Christopher Nolan turns Homer’s The Odyssey into a big, amazing movie.
By Mahnoor | 17-07-2026
Christopher Nolan’s version of Homer’s 2,800-year-old poem is the most awaited movie of the year, and for the most part, it is everything you hoped for. Shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film, The Odyssey follows Odysseus’s (Matt Damon) forty-year journey home as he tries to reunite with his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland).
At almost three hours, the movie never loses momentum between grand action scenes and smaller family struggles back in Ithaca.
Critics in America and Europe mostly agree: this is Nolan pushing his ambition to the limit and succeeding.
Performances That Create the Legend
Matt Damon plays a version of Odysseus who has traded his heroism for something rougher and more complex. His cleverness saves his life but slowly costs him his soul. Robert Pattinson as Antinous is wonderfully nasty. Samantha Morton creates one of the film’s most disturbing moments as Circe. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope with control and toughness, so she is never just a wife waiting by the window.
Charlize Theron’s Circe is just another stop on Odysseus’s long journey home.
These are strong characters, and though they could have felt disconnected, Nolan and his cast always tie them to one central question: the cost of Odysseus’s actions on the people he left behind.
A Show That Needs Its Size
Critics have been very impressed with how The Odyssey looks and sounds. One often-quoted description of the film says: ‘A huge epic that doesn’t even seem to stop for breath in almost three hours.’ This statement says a lot about the scale of the spectacle, as scenes seem designed to overwhelm you with their size. The cyclops fight and the stormy sea voyages are especially impressive, and it’s clear that this film focuses on the weight of its action rather than empty computer graphics.
Critics have also liked how Nolan handled the darker and more complex parts of Homer’s epic; topics like loyalty, the brutal nature of war, and the effects of fighting for decades away from home have all been mentioned in various reviews.
People have mostly liked The Odyssey, making it one of Nolan’s highest-rated movies. Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian gave it 5 stars, saying it turns Homer’s story into a metaphor for post-war emptiness and fatigue. He called the movie thrilling, bold, serious, generous, and witty. British reviewers also agreed, with The Telegraph saying it was ‘the movie of the year’ and Empire praising Nolan’s directing as ‘astounding.’
However, not all reviews have been great. The Financial Times gave it 4 stars and noted that humor and sexuality are not Nolan’s strong points, which is a problem because Homer’s original text has many references to these themes.
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