin) by disguising themselves as a sheep. But once they actually escape, Odysseus shoots the monster with an arrow (allegedly in honor of his fallen comrades), angering the sea god Poseidon as well as his remaining men, particularly his first mate, Eurylochus (the wonderful Himesh Patel).

There’s no greater man in Hollywood than Damon, and the actor is in fine form. He is friendly, but can be short-tempered; He is principled, but contradicts his own moral code at the drop of a hat (or crested helmet); He’s a stoic, but in private conversations with a vision of the goddess Athena (Zendaya), he second-guesses every decision he makes.

It is this human quality that gives The Odyssey its thematic weight, which is slowly revealed the farther Odysseus and his men travel on their journey. In the best trial they face, the witch Circe (Samantha Morton) turns Odysseus’ men into pigs, justifying black magic as merely showing the world “what they really are.”

Putting aside the practical effects at play, which are unlike anything you’ve seen before, the scene highlights the disturbing voice in Odysseus’ head. What if it’s not the gods (surprisingly absent outside of Athens) that are blocking his journey home? What if he’s not ready to come back after spending 10 years They do what Greek soldiers doall supposedly to defend the honor of Helen of Troy (Lupita Nyong’o), who is the rightful property of Odysseus’s Spartan counterpart Menelaus (Jon Bernthal)?

There is an undercurrent of dread throughout The Odyssey, whether riding the high seas with Odysseus or returning home to Ithaca with Telemachus and Penelope. Characters regularly invoke the “Law of Zeus” (i.e. the Golden Rule), but also lament the invisible “Sea People” who have led to its decline. Characters like the leading suitor Antinous (a deliciously slimy Robert Pattinson) use Zeus’ law to suit their own ends, while the venerable Eumaeus (John Leguizamo) imagines that Zeus’ law will be upheld once again when Odysseus returns.

Once stripped of the truly awe-inspiring sea monsters, witches, and undead soldiers rising from the dust at the gates of hell, The Odyssey remains a human story of fallibility. Odysseus is held up as a paragon of virtue by his loyal compatriots, but he chooses to spend his days eating the lotus rather than return home and face his wife, son, and subjects.

Just like Nolan’s newest protagonist, J.J. Robert Oppenheimer, Odysseus must deal with being the architect of human suffering, whether the nuclear bomb or the Trojan horse. Fortunately for audiences, his journey into self-forgiveness is a cinematic epic unlike any other in recent memory, and an epic that ranks among Nolan’s greatest works.

Rating: **** (out of 4)

“The Odyssey” will be released in theaters on July 17