Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is one of those movies that leaves you walking out of the theater almost unable to articulate what you just watched. Not because it’s confusing, but because it’s so overwhelming in its scope, ambition, and craftsmanship that it almost feels impossible to process on a first viewing. I remember leaving the theater exhausted—in the best possible way. It felt like genuine movie magic. After seeing it a second time, I enjoyed it even more.
Like most Nolan films, I think The Odyssey benefits tremendously from a rewatch. The first time you’re simply trying to absorb everything. The mythology, the structure, the performances, the scale, the practical filmmaking—it all comes at you so fast that you’re just hanging on. The second time, once you know where the story is going, you can sit back and appreciate the details, the performances, the themes, and the way Nolan has constructed this entire thing. The first hour especially flowed much better for me knowing where everything was leading, and once the movie reaches its midpoint, it completely takes off.
Christopher Nolan has just won Best Picture, Best Director, and watched Oppenheimer sweep the Oscars, and somehow he follows it up with this. That’s honestly insane to think about. I genuinely believe Nolan is operating at the absolute peak of his career right now. It almost makes you wonder where he even goes from here.
What fascinated me most is how much The Odyssey feels like a companion piece to Oppenheimer. On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. One is about the father of the atomic bomb. The other is one of the oldest stories ever told. But at their core, I think they’re wrestling with the exact same question: what happens when one brilliant man’s decision changes the world forever?
In Oppenheimer, it’s the atomic bomb. In The Odyssey, it’s the Trojan Horse.
That’s what surprised me most about Nolan’s interpretation. I haven’t read Homer’s poem in depth, so I can’t speak to every difference, but this never felt like a movie about a man simply trying to get home. To me, this is a movie about a man reckoning with what he had done.
Throughout the film, Zeus’s law is repeatedly emphasized: show kindness to strangers, offer them food, shelter, and hospitality. It’s one of the foundational ideas of this world. Then Odysseus creates the Trojan Horse, a gift that conceals death inside it. Hospitality itself becomes weaponized. That one decision changes everything.
The Greeks enter Troy under the guise of a gift and slaughter an entire city. From that point forward, Odysseus isn’t simply surviving monsters or trying to reunite with Penelope and Telemachus. He’s living inside the consequences of the worst decision of his life.
That’s why I loved the way Nolan structures the Trojan War throughout the movie. The first time we witness Troy falling, it’s exhilarating. The gates finally open. Hundreds upon hundreds of Greek soldiers pour into the city. Agamemnon slowly walks through the gates while everyone else charges ahead, and he has this unbelievable screen presence. It’s triumphant. As the audience, you’re cheering because the heroes have won.
But every time Nolan returns to that same event, its meaning changes. Victory slowly becomes guilt. Triumph becomes horror. By the end of the film, Odysseus isn’t remembering a great military victory. He’s remembering rage, murder, cruelty, and the complete collapse of the values he once believed in. That final return to Troy hit me just as hard the second time because now you understand that Nolan isn’t celebrating the Trojan Horse. He’s interrogating it.
The ending especially reminded me of Oppenheimer. Not literally, but emotionally. Both films end with men forced to stare at the consequences of something they unleashed that can never be undone.
One image I couldn’t stop thinking about is the destruction of Athena’s statue while Odysseus watches the city burn. Whether the woman played by Zendaya is literally Athena, a symbolic vessel, or simply a manifestation of Odysseus’s guilt, I actually like that Nolan leaves it ambiguous. The gods are constantly talked about throughout the film, yet they’re never presented in the straightforward way you’d expect from most mythological adaptations. Instead, the divine feels psychological, haunting Odysseus more than physically guiding him.
Then there are the performances.
Matt Damon gives what I honestly think is the defining leading-man performance of his career. He’s commanding without ever losing the humanity underneath. You completely believe him as both a legendary warrior and a broken man carrying impossible guilt. Every decision he makes feels weighed down by everything that’s happened before.
Tom Holland absolutely surprised me. I never doubted he was talented, but this is the first time I’ve seen him truly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with an ensemble of this caliber, and he completely earns his place. His Telemachus has heart, vulnerability, and quiet determination, and I honestly think this could become one of the defining performances of his career.
Anne Hathaway is phenomenal as Penelope. So much of her performance exists in silence, in the way she carries years of uncertainty and grief on her face. I completely bought this family. That emotional foundation makes Odysseus’s journey matter far beyond the spectacle.
Robert Pattinson is just an absolute slimeball in the best possible way. Antinous is manipulative, arrogant, and completely despicable, and Pattinson is magnetic every second he’s on screen. He’s one of the movie’s biggest standouts.
Himesh Patel was another huge surprise. His chemistry with Matt Damon is fantastic, and he quietly becomes one of the emotional anchors of Odysseus’s crew. John Leguizamo also delivers one of the most affecting supporting performances in the film. Seeing him play someone consumed by loyalty, grief, and anger instead of leaning into comedy really impressed me.
Ryan Hurst is terrific as Mentor, John Bernthal makes the most of every scene he’s given, Benny Safdie somehow creates enormous screen presence with remarkably little dialogue, Corey Hawkins is excellent, Charlize Theron shines as Calypso, Samantha Morton completely changes the energy of the film the moment Circe appears, Lupita Nyong’o brings real gravitas in limited screen time, and even Elliot Page, despite only appearing briefly, leaves a strong impression. This honestly might be Nolan’s deepest ensemble cast to date.
The mythology itself is incredible. The Cyclops sequence is astonishing. The Sirens sequence is haunting even though Nolan chooses not to focus on the song itself, instead trapping us inside Odysseus’s agony as he resists them. The Underworld is haunting. Nolan’s reinterpretation of the Laestrygonians as towering armored warriors is unbelievably cool. Scylla’s reveal genuinely made me think, “What the hell is that?” and I loved the impossible choice between Scylla and Charybdis.
If I have one criticism, it’s actually that I wanted more of those sequences. The middle of the movie can feel intentionally episodic as Odysseus moves from one encounter to the next. While I understand why Nolan keeps the story moving, there were moments—especially with Scylla and Charybdis—where I honestly wished he’d stayed there another minute or two. Not because those scenes don’t work, but because they’re so imaginative that I wanted to spend more time inside them.
What impressed me almost as much as the movie itself was learning how it was made.
Every time I found myself wondering, “How did they do that?” the answer seemed to be, “They actually did it.”
They built a full-scale Trojan Horse. They built ships. They built massive cities. They filmed across multiple continents. The Cyclops wasn’t just a digital creation—they built an enormous practical puppet. For the Scylla sequence, actors were physically rigged into huge harness systems and yanked from the boats. Matt Damon was literally out floating in the ocean.
Yes, visual effects enhance everything, but Nolan begins with something tangible. You can feel that physicality in every frame, and I honestly think that’s becoming one of the defining qualities of his filmmaking. While so many blockbusters are content to solve problems inside a computer, Nolan keeps asking, “How can we actually do this?” That’s the juice. You can feel the effort on screen.
There’s also one small emotional moment that absolutely destroyed me. Odysseus’s dog waits years for his master to return home. By the time Odysseus finally comes back, the dog is barely hanging on. It recognizes him, wags its tail one final time, and dies. As someone who loves dogs, I don’t think I cried harder at anything else in the movie. For all its spectacle, The Odyssey never forgets the little moments of humanity that give the epic its soul.
Ludwig Göransson’s score is monumental. Jennifer Lame’s editing continues what has become an incredible creative partnership with Nolan. The production design, costumes, cinematography, sound design—every department is operating at the highest possible level. This is filmmaking firing on every cylinder.
The final forty minutes are some of the strongest work Nolan has ever directed. There’s a moment where Odysseus says, “I’m bringing it all,” and from that point onward the movie simply does not let go. It isn’t Nolan’s biggest action set piece, and that’s exactly the point. It doesn’t need to be. It’s the culmination of everything the film has been building emotionally, morally, and visually.
I walked out of my first viewing overwhelmed. I walked out of my second viewing convinced.
Christopher Nolan hasn’t simply made another sword-and-sandal epic. He’s taken one of humanity’s oldest stories and transformed it into a tragic meditation on guilt, consequence, and the burden of changing the world. It’s simultaneously intimate and colossal. It’s technically astonishing while remaining deeply human. It trusts its audience. It challenges its audience. And above all else, it reminds you what blockbuster filmmaking can look like when every single person involved is operating at the top of their craft.
This is, without question, the movie event of the year, and one of the most awe-inspiring theatrical experiences I’ve ever had. I honestly don’t know how Christopher Nolan keeps topping himself, but somehow, he just did it again.
The Odyssey = 97/100