I saw THE ODYSSEY!
So I saw THE ODYSSEY recently!
It will appear in my Summer 2026 Movie Roundup, but I thought I would share my review of it early.
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THE ODYSSEY (2026)
This wasn’t quite as good as OPPENHEIMER in 2023, but it was still very good and very much worth seeing.
It was weird that THE ODYSSEY was a football in the neverending US culture war scrum, because the movie isn’t political and doesn’t really have a message beyond “war is destructive and bad”, which of course every sensible person would agree with, and a lesser message of “violating the laws of morality has unforeseen bad consequences including the destruction of civilization” which is also quite true and was one of the themes of OPPENHEIMER. Nolan himself dismissed the controversies as “irrelevant” and “part of the territory” since no one had actually seen the movie yet, and given that THE ODYSSEY is a big hit, I think that proved his point.
I do think the debate over historical accuracy in THE ODYSSEY is pointless, because the Odyssey is myth, not history. The Iliad and the Odyssey are a lot like Arthurian myth in terms of their actual historicity. Even when Arthurian legend was massively popular with English kings and nobles in the 14th century, the version of Arthurian myth they celebrated and wished to emulate had virtually no connection to the reality of Britain in the 500s AD (it was instead sort of a fantasy version of their own time in the 14th century), and by the time THE ODYSSEY was written down, a similar process was likely underway.
Both the Illiad/Odyssey and the Arthurian cycle probably have a kernel of historical truth buried underneath the tales of magic swords, sirens, cyclopses (cyclopi?), and vengeful witches with magic islands. There likely was a Romano-British warlord who might have been named Arthur (or possibly Ambrosius Aurelianus) who held off the Saxons for a while before he was overwhelmed and killed. Likewise, Heinrich Schliemann was a highly eccentric crazy rich guy, but he did prove that there really was some version of the city of Troy that was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age. But everything beyond those basic details came from thousands of years of embellishments and flourishes from later poets and writers. So arguing about the historical accuracy of The Odyssey is a bit like arguing if STAR WARS portrays faster-than-light travel in an accurate way. That kind of argument is just missing the point entirely.
It’s always interesting to see how modern standards clash with the ancient mindset. You know how I always say that everywhere in the United States is exactly the same, right up until it really, really isn’t? I think ancient people were just like us until they really, really weren’t. Like, ancient people would have been superstitious to an extent that even the most credulous crystal-and-aura influencer on TikTok would find horrifying, and frequently violent in a way that the most strident self-defense advocate would find shocking. THE ODYSSEY’S version of Odysseus feels guilt and remorse over his actions in a way an actual ancient Greek probably wouldn’t have, but so what? This is THE ODYSSEY viewed through the lens of the 21st century, just as those 14th century English nobles viewed the myth of King Arthur and his knights through the lens of their time. As I mentioned with TROY above, the ancient Greeks were often quite brutal and would celebrate sacking an enemy city.
Anyway, back to the movie! It follows the familiar story of Odysseus through Christopher Nolan’s preference for non-linear storytelling and practical effects. I did think it was interesting how in this interpretation, Odysseus explicitly connected the ruse of the Trojan Horse with the collapse of the Bronze Age and the rise of the Sea Peoples. It’s also probably the most supernatural film Nolan has ever done, with actual fantasy/supernatural elements as opposed to science fiction like INCEPTION, TENET, and INTERSTELLAR. Odysseus talks to Athena throughout the movie, and it’s left up to the viewer’s interpretation whether or not he’s actually talking to Athena or his own guilt-ridden hallucinations. That said, Odysseus encounters a witch with actual magic powers, and travels to the Underworld to speak with the shades of the dead, so it’s entirely possible he’s talking to the actual Athena.
In this version, as I mentioned Odysseus is guilt-ridden over the ruse of the Trojan Horse, which is shown as a violation of the sacred hospitality of Zeus’s law and as great a crime as the creation of the atomic bomb. Interestingly, this is similar to OPPENHEIMER, where Oppenheimer’s creation of the atomic bomb is treated similarly.
There are also some genuinely scary sequences in the movie – the bit with the underworld is very spooky, the cyclops is actually quite frightening, and the character of Circe reaches a level of scary previously attained by Heath Ledger’s version of The Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT. If Nolan ever decides he wants to do a horror movie, it will probably be one of the scariest ones ever made.
To sum, THE ODYSSEY has great performances, great spectacle, great cinematography, and great action sequences, and is an interesting interpretation of the original myth. Definitely worth seeing. I think you can tell it was a great movie because of all the arguments on the Internet about “what did it really mean?” Great art often has that effect.
Overall grade: A