The Odyssey

Is this the film that launched 1,000 ships or is it a movie that emptied 1,000 seats? Well, when I first exited the theater I thought it just launched 500... I took some time to see which direction I would go and I hope you enjoy this long review. This is my longest review and the one I put the most effort into. There is a "Too Long, Didn't Read" in the comments if you wish to skip but I would ask you at least glance through a little bit.

Dr.Necrow's review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

The biggest disappointment of The Odyssey is that it takes one of the most timeless stories ever told and tries to make it feel contemporary. Instead of feeling ancient, strange, mythical, and larger than life, it often feels like a modern war drama wearing Greek armor. By the end, I was left feeling depressed and strangely empty, as though I had stepped off a theme-park ride that was loud and expensive but ultimately hollow.

What frustrates me most is that Christopher Nolan has already proven that he can make truly great films. Since The Dark Knight, however, only Oppenheimer has reached that level for me. His other works since then have ranged from good to merely average, which makes The Odyssey all the more disappointing. It sometimes feels as though everything that works comes directly from Homer, while many of the film's weaknesses stem from Nolan's adaptation choices.

A Myth Made Smaller

The central problem is that Nolan modernizes a story that did not need modernization. The original Odyssey survives because it feels ancient, mysterious, and mythic. Here, those qualities are constantly undercut. Characters speak like modern people, swearing and tossing around phrases such as “Let’s go,” which makes the world feel less like ancient Greece and more like twenty-first-century America in costume.

The film repeatedly tries to reinterpret Odysseus as a man ashamed of his legacy and unwilling to return home. At one point, he says:

“Yes, the breaking of Zeus' law is spreading like the plague. Our age of bronze is collapsing and maybe I couldn't bear to see the ruins of what I have done, anywhere, least of all my home.”

I genuinely could not believe what I was hearing. That sentiment feels almost entirely opposed to the spirit of Homer’s poem. The Odyssey is fundamentally about perseverance, homecoming, and a man's desperate desire to return to his family despite impossible odds. Reframing Odysseus as someone avoiding home because he is ashamed of his role in history strips away one of the story's defining themes.

The film also downplays Odysseus's heroism, treating the Trojan Horse and his wartime accomplishments as sources of guilt rather than triumph. His men die seemingly for nothing, but the emotional impact barely registers because the film never gives us a reason to care about them in the first place.

The Wrong Characters Matter

One of the adaptation's biggest mistakes is where it chooses to spend its time. Rather than developing Odysseus's crew (the people whose deaths should carry enormous emotional weight) the film devotes far more attention to characters played by Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland.

The result is that when members of Odysseus's crew die, the audience feels almost nothing. The original stories spend time with these men and establish their relationships with Odysseus, making their losses tragic. Here, they are largely interchangeable faces.

The scenes with Calypso are a perfect example of the film's misplaced priorities. They drag on endlessly, add very little new information, and contribute almost nothing to the larger story. Valuable screen time is spent on sequences that feel repetitive while genuinely important relationships remain underdeveloped. Don't even get me started on Sinon who bastardizes the story of Achilles who is seemingly entirely absent...

Spectacle Without Wonder

Nolan's filmmaking choices continue to frustrate me. He refuses to let scenes breathe, constantly cutting away from moments that deserve time to develop. The movie somehow feels both too long and too short at the same time: entire stretches drag, while major mythological events rush by before they can leave an impression. The dialogue is just there to get information out but refuses to elaborate or inspire.

Scylla is one of the few moments where the film truly embraces the weirdness of Greek mythology, and for a brief moment it feels as though The Odyssey might finally become the epic it should have been. Then Nolan immediately moves on.

The sequence involving the giant warriors in plate mail is even worse. Rather than raising the stakes, it only made the movie feel less serious. The scene is so disconnected from the tone of the rest of the film that it undermines the mythological grandeur it is trying to create. It almost feels as if the seen was fromMonty Python and The Holy Grail.

The world itself often feels artificial. Troy looks as though it is constructed from Styrofoam, plastic, and fake leather rather than bronze and stone. For a production of this scale and cost, the sets rarely possess the weight or texture of an ancient civilization. It's also weird that all the buildings don't like brilliant and brand new as they should have been practically just built.

The cinematography is similarly disappointing. Somehow, The Odyssey looks less impressive than The Dark Knight Rises, which was already one of Nolan's weaker-looking films. Despite the capabilities of IMAX cameras, the final image often resembles gray sludge. Behind-the-scenes footage appears more colorful and vibrant than the finished product, and some scenes suffer from inconsistent color grading that honestly looks amateurish.

Nolan's Contradictions

One of the strangest aspects of the film is how selectively it embraces myth and historical realism. Nolan removes much of the active involvement of the gods while still including monsters and supernatural creatures. The result is an adaptation that never fully commits to either realism or fantasy.

The same inconsistency appears in the score. Nolan reportedly avoided using a traditional orchestra because ancient Greeks did not have one, yet the soundtrack relies heavily on brass, percussion, and electronic elements that are equally anachronistic. If historical accuracy is the goal, commit to it. If not, embrace the mythological spectacle that the story demands.

The dialogue suffers from the same problem. Everyone speaks in an aggressively modern style that destroys the atmosphere. Ancient characters do not need to sound like Shakespeare, but they also should not sound as though they stepped out of a movie made in 2026.

Translation and Adaptation

The issue becomes clearer when considering the poem itself. Homer wrote primarily in dactylic hexameter, a form that is incredibly difficult to reproduce in English. Every translator must make choices about what to preserve.

Emily Wilson's translation, which influenced the film, uses iambic pentameter and often emphasizes accessibility and modernity. There is nothing inherently wrong with that approach, and some of her decisions are genuinely effective. I was surprised how much I liked.

Personally, however, I prefer Robert Fagles's 1996 translation. His version captures the scale, grandeur, and mythic quality of the original in a way that feels more appropriate for adaptation. Wilson may be more literal in places, but accuracy alone is not enough. A translation can preserve the words while losing the spirit.

That is ultimately my problem with Nolan's film. It often feels technically faithful while missing the soul of what made The Odyssey endure for thousands of years.

Performances and Audio

The cast is stacked with talented actors, yet many of them feel strangely diminished. Great performers who are normally charismatic and distinctive are reduced to playing simplified versions of themselves.

Matt Damon spends most of the film radiating generic “main character energy” rather than embodying Odysseus. Robert Pattinson is entertaining, but the role does not really know what to do with his eccentric strengths as an actor. Jon Bernthal, meanwhile, seems completely disengaged and delivers one of the weakest performances in the film.

More broadly, Nolan's actors increasingly fall into the same style of mumbled, emotionally restrained performances. Whether because of his direction or his approach to production sound, many of the performances feel flattened.

This problem is only made worse by Nolan's audio mixing, which has become impossible to ignore. Dialogue is repeatedly buried beneath music and sound effects, forcing the audience to struggle just to understand basic conversations. Nolan's commitment to production audio and avoidance of ADR no longer feels like an artistic choice; it feels like an obstacle. He should strongly consider using ADR when he can get away with it.

Violence, Budget, and Scale

The R rating is also baffling. The violence is dirty rather than brutal, there is no nudity, and the rating seems to exist largely because of a handful of uses of the word “fuck.” If Nolan wanted to make an R-rated adaptation of The Odyssey, the film should have embraced the horror, violence, and maturity of the material rather than stopping halfway. Aphrodite was strangely absent...

The budget raises similar questions. Adjusted for inflation, Ben-Hur cost roughly $100 million and still looks timeless. Oppenheimer cost around the same amount while featuring a massive cast, extensive IMAX photography, and a three-hour runtime. The Odyssey, by contrast, reportedly cost around $250 million.

So where did the extra money go?

The film never feels bigger, more beautiful, or more epic than those earlier productions. Nolan has already proven that he can create spectacle efficiently, which makes the enormous budget here even more difficult to understand.

Final Thoughts

The Odyssey should have been one of the greatest cinematic adventures ever made. Instead, it feels like a technically impressive but emotionally empty adaptation that misunderstands why Homer's story has survived for thousands of years.

The myth itself is extraordinary. The problem is that Nolan seems so determined to make it modern, grounded, and psychologically contemporary that he forgets the very reason people still care about it in the first place.

The Odyssey endures because it feels ancient, mysterious, heroic, and larger than life. By trying to make it more relevant, the film paradoxically makes it feel less timeless.