The Odyssey (2026)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Odysseus, the legendary King of Ithaca, embarks on a long and perilous journey home following the Trojan War. Throughout his voyage, he is forced to confront the whims of gods, mythological monsters, and trials that stretch both his cunning and his humanity to the breaking point.
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73 films that influenced The Odyssey
What critics say influenced The Odyssey
They’re unforgettable characters on their own, but they also mirror the guilt, trauma, and loss that haunt him long after his brutal invasion of Troy.
…the Wizard of Oz effect makes it so, just like with Troy, no Gods are actually used…
…his invasion heroics in Troy…
I never thought I’d find myself talking up Wolfgang Petersen’s big-budget 2004 epic Troy, based on Homer’s other story, and starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, and Diane Kruger.
Whereas Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy feared even acknowledging the gods and reduced the war of its title to a fortnight frolic on a beach, Nolan’s Odyssey is all-encompassing, faithful, and dares incorporate actual history we know from the late Bronze Age.
The last major film in this genre, Wolfgang Petersen’s TROY, hit theaters 22 years ago, so huge epics about Greek mythology are rare.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), starring George Clooney…
Not in the way that O Brother, Where Art Thou? loosely adapted Homer’s story into a silly Southern romp.
Homer’s literary work has been adapted multiple times for the screen, including by the Coen Brothers in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
…rather than something more loosely inspired like O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Previous attempts to grapple with Homer’s epic veered into schlocky melodrama (Ulysses in 1954), artsy meditation (The Return in 2024) or comic metaphor O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000).
…most of the stuff I do remember only sticks by way of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which remains my favorite adaptation of the text.
It feels as if it is in conversation with Oppenheimer, in the way it explores the failures of one generation and its effect on the generations to come.
Oppenheimer’s audacious visual sensibilities…
Similar to his previous film Oppenheimer, Nolan uses Odysseus’ adventure to ponder the weight of actions that have massive, and often devastating, implications on society.
The Odyssey would make a biting companion piece with “Oppenheimer” (2023.)
The Odyssey is a fascinating follow-up to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. In fact, it might be the film I was hoping Oppenheimer might become.
Everything Nolan had to say about this burden and these stories of greatness was already said in Oppenheimer.
You can also trace a keen fascination with Greek Mythology that is present throughout Nolan’s entire filmography to various degrees - especially Oppenheimer and Inception, which draw heavily from Prometheus and Theseus, respectively.
And what could resonate more with the director of “Tenet,” “Interstellar,” “Inception,” and “Dunkirk” than the notion that we forge our own destinies?
Odyssey is also apiece with many films in the director’s oeuvre—The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, two-thirds of the The Dark Knight trilogy—which all dwell on the desire to go home, and the fear that it will be impossible to find the same wife and kid(s) waiting for you there.
…while being stuck in a prison both of his own making and at the whims of very powerful people (Inception)…
You always know you’re getting near the end of a Nolan movie, from Inception to Tenet, when the buildings start falling down…
…dreams hold crucial real-world significance (Inception)…
Odyssey is also apiece with many films in the director’s oeuvre—The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, two-thirds of the The Dark Knight trilogy—which all dwell on the desire to go home, and the fear that it will be impossible to find the same wife and kid(s) waiting for you there.
There are moments of silence that recall the same temptations as one of Interstellar's dramatic grasps.
Zoom out and you can see the longer threads: a child reckons with their father’s absence (Interstellar)…
…syncs up with the action on screen in a way that recalls the thematic richness of Hans Zimmer’s scores for “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk”…
And despite my love for adventure stories, I still think both Inception and Interstellar remain stronger films.
It’s a film about a father trying to get back to his family (Interstellar)…
It reminds me of a tense moment in Dunkirk, and once again, Nolan delivers a masterclass in building suspense.
Like "Dunkirk" (and to some extent "Oppenheimer"), "The Odyssey" is telling a story about the existential fallout of war and what it does to the souls of those who survive.
Shot on IMAX 65 mm and 65 mm large-format film stock, Dunkirk was too dark and monochromatic.
The soldiers in “Dunkirk” can see England but remain stranded across the water (Himesh Patel’s Eurylochus and the other men come to mind).
I feel like a broken record – I called Dunkirk “his best movie to date,”…
…syncs up with the action on screen in a way that recalls the thematic richness of Hans Zimmer’s scores for “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk”…
Odyssey is also apiece with many films in the director’s oeuvre—The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, two-thirds of the The Dark Knight trilogy—which all dwell on the desire to go home, and the fear that it will be impossible to find the same wife and kid(s) waiting for you there.
Recalling the opening heist of The Dark Knight, this sequence unfolds with a certain mathematical precision, conveying the minutiae of Odysseus’s planning and quick thinking in the moment in tracing the movements of each member of the ambush party to get ahead of the Trojans’ scrambled counteroffensive.
I recently compared The Odyssey to The Dark Knight because that movie ends with Batman taking the fall for some kind of grave injustice and exiling himself.
In The Dark Knight, Batman uses a wildly unethical surveillance method that goes against his own principles.
…a wizened mentor keeps the home fires burning (The Dark Knight trilogy)…
Batman lept from an impossible height in Japan, and Agamemnon stalks forth in a Darth Vader fit that goes incredibly hard…
The director’s male protagonists are often haunted by the consequences of their choices, going back as far as Memento to as recent as Oppenheimer.
In Memento, we meet a man who chooses instant catharsis over truth, and he leaves a trail of blood in his wake.
Nolan’s Memento-style time fragmentation trickery is pressed into service to suggest his recurring PTSD…
As early as Memento, Nolan wondered if, perhaps, we exist as constant possibilities of ourselves.
…with much of its backstory told in nesting flashbacks as its protagonist orally struggles to remember his past (The Prestige with a touch of Memento)…
It’s not as overly complex as Inception or Memento, and it never becomes the sci-fi schmaltz of Interstellar.
Where Oppenheimer prophesied global annihilation and Tenet suggested the possibility of amending our mistakes, The Odyssey argues that what humanity lost can return one day.
Nolan’s most fantastical movies — “The Prestige,” “Interstellar,” and “Tenet” — each twist themselves into knots in order to argue that we make our own fates, no matter how magical or predestined they might appear upon first blush.
Also shot on IMAX 65 mm and large-format film stock, Tenet was flat and monochromatic.
You always know you’re getting near the end of a Nolan movie, from Inception to Tenet, when the buildings start falling down…
There are few things left hanging; as with other looping works, Nolan's tenet is to tie things off.
Nolan’s casually radical translation uses its mythic setting to smuggle in his most grounded exploration of his ‘faith in the mechanics of the world’ (to borrow a phrase from a wise man called Neil in Tenet).
The way Nolan interweaves the past and present narratively is reminiscent of the dance-like flow in The Prestige.
Odyssey is also apiece with many films in the director’s oeuvre—The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, two-thirds of the The Dark Knight trilogy—which all dwell on the desire to go home, and the fear that it will be impossible to find the same wife and kid(s) waiting for you there.
In The Prestige, which I am about to spoil, we find two competing magicians, one who proves to be a stellar practitioner of prestidigitation, and another who seeks the use of real magic (or more accurately, mad science) in order to be considered the best in the business.
…magic is made manifest (The Prestige)…
…with much of its backstory told in nesting flashbacks as its protagonist orally struggles to remember his past (The Prestige with a touch of Memento)…
From Memento and The Prestige to Inception, The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer, Nolan has consistently pushed the boundaries of cinematic storytelling.
Like Nolan’s Batman films, The Odyssey presents a world that never existed and makes you believe in it with your whole body.
He was attached to the script for Troy in 2004 but left that project to work on Batman Begins.
Nolan had been attached over two decades ago to direct Troy but withdrew from the project to turn his focus to Batman Begins.
…the filmmaker who once eschewed Ra’s Al Ghul’s immortality-giving Lazarus Pit in Batman Begins…
It’s Nolan reverting to his 2005-era Batman Begins persona, which had the same glaring flaw in combat.
In BATMAN BEGINS, he departed from the sacrosanct work of Bill Finger and Bob Kane to create a largely unrecognizable Ra’s al Ghul.
Every monster and spectacle is here, but it’s still told through the lens of the filmmaker who once eschewed Ra’s Al Ghul’s immortality-giving Lazarus Pit in Batman Begins, or Bane’s ability to use a nigh magical serum to hulk out in The Dark Knight Rises.
Its ending is inconsistent (Nolan’s worst since The Dark Knight Rises)…
Hathaway might be perceived as a somewhat Rom-Com queen, but Nolan has managed to get great work out of her in The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012) was not a fully satisfying conclusion to his Batman trilogy…
I’d argue The Dark Knight Rises was already desperately trying to break free from the structures that confined him…
Like Nolan’s Batman films…
In Insomnia, we find a cop who, in an effort to cover his own ass, throws true justice down the drain.
It’s likely that whatever you recall of Insomnia, which boasts Al Pacino and Martin Donovan hashing out plot info in great 2002 sheen, underrates it.
…it breathes the same air as old school Hollywood epics like “Ben-Hur” and “Spartacus”…
It may be this decade’s Ben-Hur (1959). It could be this century’s Ben-Hur.
In the 1950s and 1960s, The Ten Commandments, (1956), Ben-Hur, (1959) The King of Kings, (1961), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) had white American actors of non-Greek descent playing Ancient Greeks.
…adapting Homer’s The Odyssey in a feature film could—and maybe should—easily reach the gaudy and over-indulgent Cecil B. DeMille territory…
…it’s challenging to point to one that towers over them all in the same way that William Wyler’s Ben-Hur(1959) still does for the tale of the Christ…
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Not only is the humongous puppetry reminiscent of Jason and the Argonauts in its execution…
Meanwhile, Hercules (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts had people of non-Jewish descent playing Ancient Jews.
…though when I left the cinema I only had one fully formed emotion – the desire to watch Jason And The Argonauts again.
There are moments that evoke the awe of “Lawrence of Arabia,” the monumental scale of “The Ten Commandments,” and even the existential grandeur of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
In the 1950s and 1960s, The Ten Commandments, (1956), Ben-Hur, (1959) The King of Kings, (1961), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) had white American actors of non-Greek descent playing Ancient Greeks.
…he would still fit in a Cecil B. DeMille film…
Whether your heart beats for space adventures like Star Wars or more grounded, yet equally magical, fantasy worlds like The Lord of the Rings, this is the story that came before them all.
I couldn't care less about the costuming (sorry guys, Agamemnon looking like Darth Vader is sick) or anachronistic dialogue (see: Marty Supreme), as the rub lies beneath bronze plating.
Akin to Peter Jackson’s first three Lord of the Rings films, Nolan makes brilliant use of practical filmmaking techniques.
I couldn’t help but wish I was watching the Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers…
Nolan's Polyphemus is an uncanny mix of human and monster, similar to a giant Gollum.
…the giant Laestrygonians, who here eschew man eating for a ton of ass kicking in a fight that feels like a Middle Earth outtake from The Lord of the Rings…
Akin to Peter Jackson’s first three Lord of the Rings films, Nolan makes brilliant use of practical filmmaking techniques.
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This is framed like the early introduction to Medusa in the Ray Harryhausen classic Clash Of The Titans.
This isn’t Clash of the Titans, however…
I was hoping to watch Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024), which focuses on Odysseus’ journey back to Ithaca, before seeing this one.
Previous attempts to grapple with Homer’s epic veered into schlocky melodrama (Ulysses in 1954), artsy meditation (The Return in 2024) or comic metaphor O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000).
2024's The Return, starring Ralph Fiennes, is great, but it only depicts the last act of Homer's work…
…he is one reason where “The Odyssey” beat “The Return.”