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In a plot fit only for ancient bards, this summer’s hottest movie isn’t a classic, or a weird yarn, or a crinolines-and-bonnets period drama. Instead, it’s based on a nearly 3,000-year-old poem, which filmmaker Christopher Nolan is releasing as a sequel. Oppenheimerhis tragic, Oscar-winning study of the origins of nuclear war. Nolan, former director of Mementosand The Dark Knight Trilogy and Dunkirkhe now turns to the Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic which, along with its counterpart, the Iliad, is one of the founding texts of Western civilization.
Nolan’s adaptation is a big story, the largest in his career at nearly $250mand the director has made it with actors from Hollywood famous like Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway, young faces including a few minutes of Zendaya and Tom Holland of Spider-Man, and unusual choices like Lupita Nyong’o, Mia Goth, Samantha Morton and co-director Benny Safdie.
The 24 books of the Odyssey were written around the eighth century BC and are attributed to the Greek poet Homer; Acting as a sequel to the Iliad, it tells the story of the 10-year war Odysseus returns home to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus after the end of the siege of Troy. Nolan, 55, explained why he chose to film, telling the New York Times: “As a filmmaker you have to move fast. I wanted to challenge myself with a different kind of storytelling and I look at cultural differences.”
The modern importance of The Odyssey is the most important story in the film’s impact. Mary Beard, a distinguished professor of higher education at Cambridge, says she expects an “uthering Heights effect” and suggests that there are deeper questions at play behind the story. “Films have always brought people’s interest to the ancient world and the clarity of modernity to modern artists. What are the big questions that Odyssey asked and are still ours? What does it mean to return home? What does war do to those left behind? Where are the boundaries between civilization and brutality?”
Befitting its high standard, The Odyssey was shot entirely on the larger Imax format (which Nolan said he used 2m ft of film), and, as is his custom, Nolan avoided the green screen VFX in favor of actual props and locations, including the Trojan horse and Odysseus’ ship. In November, he explained his thoughts: “By acknowledging the reality of the world in this film, you tell the story in an interesting way.” Because every day you face the world pushing behind you.”
Wendy Mitchell, associate editor of Screen International, says Nolan has earned the freedom to control expensive and difficult material. “Nolan gets big movie reviews because he gets a big audience. I think the audience is smart enough to see what happened in real life, or in camera, that Nolan strives for, and I know we’ll feel that as an audience.”
Mitchell adds: “All companies respect his way of watching video, and shooting on film, in the digital age when we will start to see shortcuts with AI or technology.
Nolan is not the first to make a series of films that look to the past to inspire the latest years. Ridley Scott directed Gladiator II in 2024 a great success – the follow-up to the 2000 musical directed by Russell Crowe. The Zack Snyder-directed 300, about the battle of Thermopylae, was a huge success when it was released in 2007, as it was in 2014 following 300: Rise of an Empire. With box office predictions showing that The Odyssey could draw $80m-$100m in the first weekend in North America alone, the idea is that Nolan could be, like the heroes of the past, rising to save the entire film industry.
The Odyssey arrives at an interesting time in Hollywood, when big budget movies seem to be disappearing, and small movies that come from the Internet. Back rooms to Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movieis collecting accolades at the box office. Saying that he believes The Odyssey “will see interest in the four-part series among moviegoers”, Mitchell is confident that Nolan will see the basics. “Just because the YouTube veterans had a movie this year doesn’t mean all of Hollywood is YouTube now. What will be really interesting to watch is how the Russo’s Doomsday Brothers will fare, if the franchise continues at the rate it’s been in the past.”
Perhaps inevitably, The Odyssey has also been the victim of a culture war, from Elon Musk and his acolytes. accused Nolan about “wanting (wanting) to destroy western civilization and everything that helped create it” by casting Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, to critics complaining about the lack of Greek actors in the film, by Chris Cotonou. asks the Guardian: “Are we unworthy of our legends?”
Nolan has also been criticized for incorporating modern dialogue, particularly through use Recent versions and Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn. Beard, however, says there is no problem. “Translations do not change all parts of the original Bible.” We must remember that there is no connection between Greek and English: Greek languages distinguish the world in different ways. Beard refers to Wilson’s interpretation of the term “servant girls” for the more accurate “slaves”. This is what they should have had. This does not discredit the ancient Homeric writings to meet the fact that they depict a society of slaves.”
Mitchell, meanwhile, says the film will end such storms. “I think it will reach everyone. People will want to be in the cultural conversation. It feels like you care about movies, and even if you only see a movie once a year, The Odyssey will be that movie.”
Hit or legend: old legends on screen
Hercules (1997)
There have been many movies about the legendary superhero, especially as a ripped sports car. Steve Reeves starred in the 1958 Italian film that launched the pulpy sword-and-shoes genre; still a bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger went to the Big Apple at Hercules in New York in 1970; and Dwayne Johnson played well in a 2014 version. But arguably the most memorable is the Disney animation, released in 1997, which didn’t take itself too seriously, either.
Troy (2004)
A prequel version of The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer’s Iliad by German director Wolfgang Petersen. Brad Pitt plays the handsome tentacled Achilles, Orlando Bloom is handsome as Paris, and Sean Bean is the shy Odysseus. But even though the filmmakers are throwing everything, everything is lifeless.
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010)
Greek mythology went YA with the Percy Jackson series of books by Rick Riordan, about the human son of the undersea god Poseidon, who lives in modern-day New York. With Hollywood clearly looking to achieve Harry Potter, the film series was planned with Logan Lerman in the lead role. But this first one, in which Percy hunts for the missing thunderbolt of Zeus, did not capture the imagination of the audience and the series was heard after the next one. Sea of Monstersin 2013.
Return (2024)
The last adaptation of the Odyssey was a revolutionary, highly elevated work from the late playwright Edward Bondstarring Ralph Fiennes as a traumatized version of the Greek hero, opposite Juliette Binoche as the mysterious Penelope. This is a treatment that gets right to the heart of the powerhouse mythology.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?? (2000)
We are far from the sword and boots part here. The Coens’ deep-south prison-scape comedy is inspired by Homer, George Clooney with a great performance as Ulysses Everett McGill, Holly Hunter as abandoned wife Penny, and John Goodman as KKK blindfolded “Big Dan” Teague.
Oedipus Rex (1967) and Medea (1969)
Two themes of Greek mythology as filtered through Sophocles, Euripedes and the Italian ramshackle Marxist poet of cinema Pier Paolo Pasolini. The former features costumes from ancient cultures, from the Sumerians to the Renaissance, while the latter showcases the powerful singing of lyricist Maria Callas.
My Beautiful Wife (1964)
The legend of Pygmalion and Galatea became, among other things, a play by George Bernard Shaw, a Lerner and Loewe Broadway musical and an unforgettable musical, in which it does not matter that the elfin star Audrey Hepburn was replaced by her singing voice with Marni Nixon.
Orpheus (1950)
French artist and poet Jean Cocteau takes us through the looking glass to see a vision of sex and death unlike anything else in cinema. Jean Marais, with Bouffant hair, is the famous poet Orphée, who goes to hell after his wife dies. The Wachowskis must have watched Cocteau’s amazing glass before making The Matrix.
Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981)
Ray Harryhausen, who was a master of stop-motion animation, became a classic fairy-tale movie filled with these monsters. The first, starring Todd Armstrong as the furry bully Jason and Nancy Kovack as Medea, was a real step forward in the fantasy movie genre with its battle of skeletons and a living image. Second, with Olympus instead apparently affected by the newly released Superman, things seem smaller, but still glorious.
