(Content warning: This story mentions rape and sexual assault in context to the original Odyssey story.)
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
Christopher Nolan’s latest summer blockbuster, The Odyssey, is a three hour long epic of truly mythological proportions. With its star-studded cast and massive budget of $250 million USD ($375 million if you include marketing costs), its global box-office acclaim of over a billion dollars comes as a surprise to no one.
I watched Nolan’s The Odyssey twice in theatres (once in 70mm, once in IMAX laser projection, thank you very much), so I’ve definitely had an opportunity to review my thoughts. I first watched it on July 17 2026 — its opening night — and then once more in early September.
In between my watches of the movie, I ended up reading Homer’s Odyssey (the Emily Wilson translation) for the first time. I’m a fourth-year English major, so it’s truly surprising that it’s taken me this long to get to this ancient classic. With the release of the film, I figured now was the perfect time to conquer the book.
Let’s start with what the movie gets right.
It’s difficult to discuss any Christopher Nolan film without admiring his fierce dedication to the use of practical effects whenever possible. The Odyssey is a true feat of filmmaking. In this age of having to question whether a video on my social media feed is real or AI, I can’t help but applaud Nolan for his loyalty to practicality.
Believe it or not, the scene where Odysseus and his men land on the island of the Laestrygonians (the forest-dwelling army of giants) is entirely practical and done without CGI. I was in awe when I first read about this. Nolan uses forced perspective, inventive camera angles, and over and under-sized stunt doubles to create a seriously impressive visual effect.
The cyclops is also based on practical effects, despite how surreal he appears in the movie. Scenes involving the cyclops were filmed using a 60-foot puppet that was later enhanced with digital effects.
It’s very clear that special effects are used very sparingly and only when strictly necessary — it’s part of what makes the movie such an awe-inspiring watching experience. It made the movie feel less like a fireworks show and more like an exploration of its characters.
The pathos at the heart of this film was really impactful, proving to be the core of this visually stunning and forceful epic. This theme is especially represented in the arcs of each main character, such as Odysseus’ glory and guilt, Telemachus’ faith and endurance, and Penelope’s fierce loyalty and wit. It hits you directly in the heart even three millennia later. So much has changed about humanity, but humans haven’t changed much at all.
I really loved the movie, as did many other viewers. However, not everyone agrees — particularly the Odyssey’s latest translator, classicist Emily Wilson, who claimed that Nolan’s film is poorly written.
As any film adaptation does, the movie took some liberties with the original text.
The iconic dialogue of Odysseus lying to the cyclops about his name being “Noman,” which is what later allows he and his men to escape, is unfortunately left out of the movie. Odysseus’ and Penelope’s olive tree marriage bed also made no appearance in the movie, which I was quite sad about.
The romance and brilliance of Penelope’s test at the end of the story is one of my favourite parts! For consolation, I’m going to go listen to “Would You Fall in Love with Me Again” from Epic: The Musical for the next week straight.
The dynamics of the female characters are altered in various ways throughout the film. In some ways, I really liked the changes and found them to be surprisingly feminist for a Christopher Nolan movie (who has only had one movie, Interstellar, pass the Bechdel test in his three-decade long career). In other ways, I found it made its female characters more two-dimensional than they are in the text and watered down the misogyny of ancient Greek society.
I loved how it showed that if you hurt a woman, you suffer. Agamemnon is killed by his own wife, Clymynestra, for sacrificing their daughter. Telemachus stands against the suitors for their treatment of his mother, Penelope (without book Telemachus’ misogynistic remarks towards her). Odysseus’ men suffer at Circe’s hand for the threat they pose to her. Women take their own vengeance and fate does too.
Especially in Circe’s house, where even though you are rooting for Odysseus to succeed, you agree with what she is telling him. Odysseus is still our protagonist, but the viewer understands what him and his soldiers represent for women — rape, torture, and death. She’s not painted as an evil, scheming witch — she’s just right.
Although the film adds an extra layer of nuance to its women, it also makes some of its leading women character’s less multidimensional. Penelope and Calypso receive the worst of this, in my opinion.
Loyal Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and the main female character of the story, is not done the justice she deserves. Where was the mysterious and witty trickster of Homer’s Odyssey? Nolan’s Penelope is far too repressed and passive in comparison. Odysseus gets all the film’s glory, but Penelope was a character of far more action than the movie gives her credit for.
Additionally, Calypso’s iconic and powerful speech to Hermes critiquing the double standards men and women are held to is entirely cut. She is a very dynamic and flawed character in the book, and the movie made her totally uninteresting.
The particular type of violence women faced in Odyssey times is also minimized in the film. I was thinking about this when I first watched it. The movie shows the Greeks ransacking Troy and indiscriminately killing citizens, whereas that is not what actually happened.
Sure, men were violently and indiscriminately killed; but the women were raped and abducted as domestic and sexual slaves to take back to the soldiers’ homelands. Those ships headed homebound weren’t just filled with soldiers like they are in the movie, they were packed with abducted Trojan women and children too.
There’s a long section in Homer’s Odyssey dedicated to the hanging of the enslaved girls (as punishment for laying with the suitors — that is to say, for being raped by the suitors) after Odysseus kills the suitors, which is something that is completely cut from the movie. In the movie, men and women face near identical forms of violence, when this is far from the truth in the text.
I don’t necessarily find this to be a bad thing though. I don’t think the viewer nor the movie would have benefited from these graphic displays of violence against women, but it is something to think about.
It is a large act of erasure to pretend that women and men faced identical forms of violence in The Odyssey and that Odysseus and his men were not brutal to the Trojan (and non-Trojan) women they encountered. Ancient Greece was rife with systemic misogyny and violence against women — and Homer’s Odyssey makes this explicit.
Ultimately, Nolan’s interpretation and adaptation of this three-thousand year old story reminded me of why The Odyssey has been omnipresent in cultures throughout history and remains a plinth of storytelling after so long. It’s been translated for the screen in a strong, impactful way.
If you’ve grown up hearing about Greek myths but have always wondered why they survived for so long, watch Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. The movie really captures the magic and power of the original story and communicates it beautifully for modern audiences.