Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many film cameras: Christopher Nolan's ODYSSEY

Starring Matt Damon as a toilet brush:

https://people.com/thmb/YILp5A87zz05zzOcagqhNaUNoaY=/4000x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(599x0:601x2):format(webp)/matt-damon-the-odyssey-021725-2-4ae9f59958f347758e261cb65392141c.jpg

Plus everyone else so far:

Tom Holland
Zendaya
Robert Pattinson
Lupita Nyong'o
Anne Hathaway
Charlize Theron
Jon Bernthal
Benny Safdie
John Leguizamo
Elliot Page
Himesh Patel
Bill Irwin
Samantha Morton
Mia Goth
Corey Hawkins
Jesse Garcia
Will Yun Lee
Rafi Gavron
Shiloh Fernandez
Nick E Tarabay
Jimmy Gonzales
Maurice Compte

I don't know how this is a good idea but I've doubted Nolan before.

Jon Bernthal might have made a pretty good Odysseus. Matt Damon, not so much. Honestly, a lot of that cast list is a flashing neon STAY AWAY sign. Ooh, is Zendaya gonna make her one facial expression again?

He should make them all act in ancient Greek.

Needs Tim Blake Nelson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaCWSAAb8A

He's going to do the mo cap for the cyclops.

He's also going to do the mo cap for Matt Damon.

Yeah this sounds very bad. Nolan often a Cinema of Quality bore and this will be tailor made for that.

assume by this time next year it will be a trilogy

RPattz IS cyclops

bring on the lotus eaters i am here for all this imo

All in on IMAX:

After the success of Oppenheimer, which earned more than $190 million on Imax screens, some 20 percent of its total gross, Nolan challenged the company to improve its cameras, to make them lighter and quieter, and to solve issues with scanning and processing the cameras’ 70 mm film stock, to allow him to easily watch dailies as he shot.

“Chris called me up and said If you can figure out how to solve the problems, will make (Odyssey) 100 percent in Imax. And that’s what we’re doing,” said Imax CEO Rich Gelfond, speaking at the company’s annual press lunch in Cannes on Thursday. “He forced us to rethink that side of our business, our film recorders, our film cameras.”

The new Imax cameras are reportedly 30 percent quieter — so those infamous muffled dialogue scenes in Nolan films could be a thing of the past — and substantially lighter. Gelfond said new film scanning and processing techniques will allow a faster turnaround for dailies.

Having recently read Emily Watson's translation, it was plain to me that Homer's primary concern in every single book of the Odyssey wasn't stuff like the spectacle of blinding the giant cyclops or men turned into swine. Nope. Homer was mostly focused on the proper relationship between hosts and guests, their conduct toward one another, and the various gradations of propriety determined by social status, power, and wealth among the participants. It was a book of bronze age etiquette at least as much as an adventure story. I doubt this will be made apparent in Nolan's adaptation.

Let's go defy some gods:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gu2dTQsWsAAxmSd?format=jpg&name=900x900

And if that didn't work:

https://images.bauerhosting.com/empire/2025/07/odyssey-poster-christopher-nolan.jpg?auto=format&w=992&q=80

There has to be some way to put this alongside a poster of The Brutalist so it looks like these sparks are coming from Adrien Brody

Having recently read Emily Watson's translation, it was plain to me that Homer's primary concern in every single book of the Odyssey wasn't stuff like the spectacle of blinding the giant cyclops or men turned into swine. Nope. Homer was mostly focused on the proper relationship between hosts and guests, their conduct toward one another, and the various gradations of propriety determined by social status, power, and wealth among the participants. It was a book of bronze age etiquette at least as much as an adventure story. I doubt this will be made apparent in Nolan's adaptation.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 15 May 2025 19:34 (one month ago)

180 minutes and 9 seconds of who eats what and in what order they eat. Filmed in IMAX.

Initial teaser running before Superman. Tom Holland asking about his dad, a tiny Trojan Horse, and floating around on wreckage.

So maybe Aimless was OTM

https://bsky.app/profile/grousehollow.bsky.social/post/3lwp6v2e63c2u

At last I have finished The Odyssey, after many years and triumphs and tragedies and olive oil rubdowns and what-have-you. So finally know what the epic is all about, which is this: eating meat. Lots and lots and lots of meat.

Got photos if you want it:

https://ew.com/the-odyssey-exclusive-images-matt-damon-anne-hathaway-tom-holland-11857321

I wanted it to take a decade and everyone but Matt Damon gets eaten

the prologue that plays before Avatar 3 is insane, I am seated, etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzw2ttJD2qQ

trailer a bit underwhelming coming after that prologue tbh

but not as underwhelming as that flop Avengers teaser was when it played immediately after the prologue lol

No cheering?

O, Muses! You obviously failed to show up for this movie. The audience will miss you terribly.

no muses no watch

christ this looks dull as all hell.

Doesn't exactly scream summer, that's for sure.

i think of Nolan as a director who's formally strong but unimaginative so taking on a famous work of fiction that everyone already has cool mental images of feels like a big error

i always think back to Inception when they're entering the innermost layer of the dream world and i'm like "okay this is where you put the coolest setting you can possibly think of, show me what you got" and... it's the snow level from a Call of Duty game

It would be great if it was just Matt Damon, in costume, reading the book on location(s) for 10 hours.

just looks like another viking movie

just looks like another viking movie

Coming in 2029: Christopher Nolan's The Saga Of The Volsungs

well I'm just reminded of how The Northman pretty much tanked... I thought it was a good film but it has a lot of anger and weird dude energy at a moment when that wasn't hitting

looks like more of the same

a lot of anger and weird dude energy

I would not be surprised to see organizations catering to right-wing chuds with Roman statue avatars block-buying tickets to this thing in order to promote "classical values" and blah blah blah.

that's why i will only watch these kinds of things on mute, glancing up occasionally for beefcake, which if the trailer for this is representative seems to be sparse to non-existent.

i always think back to Inception when they're entering the innermost layer of the dream world and i'm like "okay this is where you put the coolest setting you can possibly think of, show me what you got" and... it's the snow level from a Call of Duty game

booming post, extremely otm

Nolan is the worst exemplar of several terrible tendencies, I won't belabour the point tho, god speed man-dreck fans

He’s gonna make this epic look like a three hour episode of swords & sandals Dragnet without any suspense except the occasional bit where you wonder when Göransson’s score is finally gonna resolve

I’m not like “oh if it doesn’t have a twist it sucks” guy over here, my family and I still love all the Captain America movies ffs, but what is the deal with Nolan and foregone conclusions ramped up to maximum volume? I assume after The Prestige he just decided “finally, I can stop making movies where the denouement is in question!” and surprising people with anything other than mild disappointments in the moral qualities of minor characters fell off the menu. Oh well. I guess if he and his fans and coworkers are all having fun I should shut up.

I can't say I was ever a Nolan super-fan but always thought his movies were worth watching once, preferably on a movie screen. They usually don't hold up to much scrutiny, despite their possibly higher aspiration, they are ultimately just popcorn movies. I like that he continues to stay with practical effects, I like what is doing with Imax. I guess not everybody likes his aesthetic, but it looks like he at least cares what his movies look like (I'm less sure that he really cares what they sound like). I have weirdly come to appreciate him more his last couple of movies just because his movies stand out more compared to most other blockbusters/action movies which somehow keep looking worse and worse to me.

This looks fun! A Clash of the Titans with fresher special effects (and not cgi slop) sounds great and potentially something he can pull off—the story suits his tendencies to grandiosity.

Tenet is his best movie, where the pomposity somehow actually elevates it to some kind of sublime ridiculous.

And the source text, obviously, can easily absorb just about anything ridiculous or grandiose or pompous you want to impart to it.

Apparently online racists are real mad that Helen of Troy is being played by the totally not beautiful at all Lupita Nyong'o.

I’m really enjoying the spectacle of musk fanboys vs nolan fanboys engaging in their little civil war of words. From a distance, of course, I only know what happens on x.com from screenshots and reposts

at the very least it prevents this from happening:

I would not be surprised to see organizations catering to right-wing chuds with Roman statue avatars block-buying tickets to this thing in order to promote "classical values" and blah blah blah.

It's just disrespectful to the real-life historical figure Helen of Troy who, being from a city in modern day Turkey, was undoubtedly a lily white woman like Sydney Sweeney.

Apparently online racists are real mad that Helen of Troy is being played by the totally not beautiful at all Lupita Nyong'o.

Foremost amongst them, Elon Musk.

Can't see Nolan improving on Horrible Histories' Helen though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSZ2BoBZH-4

it's very sad when serious historians and classicists fall out over stuff like this

I did end up watching Tenet-- kind of a spiritual sequel to The Prestige, it seemed to me, a "hogs running wild" version of Nolan. Neither hated it or loved it, the whole thing seemed to be about how cool the backerds-forwards tripping out was to see in action and it was cool! Very cool. One of the worst-cast worst-directed antagonists I've had to ever watch, though, wow

xpost, she was pretty thrilled by it on Bluesky

https://bsky.app/profile/emilyrcwilson.bsky.social/post/3mrvo3preq22g

Kenneth Branagh frequently has to be reminded when he's not doing Shakespeare

For those who can't get enough of discourse and attacks and clusterfucks in all directions (it me)

Episode #253: The Odyssey@adam_tooze and @CameronAbadi analyze the classic epic from an economic perspective: https://t.co/Gh8eZbLtff

— Ones and Tooze (@OnesandToozePod) July 31, 2026

For those who can't get enough of discourse and attacks and clusterfucks in all directions (it me)

Episode #253: The Odyssey@adam_tooze and @CameronAbadi analyze the classic epic from an economic perspective: https://t.co/Gh8eZbLtff

— Ones and Tooze (@OnesandToozePod) July 31, 2026

https://slate.com/culture/2026/07/the-odyssey-christopher-nolan-emily-wilson-review-critique-translation-lrb.html

This will probably be the only moment in the lifetime of classicists when they have a chance of getting their opinion about a movie published in the popular media. Congratulations, Theo Nash, for managing to catch that train.

Saw this yesterday, and oddly Aimless one of my biggest takeaways was the many, many references to Zeus' law throughout. The point re: hospitality/Xenia is hammered home at every turn.

Nolan does have an ability to make a long film skip by, and I far preferred it to Oppenheimer.

I caught a 70mm IMAX showing here in Manchester, UK and the exclusive Dune: Part Three preview upfront was almost worth the price of admission alone.

The point re: hospitality/Xenia is hammered home at every turn.

Glad to hear it. A year ago I openly doubted this would be the case. He must have had some good subject matter advisors.

It's prob pretty clear from this thread I'm not a fan but Nolan is very otm here:

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/christopher-nolan-explains-problem-film-criticism-today/

“The criticism that’s often leveled at movies in general is, ‘Oh the character has to be made sympathetic, so the character is manipulated in different ways or changed in different ways.’ And that’s a fundamental flaw of film criticism in a way,” Nolan said. “Because to be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism. And that’s a real problem in criticism today.”

“People have this idea that, ‘Because I can understand why the story affects me the way it is, therefore, it didn’t work.’ That’s not how storytelling works,” the filmmaker continued. “So, when we create a heroic figure in a story, as storytellers, we have to be mindful of the energy that the audience brings to that story and the interaction between our intention and the way the audience receives that. The fact that that mechanism is identifiable to people doesn’t invalidate it.”

Nolan went on to clarify that this is an issue he’s observed in “amateur film criticism” and that “professional film criticism tends to understand the necessity for the mechanisms.”

I caught a 70mm IMAX showing here in Manchester, UK and the exclusive Dune: Part Three preview upfront was almost worth the price of admission alone.

Man, when I saw it every trailer seemed to be for some movie about about or with a dog in the wilderness/post apocalypse. "Heart of the Beast" (Brad Pitt and a dog stranded in Alaska), "The Dog Stars" (Jacob Elordi and his dog in the post apocalypse). "Focker-In-Law" (Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro and Ariana Grande in what I presume a twist will reveal to be hell).

saw it on a giant-ass IMAX screen this weekend and found it pretty delightful, epic and otherworldly (aside from the modern language but no big deal really) and I enjoyed the focus on the effect of breaking Zeus' law on civilization as a reasonably subtle critique of today's political zeitgeist

The box office numbers are impressive, but what percentage of that is IMAX surcharges?

I saw The Odyssey last night at AFI Silver on 70mm film. I appreciate Nolan as a cheerleader for physical media and practical effects, standing up to an industry that is happy to slop out CGI and AI and what ever technology succeeds that. But I'm meh on him as a filmmaker.

Man, when I saw it every trailer seemed to be for some movie about about or with a dog in the wilderness/post apocalypse. "Heart of the Beast" (Brad Pitt and a dog stranded in Alaska), "The Dog Stars" (Jacob Elordi and his dog in the post apocalypse). "Focker-In-Law" (Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro and Ariana Grande in what I presume a twist will reveal to be hell).

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, August 1, 2026 9:41 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Did the industry learn nothing from the Harrison Ford remake of Call of the Wild? In the trailers both Ford and the dog were in some disconcerting portion of the uncanny valley.

“The criticism that’s often leveled at movies in general is, ‘Oh the character has to be made sympathetic, so the character is manipulated in different ways or changed in different ways.’ And that’s a fundamental flaw of film criticism in a way,” Nolan said. “Because to be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism. And that’s a real problem in criticism today.”

“People have this idea that, ‘Because I can understand why the story affects me the way it is, therefore, it didn’t work.’ That’s not how storytelling works,” the filmmaker continued. “So, when we create a heroic figure in a story, as storytellers, we have to be mindful of the energy that the audience brings to that story and the interaction between our intention and the way the audience receives that. The fact that that mechanism is identifiable to people doesn’t invalidate it.”

Nolan went on to clarify that this is an issue he’s observed in “amateur film criticism” and that “professional film criticism tends to understand the necessity for the mechanisms.”

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Saturday, August 1, 2026 9:36 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh joy, our old friend/punching bag "sympathetic." It is a lazy criticism, but people forget that if audience members cannot maintain sufficient suspension of disbelief they may not find a film entertaining or otherwise worth their attention. And this becomes more important in a longer and/or complex film.

The last movie I walked out of was The Tree of Life, after yet another scene demonstrating that Brad Pitt's character was 1) a 1950s trad dad and 2) deeply disappointed with his life. I wouldn't have said that I found the character unsympathetic; rather that I was frustrated with so many variations on a theme without any resolution.

Happily, the opening-weekend screening I saw didn't have any trailers at all. Just lights down, brief promos for the DCP and sound systems, then straight into the movie.

When i went to see Tenet they accidentally showed 10 minutes of Kanye's Jesus movie first

Oh joy, our old friend/punching bag "sympathetic." It is a lazy criticism, but people forget that if audience members cannot maintain sufficient suspension of disbelief they may not find a film entertaining or otherwise worth their attention. And this becomes more important in a longer and/or complex film.

I don't think that's what the quote is about at all! Nolan is not railing against sympathetic characters but rather against ppl saying "ah, you did this in the story to make the character more sympathetic, I can see through that, therefore it is a bad story"-

That's how I interpreted his remarks too.

We (me, my wife, 15 y/o son) were going to go and see this last night, but we realised that none of us actually wanted to, so we didn't.

One for the pull quotes

Odyssey is easily better than the recent Dune movies, which were frequently dull and had multiple instances of embarrassingly bad dialogue... when I think of the new Dune all that comes to mind is Zendaya saying "desert power" and a Shell Oil logo appearing on the screen

like if you're looking to choose a three-hour movie with Zendaya in it

The AFI Silver screening didn't have trailers, but there was an extended supercut of Zendaya that turned out to be a Rolex ad. Some of the audience laughed.

"We (me, my wife, 15 y/o son) were going to go and see this last night, but we realised that none of us actually wanted to, so we didn't."

i keep thinking i should see it again, but havent been able to. listened to a radio play adaptation of it on bbc sounds from 2004 which i loved - its more involving, has the gods (makes athenas role much clearer), doesnt actually show his deviousness or cunning characteristics anymore than nolan (that i noticed) but people talk about it. listening on headphones, i found it more transporting than the film, and it made me care more about the people in it, as well as filling in a lot of the story that nolan seemed to try and pare down or get rid of (the gods, esp athenas role in helping odyssey survive, anything that might be a bit fantastical or hard to ground into nolan-ish 'realism')

Watch Blue Heron or By Design instead.

ive seen blue heron but am going to post about it in the canadian movie thread rather than put it here.

I think *if* one wanted to see this at all, might as well see it on a big screen. I can't imagine it holding my attention at home, doesn't seem designed for that. It does, however, seem like one of those movies that will constantly be playing in the background somewhere and, should one come across it on TV, I can imagine settling down and just sitting with it at whatever point it's at for a bit.

seeing it on imax (digital, not 70mm) was such a heavy handed, near oppressive experience, im not sure i really took in anything that wasnt one of the big set piece scenes.

this was the first movie i've watched in a theater since Mortal Engines (2018). it's a bit better than that one.

really don't need any close-ups in 70mm and certainly not in imax, and this movie is FULL of close-ups

in oppenheimer that kind of worked as cillian murphy is a subtle actor, but matt damon isnt that kind of actor

Damon is as subtle as Murphy.

thought Damon did a pretty solid job, once I stopped thinking of him as Jason Bourne

(Samantha Morton probably the best actor in the film)

At the very least she is one of the only ones on screen making any actual acting choices, rather than just playing it safe like a staid stage veteran.

I mean an IMAX film, you're basically doing a stage play in the front car of a roller coaster

Felt like I was watching a stage play being performed *next* to a roller coaster.

too bad we can't get a Powell/Pressburger 70mm Technicolor Odyssey

"Damon is as subtle as Murphy."

Possibly but I think he has a bit more nuance?

Nolan in general doesn't seem to be good at directing actors though or getting strong performances. It's like he just leaves them to it. Zendaya and Theron both looked a bit lost here. Morton is way out in front as the best performance but I'm wondering if that was all her own making

R-patz' performance was the most fun, and the most stagey, like an excellent panto evil villain

I would be surprised if Nolan had much to say to them about their acting

Was good to see an original, competently executed blockbuster. Going in I was mostly curious how it would work tonally, and overall, although sure there were some cringe lines, the almost documentary style and the modern language worked for me.

Too grounded for my taste though - there was a brief thrilling moment entering Athena's temple on Pylos where I felt like I was entering an exotic forgotten world. Wish there'd been more of that. But that would have been a very different movie.

https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/what-does-a-christopher-nolan-movie-want

This was quite a good read but the writer thinks tenet and interstellar are his best, mainly I think as they feature more of an everyday reality that it's thought is missing from his other films. In some ways that's the corny arthouse pov - less spectacle! More everyday stuff! More reality! But anyway,it's good to see someone look at the spectacle aspect more closely. Though for me the odyssey lacks the kind of spectacule that could make it transcendant, that would take it beyond normal reality, even in ancient Greece.

Yet while his films are brimming with spectacle, depictions of the everyday, the banal, the ordinary, are so often absent. Why don’t (or why won’t) his films show this, particularly when everyday life is held out as the very thing so many of his characters and narratives want to achieve?

Nolan is remarkably skilled at conjuring such spectacles.... Such a facility has saliency in our current age, where images of spectacle risk shattering the fragile casing that surrounds ordinary life. But what does this facility hide? What is lost in stringing spectacle upon spectacle?... Nolan’s only profound thought about time, something only hinted at in The Odyssey’s quest to return to a home that is already gone: Time is loss. To make a film about that does not necessarily require convoluted structural conceits, spectacle, or even sustained depictions of the everyday, but an honesty about what slips away forever.

I feel like the end of that article needs the Spiderman meme with the dinosaur, this time going 'But I want convoluted structural conceits and spectacle'

Loved this tbh, I’m a bit more down w/how Nolan typically tells his stories than a lot of people but this is much more effective and interestingly accomplished than usual. There’s a lot I could point to here but the standouts being scenes with Leguizamo, the sacking of Troy from Odysseus’ perspective, Samantha Morton, most scenes with Anne Hathaway, the imposing presence of Agamemnon (I wasn’t bugged by Safdie in the role bc part of the strength there came from him being a less impressive figure whose power comes from the epic armor, the character’s presence was quite palpable. And I thought the music was pretty fantastic

i was dicaprio_pointing.jpg during that polyphemus shot that looked like 'saturn devouring his son'

i feel like this might be nolan's best film. but mostly because of the source material and budget, not best in a "wins above replacement" sense. like if this were directed by jj abrams or michael bay or ridley scott it would be a bit worse, but not that much worse

xp

yes!