Christopher Nolan doesn’t do small. His latest film, The Odyssey, just proved that all over again. Critics are throwing around words like “masterpiece” and “watershed moment” like they’re going out of style. And for once, the hype might actually be earned.
This is Nolan’s first film since Oppenheimer swept the 2023 Oscars. The follow-up? An adaptation of Homer’s ancient epic poem, told through a lens only Nolan could pull off.
The Telegraph called it the film of the year. Metro said it would “change cinema forever.” The Times went with “a masterpiece in every way.” The Standard? “A colossal piece of cinema.” That’s not faint praise. That’s a chorus.
A Capable Start Cast:
The Odyssey hits UK cinemas Friday, and the cast list reads like a who’s-who of modern Hollywood: Matt Damon, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong’o.
Damon plays Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, fighting his way home from the Trojan War to reunite with his wife and son, played by Hathaway and Holland. Along the way, he runs into mythical creatures that seem built for IMAX screens. Meanwhile, Pattinson’s Antinous circles the queen back home, waiting for his moment.
Variety’s Guy Lodge called it “a genuinely grand, gutsy vision,” adding that the film “thrills generously for the bulk of its near three-hour running time.” Every few minutes, he wrote, it delivers a setpiece that would be the climax of most other summer blockbusters.
The Standard’s Nick Howells went further, calling it “far more astonishing” than Oppenheimer.
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Tom Holland’s Quiet Standout Moment
Not every headline belongs to Damon. Deadline’s Gregory Nussen singled out Holland’s performance, noting it carries “the courageous naivety of Spider-Man” while pushing into new territory. “Holland may be playing a child, but his performance is bursting with a newfound maturity,” Nussen wrote. “It is his strongest one to date.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney flagged the film as somewhat uneven overall, but had nothing but praise for the ensemble. Damon goes to “dark places seldom if ever explored.” Hathaway brings “steely self-possession masking vulnerability.” Pattinson “bites into his character’s villainy with gusto.”
Mixed But Mostly Positive Reviews:
Even the glowing reviews come with a few asterisks. Some viewers struggled to catch dialogue in certain scenes, a familiar complaint with Nolan, who insists on using audio recorded live on set rather than dubbing lines in later.
The Financial Times’s Danny Leigh took issue with something else entirely: the dialogue’s modern phrasing. “Nolan has called using contemporary language ‘a no-brainer,'” Leigh wrote. “Respectfully, in this case, I would argue it was a brainer.”
The LA Times’s Amy Nicholson raised a deeper concern. She called the film “epically satisfying” but felt it softened Odysseus’s more complicated, ego-driven nature from the source material. “The chasteness of Nolan’s version bugs me,” she wrote, “as it’s insulting he doesn’t trust audiences to grapple with this hero’s moral complexity.”
Should You Watch It On IMAX?
This isn’t just another Nolan blockbuster shot partly on IMAX. The Odyssey is the first feature film ever shot entirely on IMAX 1570 cameras, the highest-resolution film format in existence.
These cameras are massive. Up to 270 kilograms, requiring five people just to move them around a set. Film reels needed reloading every three minutes during the shoot. And because the cameras are loud, capturing clean dialogue became a serious challenge.
Nolan’s team solved that by having IMAX build a custom camera, nicknamed the “Keighley,” fitted with a noise-dampening housing called a “blimp.”
That’s the level of obsession baked into this production. Whether or not every critic loved every choice, nobody’s arguing the film lacks ambition.
With a reported $250 million budget and Oppenheimer’s $975 million global haul as the benchmark, Universal has a lot riding on this one. The reviews, at least, suggest it’s off to a strong start.
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