(2026) The Odyssey - Another Brilliant Work from Christopher Nolan

I have read so many news headlines, social media posts and a lot of things about this movie which made me intrigued to give it a try. Last week the tickets were already sold online but they were not available in my favorite cinema with large screen and great sound system. Since my wife and I will be going for two weeks holiday trip starting tomorrow and I did not want to miss out while waiting for it to be available in that cinema, I decided to just buy tickets for today's show in the studio nearest from my home. Without further ado, here's more on the movie.

Brief Story Line

After their vitory in the Trojan War that took many years, brilliant Greek strategist Odysseus (Matt Damon - The Last Duel, Jason Bourne etc) was trying to return to his home in Itacha. However the journey was far from easy as Odysseus and his crew had to go through various ordeals and faced a lot of dangerous mythical creatures and other enemies.

Meanwhile Odysseus' wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway - The Devil Wears Prada 2, Dark Waters etc) was anxiously waiting for his return, though many suitors including Antinous (Robert Pattinson - Mickey 17, Twilight movies etc) who believed he had died, tried to marry her and ultimately becoming the new king of Itacha. Penelope's son Telemachus (Tom Holland - Uncharted, Spider-man: No Way Home etc) wanted to find out whether Odysseus was still alive by looking for answers from the Spartan King Menelaus (Jon Bernthal - His & Hers mini series, The Accountant 2 etc) despite the disapproval from his mother.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

To be honest, the story was much more than what I summarized above. But in order to avoid sharing too much information, I would rather that you see the film for yourself to experience it. And that was indeed an amazing experience. My wife and I sat through for almost 3 hours and somehow did not find it to be boring or difficult to comprehend and it was not even tiring. The story telling was just awesome and though it had different timelines but it was not hard to understand. I believe this was due to wonderful work of the director Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk, The Dark Knight trilogy etc) who also wrote the movie. Unlike his other works that require heavy thinking like Tenet, Inception or Interstellar, this one was actually not that complicated.

Now although the movie's main focus was on Odysseus journey back home, it would not feel complete if the Trojan war was not touched. It was not heavily prioritized but enough for us to see it from different angle where the war was not aesthetic at all and just plain violent. It was completely different from the 2004 movie Troy which was based on Iliad, the poem by ancient Greek poet Homer who also created another poem Odyssey, the basis for this film. 

Another factor that made this movie enjoyable was the performance of the cast, particularly Matt Damon. He is not exactly my wife's favorite actor but due to his portrayal of Odysseus here, she had changed her personal view of him. Controversy aside, I think the rest of the cast were great as well despite the discontent from a lot of people including critics on their choosing. In addition to the above names, there were a lot of important characters with varying degree of on screen presence such as Helen of Troy (Lupita Nyong'o - The Wild Robot, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever etc), Agamemnon (Benny Safdie - The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Licorice Pizza etc), Odysseus' servant Eumaeus (John Leguizamo - Smoke mini series, The Menu etc), Athena (Zendaya - Dune: Part Two, Euphoria TV series etc), Calypso (Charlize Theron - Apex, Fast X etc), Sinon (Elliot Page - The Umbrella Academy TV series, Whip It etc), Odysseus' right hand man Eurylochus (Himesh Patel - Enola Holmes 3, Yesterday etc), Circe (Samantha Morton - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Burning Girls TV series etc) and many others.

The movie was moving at a steady pace with sufficient amount of well executed action sequence and awesomely done special effects. Even before half way through the movie, we already saw several intense obstacles that Odysseus encountered. But most importantly all those things led to a wonderful climax which really satisfied us. It has an ending that both of us liked with some touching moments. There was one very brief scene before that amazing finale which was so touching and showed the brilliance of Nolan. Obviously there were other scenes that had great impacts on the story.

Overall this was another great work by Christopher Nolan. My wife and I loved the never boring story telling, the intense action, the emotional moments especially the strong love between Odysseus and Penelope, the acting and its satisfying ending. With regards to the casting choice, I personally was not too bothered as the main important characters were not the most controversial ones. I did however agree with the comments on the use of modern dialogues cause they sounded weird (saying mom and dad). Probably because I had seen too many ancient setting movies and series where they used British English instead of American English. But other than those, I still believed this one was worth to experience in the large screen (and likely better in IMAX studio as it was shot entirely using IMAX's 70 mm film cameras). I am not sure about critics views cause by the time I wrote this, they are not available yet. However, if you love Nolan's works and familiar with his previous style movies, then there is no reason why you should not see this in the cinema. Just be ready as it has running time of 172 minutes.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars