The Odyssey (2026) – Review by Andrea Carnevali

Matt Damon as Odysseus

The Odyssey

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

Christopher Nolan has found the right way to retell a story that’s nearly 3,000 years old and in the process has found something new to say. 

The anticipation surrounding The Odyssey could hardly have been greater.

It’s Christopher Nolan’s first film since the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer. It has one of the most extraordinary casts assembled in recent years. It also comes with a reported price tag of $250 million which, if anything, at least promises to be huge. And, of course, it is based on one of the most influential stories ever written.

So… does it live up to the hype?

For the most part, yes.

It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Memento or Inception for me, but it’s definitely another remarkable piece of film making from one of cinema’s most consistently ambitious directors.

Homer’s Odyssey is, of course, the blueprint for storytelling itself. The hero’s journey, hidden identities, mentors, monsters, impossible trials and cliffhangers – the DNA of countless stories from Shakespeare to Star Wars and everything in between. They can all be traced back to this single epic.

Nolan wisely keeps most of that framework intact (although the episodic nature of the original occasionally works against the film, making it feel slightly fragmented). But he also does what he always likes to do: he plays with the timeline of events, telling the story through a series of memories, flashbacks and recollections.

At first, I wasn’t entirely convinced. Given my classical upbringing in school, I was very familiar with the story itself.  Yet, I found the beginning particularly patchy, surprisingly heavy with exposition, and I felt some of the transitions were a bit clunky. I kept wondering whether Nolan’s trademark manipulation of time was helping the story or simply making it more complicated than it needed to be.

Then the ending arrived (no spoilers here), and suddenly everything clicked into place.

Because underneath all the Cyclops, cannibal giants, sea monsters, gods, fights and battles, Homer’s tale is actually the story of an exhausted soldier desperately trying to find his way home to the people he loves after years of unimaginable violence.

Nolan leans into that idea beautifully. His Odysseus isn’t simply travelling across the Mediterranean; he’s navigating a mind fractured by conflict, struggling to reconcile memory with guilt and heroism with horror. In many ways, it reminded me of Memento: we experience events as he experiences them, piecing together a shattered past alongside him.

This is about trauma and the psychological cost of war.

It’s a brilliant, modern interpretation that makes a story nearly three thousand years old feel unexpectedly relevant.

Visually, the film is often breathtaking. Every location feels tangible, every ship weathered, every costume lived in. Nolan’s commitment to practical film making gives the entire production a physical weight that’s becoming increasingly rare in blockbuster cinema.

The cast is exceptional. Matt Damon perfectly balances Odysseus’ legendary heroism with the quiet exhaustion of a man who has simply had enough. Anne Hathaway makes the most of her small role and runs away with it. She is absolutely wonderful, and I can easily see her receiving a nomination for this.

Tom Holland continues to prove that he’s becoming one of the finest actors of his generation. There are so many other names that listing them all would take pages, but suffice it to say the entire ensemble rarely puts a foot wrong.

The music deserves a special mention too. Ludwig Göransson’s score is magnificent, managing to sound both ancient and contemporary at the same time. I say this because, in honesty, I found his Oscar-winning score for Oppenheimer rather overbearing. Here, the music knows when to propel the action and when to step back, adding tension and emotion without constantly demanding our attention.

My only recurring frustration with Nolan remains his approach to sound mixing. It’s less problematic here than in some of his previous films, but I still found myself wishing he would occasionally let us hear every line of dialogue without having to work for it. Whether it’s the music, the sound effects or characters who seem determined to mumble through some scenes, Nolan’s mixes continue to test my ears as much as they test my brain.

If I have other reservations, they’re relatively minor.

The film probably runs 15 or 20 minutes longer than it needs to. Some sequences, particularly those involving Charlize Theron’s character (and I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I do love her), slightly interrupt the otherwise relentless momentum. It’s one of those rare occasions where I wished Nolan had trusted the audience a little more. The emotional destination is so powerful that it doesn’t need every stop along the way.

My other criticism is, oddly enough, a consequence of one of the film’s greatest strengths.

Nolan’s determination to shoot everything practically deserves enormous admiration, and this absolutely has to be seen on the biggest screen possible (it is the first feature in the history of cinema to be filmed entirely in IMAX). But occasionally that philosophy seems to restrict him rather than liberate him. There were moments— for example during the Cyclops sequence, the sea monsters and the storm at sea —where I found myself longing for a wider perspective. Nolan is so committed to avoiding CGI that he sometimes denies us the scale these mythical moments arguably deserve.

As I said, I’m really picking nits here, of course.

Christopher Nolan has spent the last twenty-five years setting impossibly high standards for himself, so it’s only natural to expect perfection at this point.

Watching The Odyssey, I realised I wasn’t comparing it with other blockbusters. I was comparing it with Christopher Nolan. And that’s probably the highest compliment I can pay him.

He has found the right way to retell a story that’s nearly 3,000 years old, and in the process, has found something new to say.

Bravo. He really deserves all the millions this film is going to make.

Andrea Carnevali is a Bafta winning film maker who lives in Chiswick, and a co-creator of the Chiswick In Film festival.