‘It was the best experience of my career’: Matt Damon as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Photo / Universal Pictures
There is little doubt that the most anticipated film of 2026 is Christopher Nolan’s sprawling take on The Odyssey.
And now, thanks to Nolan premiering the film’s full trailer via the Stephen Colbert show, we have our first proper, in-depth look at what to expect when it’s finally released on July 17.
After a series of teasers and Imax-exclusive excerpts, the two-and-a-half-minute preview gives audiences their first in-depth look at what to expect in a couple of months. And it’s … wild.
Nolan has always been the steadiest of film-makers both on and off-screen.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t laughs in his pictures (virtually every line of Tom Hardy’s in Inception is comic gold) but he’s a deeply serious man who makes serious films.
Which is why it comes as a surprise that The Odyssey looks as if it’s as close to camp as Nolan has ever come.
There are scenes of Robert Pattinson, clearly enjoying himself far too much as the villainous Antinous, threatening Tom Holland’s Telemachus, and declaring that: “You’re pining for a daddy you didn’t even know, like some snivelling bastard”.
There is Matt Damon as Odysseus, grey and heroic of beard, agonising over everything from the sack of Troy to his journey home to be reunited with Anne Hathaway’s stoic-looking Penelope.
There is, of course, the Trojan horse. There is a cute puppy, who of course will turn into Odysseus’ ever-loyal dog Argos. (Nolan even told Colbert that this would be “a dog film”.) There are Scylla and Charybdis.
And there is the laugh-out-loud conclusion of the trailer when Odysseus, deep in the Cyclops’ lair, says with relief “I think it’s asleep”, only for the howls of agony and chaos that ensue to prove that the one-eyed monster is very much not asleep.
In any case, if Nolan is embracing his inner showman with this particular swords-and-sandal extravaganza, it looks enormous fun, conceived and executed on the grandest imaginable scale.
It’s budgeted at US$250 million ($422m) – some reports suggest that it ended up costing even more – which will make this Homer adaptation by far the most expensive film of his career and, its studio Universal no doubt hopes, his biggest hit yet.
Judging by this trailer, which features the director’s own additions – most notably in a forest-set battle in which Odysseus and his men battle armour-wearing giants – every penny will be seen on screen. But why should we be so excited?
Actors queue up to work with Nolan, and The Odyssey is no exception. Several veterans from his previous films are returning, including three-time collaborators Damon and Hathaway, but he’s also packed the cast with lots of interesting names and faces, from the A-list likes of Hollywood’s “It” couple Holland and Zendaya to the always dependable Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o.
There are plenty of other Nolan regulars returning, too, from Elliot Page and Bill Irwin to Himesh Patel and Benny Safdie. The list of intriguing newbies includes the always excellent Samantha Morton, Mia Goth and Jon Bernthal.
By now, the trailers have confirmed most of the cast and who they’re playing, and there was the surprising revelation that Page (who previously worked with Nolan on Inception) is playing Achilles, newly returned from the underworld. It’s still not known who Nyong’o is playing – some rumours suggest Helen of Troy – but it’s now commonly known who else is playing whom. A particular surprise came earlier in the year, when the film’s Super Bowl trailer revealed that none other than the rap star Travis Scott has been cast as a herald, showing a hitherto unsuspected interest in R’n’B music on Nolan’s part.
Nolan revealed to Empire that, “We shot over two million feet of film … it’s pretty primal!”
While the director is well known for filming his pictures under budget and ahead of schedule – famously, he shot Oppenheimer in a mere 57 days, having cut the original 85-day schedule in order to allow more money for the production design – an epic production such as this needs a suitably lavish amount of time dedicated to its filming. It comes as little surprise that the picture began shooting on February 25 last year and did not finish until August 8, after a 91-day shoot.
Nonetheless, the director has spoken warmly about the experience, saying to Empire that: “I’ve been out on it for the last four months. We got the cast who play the crew of Odysseus’ ship out there on the real waves, in the real places.
“And yeah, it’s vast and terrifying and wonderful and benevolent, as the conditions shift. We really wanted to capture how hard those journeys would have been for people. And the leap of faith that was being made in an unmapped, uncharted world.”
Appropriately enough, The Odyssey has been a truly international production.
It began filming in some of the original locations that Homer had in mind, including Favignana, the so-called “goat island” in Sicily that Odysseus and his men were said to have stopped at to replenish their supplies and cook and sacrifice some goats, before shooting moved to Methoni Castle and Nestor’s Cave in Greece for scenes involving the Cyclops Polyphemus.
Other countries in which filming has taken place include Sicily, Iceland, Malta, Ireland, America – one presumes at a Hollywood soundstage – and the United Kingdom.
There was some minor controversy earlier this year when images were leaked of Damon and Zendaya filming at the White Dune near the city of Dakhla, Western Sahara, which has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975.
There has been some tension about Moroccan imperialism and the Polisaro Front, the representatives of the indigenous people in the region, was angry at the film being shot in this disputed area, releasing a statement saying that it represented a “violation of international law and ethical standards governing cultural and artistic work”. Nolan and Universal have declined to comment.
Silly question. Years ago, Nolan was once asked in an interview (presumably facetiously) whether he’d ever abandon the huge-scale epics that he’s become synonymous with and direct a small-scale romantic comedy instead.
He replied that: “I’m drawn to working at a large scale because I know how fragile the opportunity to marshal those resources is. I know that there are so many film-makers out there in the world who would give their eye teeth to have the resources I put together, and I feel I have the responsibility to use them in the most productive and interesting way.”
Nolan was one of the first film-makers to eschew the then-modish 3D format in favour of using Imax cameras, which he believed captured a level of spectacle that squinting through a pair of coloured plastic glasses did not, and every film of his since has gone to ever-greater lengths to offer audiences something new and thrilling.
The Odyssey will be no exception. Imax has been using the same cameras for the past 25 years, and previously their use was limited to select sequences; Oppenheimer, for instance, used 75 minutes of Imax over its three-hour length.
However, Bruce Markoe, head of post-production at Imax, has revealed that The Odyssey will be the first film to use their next-generation cameras, which will be quieter and lighter than the existing ones.
Given that a common criticism of Nolan’s films is that the dialogue can be near-inaudible thanks to the director’s refusal to use post-production dubbing or ADR (automated dialogue replacement), this is welcome news.
Also, and more excitingly, the portability of the cameras means that The Odyssey will be the first feature film entirely shot on Imax film: an innovation so salient that it is being advertised on the teaser posters. And the camera on which it’s filmed has been named “the David Keighley” in tribute to its inventor, Imax’s chief quality officer.
As is now usually the case with Nolan, the screenplay is solely credited to him, rather than with his previous collaborator, his brother and Westworld creator Jonathan.
Yet there has been a lot of interest in which translation of Homer’s original the director is going to be using. After all, although every English-language version of the saga contains the same characters, events and resolution, some of the more traditional versions of The Odyssey have as little in common with contemporary translations as a 17th century poem has with present-day language.
Perhaps the most notable recent translation of the epic is by Emily Wilson, who also published an acclaimed version of The Iliad in 2023.
Wilson’s translation – the first by a woman – came out in 2017, and Edith Hall wrote in the Daily Telegraph that “Wilson captures The Odyssey’s tonal variety, from magical realism to comedy to despair”.
Yet the greater scrutiny that it has now received has not been without controversy. It is written in iambic pentameter rather than the more commonly used form of dactylic hexameter, and eschews some of the poetic grandiosity of well-known translators such as TE Lawrence and Robert Fagles in favour of plainer, more colloquial language.
“I wanted to bring out the potential,” Wilson has said. “There’s more than one voice. There’s more than one character. Each of the characters is vivid, well-rounded, and has their own different perspective in the narrative. It’s not as Odysseus-centric as some translations might make you think.”
Given the vastness of Nolan’s ensemble cast, with a lot of A-list actors wanting their time in the spotlight, it is tempting to imagine that he has either used Wilson’s version as his basis for the screenplay, or at the very least is well aware of its complexities and nuances. But the use of the word “dad” in the new trailer already has purists worried.
Nolan seems to have a penchant for directing films set in the past. After Oppenheimer, The Prestige and Dunkirk, The Odyssey marks the fourth large-scale period piece that he has made, and, like the others, it will be carefully pored over for any perceived inaccuracies in historical detail.
Already, the image of Damon in his armour has attracted criticism. Odysseus lived (and fought) in Bronze Age Greece, where he would have worn elaborate bronze Mycenean-era battle attire, rather than the less ornate Hoplite-esque armour that he is shown wearing in the first picture, which would be more suited to an ordinary soldier rather than the king of Ithaca.
And the helmet that he’s wearing, with its red-tinged horsehair bristles, is historically accurate enough but far less exciting than one he is described as being given in The Iliad by his friend Meriones. “About his head he set a helm wrought of hide, and with many a tight-stretched thong was it made stiff within, while without the white teeth of a boar of gleaming tusks were set thick on this side and that, well and cunningly, and within was fixed a lining of felt.”
Come on, Sir Christopher, let’s see Damon with his boar’s teeth helmet on his head – it’ll be far more visually striking.
Fascinatingly, the Trojan horse that can be glimpsed both in the film’s initial teaser trailer and the image released to Empire is a good deal smaller than, say, the warhorse that was featured in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (a film that Nolan was offered the chance to direct, and which led, indirectly, to this picture). Is this historically accurate, or in keeping with what could be a more realistic, grounded approach in the picture? We shall see soon.
There are many iconic characters and moments in The Odyssey, from the final bloody reckoning that Odysseus has with the suitors who have been abusing his and Penelope’s hospitality during his absence to the sundry battles that the indomitable hero engages in along the way.
It looks likely, judging by the trailer, that all of these are present and correct, plus a few Nolan additions, too – and, given the director’s yen for secrecy, some of them might not be seen fully until the film is released in a couple of months.
Yet the most famous scene of all is surely the episode in which the hapless adventurer is captured by the one-eyed and bloodthirsty Cyclops Polyphemus, who proceeds to devour Odysseus’ men while promising that he will leave him for last. Most film-makers would choose to render the character with CGI, but Nolan remains a stickler for authenticity.
Therefore, not only are the Cyclops scenes supposedly filmed in Nestor’s Cave and Voidokilia Beach in Greece – themselves fair representations of what the original Homeric locale would have looked like – but Polyphemus himself will be brought to life on screen by a vast mechanical puppet, supposedly measuring 6m high. Undoubtedly there will be some kind of special effects wizardry going on, and it’s likely that one of the well-known cast (perhaps Bill Irwin, who did similar duty in Interstellar) will be offering some kind of motion capture and vocal talents for the character.
July 17 (July 16 NZT), the film’s global release date, cannot come soon enough.
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