The Odyssey (2026)

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan

CAST: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, John Leguizamo, Jon Bernthal, Zendaya, Samantha Morton, Elliot Page, Corey Hawkins, Benny Safdie, Ryan Hurst, Mia Goth, Logan Marshall-Green, James Remar

REVIEW:

Ambitious director Christopher Nolan, who chooses ever more ambitious and challenging projects for himself, now follows up 2023’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer with another “and now for something completely different” entry, this time choosing to tackle the sprawling Greek mythological epic The Odyssey (based on the original legend by Homer). With The Odyssey, Nolan both tackles his first mythological film and continues to show a refusal to be pigeonholed, having now directed everything from the unconventional biopic Oppenheimer to the WWII docudrama Dunkirk to the sci-fi epic Interstellar to the mind-bending unconventional heist thriller Inception to the most critically-acclaimed onscreen rendition of Batman with his Dark Knight trilogy. I was not, on the whole, impressed with Oppenheimer, and found it a frustratingly scattershot mess of fragmented narrative and excessive time-jumping whose flashes of greatness never cohesively congealed into more than the sum of its parts. While some of those flaws are not absent from The Odyssey, they feel less prominent and more forgivable. While narratively unwieldy and unevenly paced in some respects, The Odyssey is a frequently rousing epic adventure that stands tall as a respectable big-budget adaptation of Homer’s saga—a difficult feat in itself—while also putting its own spin on some of the particulars.

We set out on two parallel tracks which will eventually intersect. In the first, Telemachus (Tom Holland), the young prince of Ithaca, sets out determined to find out what happened to his long-lost father, the King of Ithaca and Trojan War hero Odysseus, who went off to war when his son was a baby and never came back. Meanwhile, Odysseus (Matt Damon) is stranded on an island with his only companion the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), who seeks to keep him for herself as her lover, though he still longs for home. It is to Calypso that Odysseus recounts his story, from his part in the sacking of Troy to his subsequent twenty year odyssey to get back home. Along the way, he and his crew encounter various dangers including the monstrous man-eating Cyclops, the Laestrygonian giant warriors, the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, the witch Circe (Samantha Morton), the song of the Sirens, and a journey through the Underworld, with storms set against him by Poseidon but an occasional helping hand from the goddess Athena (Zendaya). Meanwhile, Odysseus’ wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) clings to fading hope of his return while her husband’s royal court in his absence has been taken over by a gang of suitors who intend to pressure her into marrying one of them, led by the slimy Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who schemes to have Telemachus killed and take both Odysseus’ wife and throne for himself.

While faithful in the broad strokes to the original story, Nolan’s Odyssey adds in smatterings of The Iliad, Virgil’s The Aeneid, and some of Nolan’s own choices and stylings. The expected plot points—the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, the Sirens, the suitors, the bow challenge, Odysseus’ faithful dog Argos, etc.—are all accounted for, although Nolan puts his own spin on some of the particulars (the unconventional design of the Trojan Horse, for example, and Nolan being the first to show the deprivations of the men hiding inside). Certain elements are also abridged or left out altogether, although that’s inevitable when adapting something as dense and sprawling as Homer’s epic poem (an entirely faithful adaptation of The Odyssey would probably be virtually unfilmable and even less likely to be a box office success). The melding of sources and modernization of some elements mostly works, although the structure at times feels a little unwieldy. Nevertheless, The Odyssey is immediately engaging, and leads to rousing and satisfying destinations. As in Oppenheimer, there are three time periods we alternate between—the present day with Telemachus’ investigation into the fate of his father and the Telemachus/Penelope/Antinous palace intrigue, the flashbacks to the Trojan War, and the flashbacks of the post-war odyssey—but Nolan following the approach of using flashbacks to fill in the backstory while moving the plot forward gives the non-linear jumping around more rhyme and reason. The Odyssey feels better-structured and moves more purposefully and is rarely hard to follow. There are times when Odysseus’ “a series of unfortunate events” journey with assorted perils around every corner and Odysseus and his men landing on and soon having to flee every island they come across verges on getting a little tedious—truth be told, there were times I was more engaged by the intrigues going on back in Ithaca—but whenever the movie hits a sluggish patch, there is a strong sequence on the horizon to kick things back into high gear. There are several standout centerpiece sequences—and any number of strong moments along the way—including the encounter in the Cyclops’ cave, the gruesome transformation of several of Odysseus’ men at Circe’s hands, the flashback to the Trojan Horse and the subsequent battle in Troy, and the climactic all-out showdown, in all of which Nolan ratchets up the tension to sometimes uncomfortable levels, accentuated by Ludwig Goransson’s pounding percussive score. In a way, The Odyssey is a “road trip” movie fraught with various perils, though in this case, the destination is as important as the journey. Most importantly, the movie builds to something. When we finally arrive at the climactic battle, it is rousing and satisfying, both in terms of hard-won emotional reunions and a comeuppance we’ve been waiting for for the story’s final villains.

While the likes of Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans had the whole menagerie of gods and goddesses front and center, watching and manipulating events from behind the scenes, and by contrast the likes of Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (featuring different versions of some of the same characters who appear here) left the gods out completely, Nolan chooses to occupy a middle ground. While Zeus and Poseidon are frequently referred to, Athena is the only one who appears in the flesh, and it’s open to interpretation whether she really physically manifests to Odysseus or he hallucinates her. When it comes to the various monsters and supernatural beings onhand, however, they are anything but ambiguous background elements. The likes of the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, the witch Circe, and the multi-headed sea monster Scylla represent tangible—and formidable—adversaries for Odysseus on his journey home, while at the end of the journey Robert Pattinson’s Antinous lurks as the closest thing to a human “main villain” (although Antinous is a cowardly bully who is the least intimidating—albeit possibly the most loathsome—of Odysseus’ enemies). Nolan also puts a more modernized spin on some elements in ways that add shadings and nuance not present in the original story. Anne Hathaway gets a little dramatic monologue about her frustrations about her limited power as a woman in her time period, and Odysseus’ guilt-ridden reminiscences paint the sacking of Troy not as a glorious heroic victory, but a brutal massacre in which victory comes at a terrible cost. Here, as different as the two movies are in subject matter, one can find a common theme with Oppenheimer; like Dr. Oppenheimer, Odysseus has a brilliant idea that makes a great victory possible, but will also spend the rest of his life being haunted by the death and destruction he has helped unleash. Odysseus is also a flawed character, not an invincible superhero. He makes mistakes—some of which are costly. The way Nolan conveys these themes are not exactly subtle—as in past Nolan films, characters have occasional tendencies to lapse into melodramatic monologues—but they’re thought-provoking nonetheless, especially in the poignant final revelation of precisely why Athena (or at least Odysseus’ guilt-ridden hallucinations of her) takes the form that she does.

Produced on a $250 million budget and one of the most expensive films ever made, The Odyssey paints on a big canvas but does it without an excess of splashy special effects in a way that leaves it feeling more grounded. Nolan has stated that part of his motivation for making The Odyssey was his admiration for Ray Harryhausen (the go-to special effects guy for such fantasy adventures as Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans), and while no stop motion animation is used here, Nolan honors Harryhausen in a modernized sense by keeping CGI to a spare minimum and relying predominantly on practical effects. Nolan brought the Cyclops to life through a combination of the performance of actor Bill Irwin in full makeup and a sixty-foot tall animatronic puppet, augmented by digital touchups, filmed in a real cavernous Greek cave. Likewise, the Laestrygonian giant warriors were achieved without any digital animation; Nolan cast seven-foot tall extras for the roles, then placed them opposite shorter stunt doubles for Odysseus and his men (including a muscular female stunt double for Matt Damon) and using a couple other tricks like forced perspective to accentuate the size difference even further. The bleak landscape and eerie lighting of Hades was not created through special effects, but by filming on location in Iceland during the all-day light of the midnight sun. Nolan insisted on such touches of authenticity as Matt Damon growing out a real full beard that could withstand the rigors of wind and rain, Anne Hathaway taking weeks of weaving lessons, and the actors playing Odysseus’ sailing crew learning to do their own physically grueling rowing aboard the largest modern Viking longship built to ancient specifications and from period-appropriate materials, whose real sailing crew became extras in the movie (though this became a point of offscreen controversy when the longship was damaged during filming).

As usual, Nolan has assembled a large star-studded cast, some of whom have worked with him before (Matt Damon in Interstellar and Oppenheimer, Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, Robert Pattinson in Tenet, Elliot Page—formerly Ellen Page—in Inception), while others (including Tom Holland, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, and Zendaya) are making their first appearance in a Nolan film. It’s telling of Nolan’s clout in Hollywood, and how eager many actors are to appear in a Nolan film, that he can seemingly cast pretty much whoever he wants, even for small roles and bit parts. While some of the actors are underused—notably Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, and Zendaya—everyone acquits themselves capably with what they’re given to work with. Matt Damon might initially seem an unlikely choice to play a mythological warrior-king (although Nolan reportedly wrote the role with Damon in mind all along) but he makes Odysseus a more grounded and vulnerable figure, less a larger-than-life hero than a haunted war veteran (he also again displays a bulked-up physique at 55 years old and does more than his fair share of fighting, especially in the climactic battle).

Strong support is provided by Tom Holland, showing a transition from boyish characters like Spider-Man’s Peter Parker to more adult material, and Anne Hathaway, who combines strength and fragility as Penelope. For Holland, this is his first of two big summer movies of the year, coming out only a couple of weeks before Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Robert Pattinson goes far away from his original “heartthrob” image as a slimy, weaselly villain whose comeuppance is rooted for by the audience (incidentally this is the second time Pattinson has played a sleazy villain antagonizing Tom Holland after co-starring in The Devil All The Time, and he’ll also play another villain later this year in Dune: Messiah). The standouts in the supporting cast are an almost unrecognizable John Leguizamo as Odysseus’ loyal blind servant Eumaeus (giving a restrained performance devoid of the over-the-top obnoxious tendencies he’s shown in some other roles) and Samantha Morton, who is suitably creepy as the witch Circe. She doesn’t have a lot of screentime, but she makes an impression (although the unsettling special effects deserve some of the credit). Himesh Patel is Odysseus’ right-hand Eurylochus, while Corey Hawkins is a secondary villain among the suitors. Jon Bernthal (co-starring with Tom Holland only a couple weeks before doing so again on the big screen in Spider-Man: Brand New Day), as Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus, is his usual self. Charlize Theron has a pretty thankless role that doesn’t give her much to do; her Calypso is little more than a plot device and someone for Odysseus to tell his backstory to. Three actors whose casting generated some controversy in certain social media circles over their race or gender are non-issues except for those predetermined to take issue with them, partly because they’re fine in their roles, and partly because their roles are so small. Lupita Nyong’o, despite playing a dual role as Helen of Troy and her twin sister Clytemnestra, probably has about five minutes of screentime. Zendaya (making her first of three appearances in big movies of 2026 preceding Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Dune: Messiah, the first two along with her Spider-Man boyfriend and real-life husband Tom Holland, though they don’t share any scenes here) flits in and out in scattered brief appearances with minimal dialogue as the goddess Athena (or at least Odysseus’ hallucination of her). Elliot Page dies in the first few minutes but later makes a reappearance and gets a little monologue during the Underworld sequence (Page’s character Sinon does not appear in Homer’s original poems and has been borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid). Rounding out the cast in small roles are the likes of Benny Safdie (whose Agamemnon is hidden behind Darth Vader-esque intimidating armor and never clearly shows his face), Ryan Hurst as Telemachus’ combat mentor, Mia Goth and Logan Marshall-Green as treacherous servants in Penelope’s household, and an unrecognizable James Remar as the blind prophet Tiresias who gives Odysseus an ominous fortune in the Underworld. There’s even an opening cameo by rapper Travis Scott as a bard, a cheeky bit of stunt casting by Nolan emphasizing what he sees as a parallel between hip-hop and the spoken word oral storytelling from which The Odyssey originated.

For those familiar with the source material, it’s fascinating to see some of the choices made by Nolan. “Purists” may take issue with some liberties, but certain departures work effectively within the context of a motion picture. For those coming in without preconceptions, The Odyssey is a rousing fantasy adventure that builds an immersive world and takes us on a perilous voyage through it. Like a rolling stone gathering momentum, it starts out slowly but steadily builds to a rousing grand finale (with plenty of strong pit stops along the way). Nolan has given a modern interpretation of old-fashioned fantasy adventure filmmaking, and the result is an engaging and rousing epic.

* * * 1/2