Movie Review: The Odyssey (2026, Dir. Chris Nolan)

​Get The Greek To Me: The Odyssey (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2026)
Review by Connor McLaughlin

By the time you're reading this, I will have seen Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey four times in the theater. You might ask why. I would answer by pointing out the film opens with the text “An age of apparent magic,” and that is exactly what this feels like… movie magic. The Odyssey is the true meaning of the cinematic experience.

Based on Homer’s epic saga, Nolan transports audiences back to the foundational, source code of his oeuvre, namely a complicated man, full of sorrow, attempting to get home. In this era of the director’s career, one might think that the pre-Christian text would drone on, as it might have in a high school English class. However, just as Homer's tales of Odysseus, this film burns with urgency and satisfying pathos.

Filmed entirely in IMAX 70mm and across seven countries, Matt Damon headlines an impressive ensemble cast. He is Odysseus, beset by many challenges on the two-decade-long voyage home to his kingdom of Ithaca. Damon delivers career-best work by combining the character’s hubris with his own everyman quality to poignant effect. His co-stars showcase equally impressive work, notably Samantha Morton’s Circe, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and Himesh Patel as second-in-command Eurylochus.

It is true, of course, that this is a Christopher Nolan film, so his signature of nonlinear, densely layered storytelling remains intact. What separates this film from his others is how straightforward and digestible the narrative feels. By crosscutting between Odysseus’ son Telemachus, his wife Penelope and her suitors, and the adventures of Odysseus and his crew, the story never feels as lost as the legendary hero of the Trojan War himself.

Nolan’s vision for a swords and sandals epic is utterly distinct, at once grounded and grotesque, but with enough changes to tell this story through a modern lens. Though we never see the gods Zeus and Poseidon, their wrath is real, their monsters are real, and humans are the fodder of their choices.

The most striking takeaway of this film is how much it thematically riffs off on Oppenheimer. If Nolan’s previous work was concerned with the final nail in the coffin of modern civilization, The Odyssey examines the rot at the core. “To the burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire,” laments Odysseus. This is a deeply human and potently anti-war story about the failure of humanity and the hope to make our world resemble home again.

The film is heavy and bleak, and although it reckons with our inhumanity, it is also classically entertaining and satisfying. From the infamous Cyclops to the slaughter of the suitors, the film features one incredible sequence after another. And no matter how many times I see it, there's one particular cue from Ludwig Göransson’s thunderous score that will never cease to give me goosebumps.

*If you're seeing one movie this year, make it this. Run, don’t walk to see it, especially on its beautiful 70mm film print at the Prytania Uptown, the best screen in New Orleans. Nothing can stand between you and this movie. Not even the gods… or the bathroom.