The Odyssey

                   has been made of the 2026 epic The Odyssey, a sweeping adventure based on Homer’s text that has been written and directed by Hollywood darling Christopher Nolan. I think Nolan is an exceptional talent. The best director alive today. Both an artist and a commercial juggernaut. But The Odyssey is a misstep. 

 

When Nolan made Memento in 2000, Guy Pierce and Carrie-Anne Moss were established actors but hardly household names. When Batman Begins entered production, Christian Bale was on the fringes of Hollywood. When The Dark Knight was in pre-production, Heath Ledger won the part despite his golden boy image. As the science fiction epic Interstellar came around, Nolan gave the lead to rom-com heartthrob Matthew Mcconaughey. In every case, the actors were well-known, yes, but they were surprising choices. 

 

Here, Nolan dips into his rolodex and stuffs The Odyssey with the trendiest actors he can think of. That these actors are overexposed is an understatement. Take, for instance, that I was forced to endure a trailer for Spider-Man 3: A Brand New Day before The Odyssey even started. UK actor Tom Holland was all over the screen clad in the red spider suit... a few minutes later, he was doing his best to look convincing as Telemachus, the son of Odysseyus.

 

It’s not just the main cast either. Of late, Nolan has taken to hiring major actors for the smallest roles. “Oh, there’s Logan Marshall Green,” I thought as he popped up 160 minutes into the film in a fistfight. And before that: Bane’s Scottish henchman from The Dark Knight Rises. And before that: James Remar as a seer in Hades. 

 

True, Nolan is insulated from the overexposed media landscape by virtue of the fact he doesn’t have social media (or a smartphone). This means he’s not seeing the celebrity YouTube Shorts and insufferable Instagram Reels that dominate our feeds. But he must know that he’s risking immersion. If you invest millions in IMAX cameras that break new ground in picture clarity, why destroy that verisimilitude with actors that are nakedly promoting themselves on social media? 

 

Sadly, there are only two players in this film that merit their casting: Charlize Theron as Calypso and Lupito Nyongo’o as Helen/Clytemnestra. By contrast, Matt Damon as Odysseus absolutely does not work. I like Damon -- I loved him as Tom Ripley and Jason Bourne -- but he does not have the face or manner of someone who lived three thousand years ago. Anne Hathaway as Penelope is overwrought. John Leguiziamo kept reminding me of the bloke from Summer of Sam. And Robert Pattinson... well, I couldn’t get past the bad haircut, though at least he seemed to be enjoying himself in his role as Antinous.

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Nolan’s success today means he has no one to rein in his worst impulses. That this movie is filmed entirely on IMAX cameras is 1) a ridiculous overindulgence and 2) an utter waste of time. 99% of The Odyssey’s audience will never see it as intended. In the UK, for instance, there are three screens in the entire country capable of showing The Odyssey as it was intended. In the US, just over 20. In Africa, zero. 

 

But the bigger point is this: a larger screen does not immerse you in a movie more. Nolan is obsessed with putting his audience next to his actors in a real location on the largest canvas possible, all manner of practical effects in play, but while the scale is impressive, the reality is that it’s all for nought without good writing. 

 

Indeed, Nolan has always had an eye for spectacle but an inability to capture how people really speak on the page. There’s a reason his best movies have typically been co-written by his brother, Jonathan (The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Memento), a less accomplished director but better storyteller. Jonathan Nolan’s ear for dialogue and basic warmth add something to Chris Nolan’s calculated, awe-inspiring eye for detail. The two work beautifully together. But without Jonah, The Odyssey is a tedious and overly serious slog that fails both as a character portrait and a moral tale.

 

2026’s Odysseus is a drab, muted figure wracked by guilt for his role in the Trojan War and seemingly willing to martyr himself for the sake of the strangers he killed in battle. This is nothing like the character in the original fable, who was witty, calculated and desperate to get back to his loved ones - dead soldiers be damned. Without this simple throughline, Nolan’s Odyssey loses something elemental, and turns Odysseus into a character worthy of derision. 

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Then there’s the action itself, which as one reviewer described it online, is like a series of music videos stretched to fit a three-hour runtime. Here’s the Cyclops bit. And the giants bit. And the whirlpool bit. All with a deafening soundtrack to boot. Ironically, the independent film The Return, released on a miniscule budget in 2024, is a far better retelling of Homer’s Odyssey and a far more thrilling cinematic experience to boot. By choosing to focus on the very end of the poem (Odysseus’ return to Ithaca and his vanquishing of his wife’s suitors), it takes the time to examine the stakes and ratchet up the tension.

 

Honing in one a small portion of the poem? That doesn’t do it for Chris Nolan. He has to have his cake and eat it, and with Hollywood at his beck and call, there’s no one to take that cake away. What you’re left with is a three-hour montage of Homer’s Greatest Hits all without the central pulsing beat of the original poem: the thirst for home. Indeed, as Homer had it, home is where the heart is and charisma and charm matter for nought without your family at your side. Sadly, our modern Odysseus not only lacks charm and charisma, but he’s weak and insufferably conflicted. The result is a three-hour “epic” without a hero to root for. 

 

Yes, The Odyssey is impressively constructed, and yes, it’s an ambitious piece of filmmaking, but all the good will in the world can’t make up for the fact that this film is a strangely joyless, empty experience. Bring back Jonathan Nolan for the next project. Older brother Chris needs someone to rein him in.