Some fresh thoughts on Christopher Nolan's film of THE ODYSSEY by Homer (2026)

(Maybe not a proper review, but I wanted to share some thoughts while they are piping hot fresh in my head - and no, I did not kill and eat any of the Sun God's livestock while typing this)

Coming at this as someone who has largely absorbed Homer's saga through cultural osmosis (one of those books I shamefully had on my shelf for years and tried to Crack but didn't, though I am listening to an Iliad audio book read by Audra MacDonald), I found Nolan's Odyssey as deeply thoughtful, adventurous, occasionally with some wacked-out and pleasantly disturbing imagery (Morton's sequence as Circe is as spectacular and just heart-rending as you may have heard), a little clunky in some sections of dialog and in others as perceptive and wise as anything from this writer, and with performances from Damon, Pattinson, Hathaway, Page and (yes) John Leguizamo that knock your socks off.

You leave talking about not just how impressive the set pieces and the visual effects and giant creature work is but more so how all of the ideas about regret and guilt and the many tortured but profound layers that go into heroism (or especially what it means in a culture to be a hero, and over so many years). 

As much as this is a story with the most grandiose themes literally as old as civilization (as your HS teacher if he or she isn't too tired at the end of the day), with characterizations with Odysseus and his men (and those he meets) about the Gods and how bound we are to fates and their wills (oh, pissing off Poseidon, not great, Bob) as well as those in the afterlife, it is about how humans have to act and react in a world where they punish and bestow great powers in equal measures - and something about it makes me feel like Nolan is tapped into what is happening now in the 2020s, how so many of us are lost in a world where things are unbound by reason and dismay and the breaking of Zeus' Laws left right and center.

Any rub?  Well, Tom Holland (and the writing of him, to be fair) is the one weak spot; not bad by any stretch, but he just does not hold his own at the same level as Hathaway or Damon or even Bernthal (who is also just okay, and next to Nyongo she blows them all out of the water). I also would've cast someone else than Travis Scott, but that is a nitpick.  And I thought in the first like ten or fifteen minutes there was some exposition-dumping that takes a minute to really get into the groove of it.

It is a good sign, as it was with Oppenheimer and several (but not all) of Nolan's films that I want to see it again and one of the fun things is thinking about how he is reflecting on and I don't know if playing with but immersed in the kinds of concerns that were in Oppenheimer (what have I done that changed the world around me and how do I live with that, especially when I am praised as well as virulently damned) and Inception (time stretches to the point where you wonder who you are, or were, or what anything means).

Not perfect by any means, but overall has so much greatness and reflects Greek mythology and its story in such striking and gloriously entertaining ways; just for the sequences involving the entire lead up to and the battle inside the walls of Troy - both how the men inside that horse managed to make it (you have never thought about *that* being an issue before this time, I assure you), and when Odysseus gives his feelings and perspective on it in the last hour of this film, with one close-up of an actress in particular saying a thousand words - one can hope it will leave a philosophical as well as an emotional impact on us today.