A recent turning point to encourage more people to go to movie theaters was the double release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, giving us Barbenheimer and the biggest cinematic summer in a long time.
This year, Nolan released another large-scale movie — this time, his adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic The Odyssey. While I have my own personal gripes with certain story elements, it’s a very technically impressive and entertaining film that deserves the hype.
If you never had the pleasure of reading the epic poem, or need a refresher on the prelude to the second Percy Jackson book, The Odyssey recounts the Greek hero Odysseus and his way-too-long journey home after winning the Trojan War. He encounters gods, witches, sirens, and other mythical creatures to get home to his son, Telemachus, and wife, Penelope, who refuses to remarry another man while he’s away.
Right off the bat, this film is technically out of this world. I commend Nolan for his commitment to shooting everything practically, even if it means burying people under the sand or messing with size in camera. As someone who’s read this tale over and over again, he did an excellent job bringing these iconic scenes to life, particularly the Cyclops scene and the sacking of Troy.
Another aspect of this movie’s excellence is the score by Ludwig Göransson. Göransson has established himself as one of the best composers of all time, best known for his work on Sinners and Oppenheimer. He uses ancient instruments and creates strong themes, making the film much more compelling to watch.
It’s hard to discuss this film without mentioning the cast, full of A-list celebrities who gave incredible performances despite limited screen time (with a story this dense, some characters get marginalized a bit). Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, and Zendaya are particularly compelling as their respective characters, even if they are only in two or three scenes.
I was most excited to see Anne Hathaway as Penelope and Tom Holland as Telemachus, and it’s safe to say they are excellent. In my opinion, Penelope is the best female character in a Christopher Nolan movie (and that’s saying a lot), brilliantly expressing her understandable anger in private, and Tom Holland gives a career-best performance here, finally maturing out of playing a high schooler.
Matt Damon as Odysseus, while well acted, doesn’t feel like the classic Greek hero I’ve been reading about for years. Part of that has to do with the dialogue being a little too modern (one of a few problems I have), but Odysseus is supposed to be kind of a cocky genius who both gets the gods on his side while also pissing them off, and I feel like that version is absent from this film.
However, the real standouts here are Samantha Morton as Circe and Robert Pattinson as Antinous. The Circe scene, while much more graphic and different than previous iterations, works so well due to how intimidating Morton’s performance is. Additionally, Pattinson is delightfully sleazy and entertaining as the suitor Antinous, stealing every scene he’s in.
My main issues with this movie come from my opinion on Nolan’s work. Frankly, I feel people tend to overhype his films. Don’t get me wrong, he’s very talented, but between his inability to write female characters (Charlize Theron as Calypso suffers most from this) and his repetitive formula of disjunctively telling stories, I can’t regard his movies as highly as others.
The editing and pacing, in particular, were a big concern for me. For a movie that’s almost three hours long (and with a story that practically warrants it due to its complexity), the first hour is so disjointed and uneventful, with the various timelines occurring simultaneously. The rest goes by pretty well, but it’s a bad way to start right out of the bat.
Another issue I had concerned the sound mixing. Granted, I did see this in IMAX, a viewing experience that often leaves me motion sick, but there’s no excuse for this to be the loudest movie ever. My friends can justify that I had to physically cover my ears during certain moments, and that’s not fun to worry about at a movie theater; it really takes you out of things.
People seem pretty split about some scenes being cut from this adaptation, and I can go either way. On one hand, scrapping Aeolus’s wind bag and Odysseus in Phaeacia helps streamline the journey. On the other hand, removing “Nobody” and the wedding bed scene eliminates the key character development that makes Odysseus’ journey pay off.
Ultimately, The Odyssey (2026) is a really great movie with stellar acting and strong scenes that give long-time fans visual satisfaction of the story we’ve read for so long. Just make sure to watch it with the volume a little lower than normal and be prepared to take breaks during the lengthy runtime.
Hope you enjoy this journey a little more than Odysseus did!
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