The Odyssey (2026)  

Review: written August 2026

Myth Accomplished

Everyone knows The Odyssey. Even if you don’t know that you know The Odyssey... you do know The Odyssey. That’s because quite simply it is one of the foundational stories of Western literature, and has appeared in numerous previous screen incarnations. So it’s difficult to miss. So what did Christopher Nolan think he could do with this story of Odysseus taking a wrong turn and taking 10 years to return from the 10 year Trojan War? Well the astonishing thing is, he has done something remarkably fresh, original-feeling and meaningful with it… and done it with his trademark epic scale. Instead of leaning into a story about the gods, with humans the pawns in their story, he has placed the human stories at the heart, and made it a story about them – their loves, their hates, their weaknesses and their foibles. It manages to be grand but accessible, epic yet intimate.

I wasn’t 100% convinced, it’s true, twenty minutes in. It felt a bit exposition-y, and the tone languid rather than propulsive. I was worried that the whole exercise was going to feel stagey, reflecting perhaps its ancient origins. That changed however as we started on the journey proper, and by the time we got to the denouement with the emotional payoff for the journey, I was engrossed. Because unlike many previous versions which have focussed on the story as a series of challenges and set-pieces to showcase the effects of the day, this is an internal journey as much, if not more than, the physical journey being undertaken. Odysseus here is a troubled and flawed man, burdened by post-traumatic stress from his wartime experiences in Troy. Does he really want to get home quickly? Or does he allow the meandering, perhaps hoping for redemption or healing of some sort before he can allow it? Even when he finally gets back to his kingdom of Ithaca, we sense he is not yet ready to announce his arrival.

You can sense Nolan is bringing all his skills and movie-making experience to bear, both the technical savvy of staging huge scenes with minimal visual effects, using state-of-the-art IMAX cameras for maximum effect, but also the emotional storytelling skills. He has wisely mostly stripped out the viewpoint of the gods (with the exception of Zendaya’s Athena). We hear about them all the time, they pervade the movie, but the point of view is overwhelmingly with the humans. It’s their story and experience we live until the end credits. There are still fantastical elements of course, but we experience them at ground level, rather than imagine the gods puppeteering events. If there is a ‘look’ to the movie, it’s all to feed in to the story. There are of course IMAX-sized landscapes, but they serve to frame a human story and not to be pretty. The IMAX isn’t used just for spectacle then – it’s used to allow you to get closer, to walk amongst the travellers, to feel and not just observe the story unfolding. It’s as interested in the lines on Damon’s face as it is the raging storms, or showing the scale of a raging whirlpool.

Worth mentioning here too, Ludwig Göransson’s score, which also somehow straddles that line successfully between otherworldly and human. The human voices and sounds of archaic instruments in the score are grounding – and yet unlike anything you’ve heard before.

You can’t achieve all this without the cast giving it their all – and they really do. Matt Damon isn’t some chiselled classic Hollywood heroic actor playing an archetype of Ye Olde Times, he is relatable. We can feel his imperfections, and he wears his weariness, stress and sorrow in every surprising wrinkle. And let’s not forget those left behind in Ithaca – Tom Holland seems to grow up in front of our eyes, showing a maturity far removed from the youthful comic persona we most readily associate with him, and Anne Hathaway as Penelope convinces as the Queen determined not to stop believing her husband will return, and as the woman that gives Odysseus a reason to come home. The rest of the cast all do well, but special shout out to Samantha Morton for her scene-stealing portrayal of Circe. It’s a cast which turns a potentially fantastical tale into a tale of real people who happen to have fantastic events happening to them.

Along the way, some things won’t look the way you expect them to. The sirens scene felt unfortunately a bit curtailed to me, but then the cyclops was a brilliant reimagining that avoided falling into clichés of previous screen iterations. For me though, those are all a storyteller’s choices in bringing a written tale to the screen, and it’s the emotional throughline that works for me and that I think Nolan got right, with the elements of the story being adapted enough to serve those ends.

So it turns out Nolan was right. There is a reason for this story now. The love story, the adventure, the story of a man’s struggle to reconcile what he has done with who he needs to be… he has definitely found a few new tricks in this old tale. This is essential cinema. Nolan is still the master of the thoughtful, intimate epic.