As best we can figure, Homer wrote “The Odyssey” somewhere between 725 and 675 B.C.. If you wanted to experience it, you couldn’t buy a print version, considering that the Gutenberg printing press didn’t exist until 1455 A.D.. Instead, you’d find yourself a bard, who would have memorized the gist of the tale, while putting their own spin on it. 

For the majority of the human experience, that’s how we told one another stories. If you were a king or other nobility, the bards would perform for you at your palace. If you were part of the unwashed masses, traveling bards would travel through villages and arrive at marketplaces to tell their tales. Stories were the great equalizer. They ignored social strata, and were absorbed into the minds and hearts of all who heard them.

Then, as now, there were a lot of tales. Then, as now, most of them disappeared into the mists of history. A few endure, like “The Odyssey.” It’s a foundational story in a world of stories, one about war, honor, and the ache for home, and it’s something we can still relate to. It’s not surprising that Christopher Nolan would bring his interpretation of The Odyssey to life, in all its gritty, mythic glory.

It begins with a story. A bard (Travis Scott) stands on a table and commands attention. He’s in the midst of a vast banquet hall, where men eat, drink, and carouse. They’re the guests of Penelope (Anne Hathaway), the Queen of the mighty kingdom of Ithaca. The guests, if you can call them that, are all suitors of hers. Penelope’s husband, Odysseus (Matt Damon), has been missing for twenty years. Presumed lost, meaning that Penelope is presumed available.

The bard tells a story of Odysseus and the troops he commanded during the Trojan War. They spend ten years stuck in a quagmire, until Odysseus hits upon a gambit. His men construct a vast statue of a horse. They hide within, and the doomed infantryman Sinon (Elliot Page) helps to set the trap against the Trojans. Once the great horse is dragged inside the city walls of Troy, Odysseus, Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), Eurylochus (Himesh Patel), and the surviving soldiers emerge and fall upon the city.

It’s good story, one that brings honor to Greece. Penelope doesn’t care. She just wants her husband to come home. So does their son Telemachus (Tom Holland). The young man is impatient, as young men are. He wants to either run off the suitors and declare himself King until his father returns, or form a search party and find Odysseus. Penelope fears that, whichever decision Telemachus makes, it will lead to his death. She also fears his death will come at home. One of her suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), and she sees how he casts a hungry eye across the palace and onto her. 

Penelope fears a monster will assume the Ithacan throne and cast Greece into darkness. She prays for her husband’s safe return. The goddess of wisdom and warfare, Athena (Zendaya), may have heard her. From time to time, Athena is at the side of Odysseus, as he struggles to return home. Along the way, he’ll encounter nightmarish creatures, the witch Circe (Samantha Morton), the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), the dead, and his own frailties.

If bards were the dominant method of delivering narrative entertainment in Homer’s day, are movies the most popular method now? No, as it turns out, but nobody tell Christoper Nolan!* While movies are on the decline, Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is a towering achievement in filmmaking. He works on a gigantic canvas** with sprawling vistas and hundreds of extras. This truly does feel like his version of Lawrence of Arabia, where he’s made a literal epic. It’s true that, in true Nolan fashion, he’s made a movie with a muted color palette and a sound mix so loud that the dialogue is occasionally hard to hear over the thudding war drums. Like Zack Snyder and speed-ramping, that’s just one of Nolan’s cinematic kinks. I’ll take that, considering that the film rockets by with a nearly three hour run time. Between the immaculate production design, cleanly shot battle sequences, and time taken for character development, this is an outstanding example of what muscular, smart blockbuster filmmaking can be.

Nolan wrote the screenplay, and the narrative ping-pongs back and forth through time. While the perception of time and consequence is something that’s always fascinated him, the truth of the matter is that Homer’s original poem follows this structure. Good for Nolan for being faithful to the OG Homer, but that decision creates a somewhat weird, herky-jerky feeling throughout the first two-thirds. Happily, once Odysseus makes it home to Ithaca,*** the script’s flow moves like an arrow in flight. The screenplay also understands the themes at play, ones that are as relevant now as they were then. Like Oppenheimer, this script digs deep into the idea that the gods are not responsible for the misfortunes that befall Odysseus and his crew. Due to their own choices, they played themselves, as a great American poet said. Man is self destructive, and like the father of the atomic bomb, Odysseus spends more time battling his own choices than he does armies and monsters. 

Yet again, Nolan has assembled an all-star cast, and from small supporting roles to the leads, everyone fires on all cylinders. There are name actors everywhere, from Mia Goth as a duplicitous maidservant to the awesome as usual John Leguizamo as Odysseus’ faithful friend to Samantha Morton as a disturbing witch to Zendaya as a mournful goddess. I liked Elliot Page quite a lot as the doomed Sinon, and we see his trust in Odysseus curdle. Robert Pattinson is highly entertaining playing the evil Antinous. How evil is he? He’s so evil that, at one point, he picks up Odysseus’ elderly dog Argos and callously tosses him into a massive pile of shit.**** Worse is the fact that Antinous claims to respect the gods, yet he ignores Zeus’ Law, the idea that weary travelers should be treated with reverence as they might be a deity in disguise. Anne Hathaway, as usual, sells both longing and strength as she fends off legions of suitors. This feels like the first post-Spidey role to establish Tom Holland as an actor to be reckoned with. As Telemachus, he’s hot-headed without being stupid and determined without being obsessive.

Of course, the film would crumble without the correct casting of Odysseus. Matt Damon turned out to be a good move. We know he can handle the physicality of the battle sequences, and he’s got the charisma to be a believable leader of men. He’s also got the intelligence to show us the wily tactician, the soldier who often wins through guile rather than brute force. Damon never forgets the gargantuan flaws within Odysseus. His impulsivity, arrogance, and willingness to alternately protect his men and sacrifice them are all character flaws that Odysseus reckons with. It’s a performance that’s three-dimensional enough to be relatable while living up to the stature of a legend. 

I wouldn’t be doing right by you if we didn’t dig into two of the more preposterously stupid takes swirling around The Odyssey. The first concerns the dialogue, and the usage of modern vernacular. Is it likely that, in Homer’s epic poem written around 2,700 years ago, that Telemachus would have referred to his father as “Dad?” No. Does that matter? Also, no. Nolan chose to use modern verbiage to make these characters relatable, precisely for the same reason that Homer wrote his work the way he did. Secondly, a number of mouth-breathers have gotten upset at the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen, she of the face that launched a thousand ships. They will tell you that Sydney Sweeney is more appropriate casting, and they are wrong. No shade against Sweeney, but Nyong’o is an Academy Award-winning actor, and not only is she ludicrously attractive, she’s able to do a lot with a little bit of screen time. That’s what this role demands. Plus, if you’re upset with that, yet you’re cool with a white dude from Boston playing a famous Greek hero, it’s entirely possible you might just be a dumb racist. 

The Odyssey isn’t perfect, but its strengths overwhelm its flaws. Christopher Nolan and a cast and crew of thousands have made something that honors the past and feels perfectly relatable in the present. This is a genuinely great film.

*A little Googling tells me it’s video games, which make more than the entire film and music industries combined. Seriously, nobody tell Christoper Nolan this.

**I saw this film in Denver on IMAX 70 millimeter. While I think you should do likewise if possible, I get that there are only 41 theaters in the world capable of projecting in that format. If you can’t see it that way, don’t worry about it, you’ll have a good time regardless.

***Spoilers for a 2,700 year old work of fiction!

****Homer was not known for his subtlety.

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.