The Odyssey (Theatrical) 2026

Thunder. The surround sound speakers rumbling like thunder. Acoustic waves pound through the theatre seats, vibrating, trembling.

 Lightning. Of the flashing projector and the glowing screen. Wind. The ethereal vocals that permeate the soundtrack. Lightning again. Brilliance.

 I sit humbled in the brilliance that is Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY. We know the name of Odysseus, hero of the Trojan war. Some of us know the children’s fairy tale of a cunning leader, others perhaps know past screen adaptations showing a champion who was father to both his biological son Telemachus, as well as the men who served with him in the war. And some perhaps know him from the myths, the legends, the original poems and songs. 

 This movie is not all of that. As with Oppenheimer before this, as with Batman before that, and as with the Prestige even further back, Nolan deconstructs the myth of Odysseus to present us not just the man of Odysseus, but the story of the ones left behind.

 Told in a clever non linear fashion, this movie first cuts between Telemachus (Tom Holland) on a quest to discover the fate of his father, and king Odysseus himself marooned on a mysterious coast reliving his past. 

Back in Ithaca, Telemachus’ mother Queen Penelope is beset by suitors hoping to win her hand in marriage in the absence of her rightful husband Odysseus. Penelope remains faithful of her husband’s return but some of the suitors plot a more hostile takeover. 

Meanwhile Odysseus slowly relearns a harsh truth about his past and grapples with the question of whether he could truly go home, in every sense of the term. As we the audience are regaled with tales of Odysseus’ exploits, third hand accounts told my poets and former allies, we constantly cut to what really happened as seen through Odysseus’ own eyes. The monsters he faced like the dreaded Cyclops, the witch who turns men into pigs, the sirens. Was it real? Yes. All of it.

 Folks who feared that Nolan’s penchant for grounded gritty realism would take away the outlandish beasts and fantastical elements need not worry. They are all here. Instead his deconstruction targets Odysseus himself. 

It drives home the burden of leadership, the limits of loyalty, the fallible nature of man, and the weight of guilt. Behind the clever strategist was perhaps a cunning deceiver, behind the charisma, maybe a forked tongue, and behind the hero with his loyal followers was a man desperate to defy fate, and companions who may not have been as loyal as the tales thought they were. 

 Unlike many screen adaptations of Greek mythology, THE ODYSSEY does not have much in the way of vast panoramas, sweeping vistas and wide angle shots boasting the hundreds of cast members, elaborate backgrounds and set pieces of a grandiose scale. 

Instead Nolan’s camera often goes in close focusing on characters and their faces. Backgrounds get reduced to a surreal blur emphasising what truly matters in this story. Accompanying this epic journey is a score by Ludwig Goranssen (BLACK PANTHER, OPPENHEIMER). Like the cinematography, the score eschews traditional grandiose brass and wind orchestra for a style that is ethereal, intimate and primal.

 This is less a fantasy movie and more of a tragic war story. It is not the glorious legend, nor the heroic homecoming of the myth. It is messy, cruel, terrifying, steeped not in spectacle but in blood, urine and mud.  

The war was won. To the victors went the spoils but also the consequences of their conquests. THE ODYSSEY revels in driving that home. There are no brave battle cries, valiant rallying calls and declarations of courage from the old tale, only screams of the dying, the helpless, the lost. 

 THE ODYSSEY hit me deep in the feels. It was a fervent storm from start to finish. A storm with flashes of brilliance and waves of emotion. And as I am swept away, I am left with rumbling. Like thunder.