What’s the big deal with The Odyssey

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What’s the big deal with The Odyssey

You’ve probably heard plenty over the last few weeks about a new movie called The Odyssey, which has been one of the most anticipated films of the year. And you might be wondering how a movie that adapts an epic poem written more than two millennia ago has become one of the biggest action releases of the year. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll get you across:

• the ancient story behind the film

• director Christopher Nolan’s track record of blockbusters

• and why it’s being called a win for cinema…

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Squiz the Shortcut

Let’s wind it back a couple of thousand years… What’s The Odyssey about?
It’s the story of Odysseus, who was the King of Ithaca. After the Trojan War, which is covered in Homer’s other famous story, The Iliad, he spends 10 years trying to get home to his wife Penelope.

And what is it based on?
At nearly 3 hours long, it’s a lengthy adaptation of an epic poem written by Homer around 700BCE. The Odyssey has been adapted into films multiple times and inspired many more. And one of the reasons it’s endured so well is because it’s such a classic story - even if you’ve never read it, you’ll likely know lots of the key elements…

It’s been a minute - remind me of some…
A lot of the original story is taken up with Odysseus telling the tale of the various experiences he had on his journey. He has perilous encounters with lots of famous parts of Greek folklore including the sorceress Circe, sirens, the cyclops Polyphemus - all great territory for moviemaking…

What happens?
No spoilers, but eventually he ends up back in Ithaca, and is forced to deal with a bunch of people there who have been trying to woo his wife Penelope, and he’s aided by his son Telemachus and his friends Eumaeus and Philoetius. 

And the movie has a famous director?
It does… Christopher Nolan’s most recent film was the hugely successful biopic Oppenheimer, about the controversial nuclear physicist J Robert Oppenheimer. As well as being a box office smash, it was critically acclaimed and dominated the Academy Awards in 2024, winning Best Picture. Nolan’s got a string of hits - we’ll dive further into his filmography in a moment.

And who’s starring in The Odyssey?
If you’ve been anywhere near mainstream or social media, it’s been hard to miss the cast all razzed up for the premieres in major cities. The lead character of Odysseus is played by Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway is Penelope, Tom Holland is Telemachus, Zendaya is Athena, and then you can add in Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron.

So it’s a big budget affair…
Oh yeah… It’s estimated to have cost US$250 million to make, and it’s expected to take over $US200 million globally on its opening weekend. But even a top-tier cast like that doesn’t fully explain the hype - lots of movies have great casts and don’t reach this level of anticipation. 

What’s the secret sauce?
Experts reckon it’s got a lot to do with Nolan being in the director’s chair. He’s been making movies on a large scale since his breakout hit Memento back in 2000 - that was the Guy Pearce movie that was told in reverse chronological order. It was a cult classic, and from there he went on to make a crime thriller called Insomnia in 2002, which starred Al Pacino and Robin Williams. But it was 2005 that sent his career into the stratosphere.

What happened in 2005?
He made Batman Begins, which was one of the first grittier, realistic versions of a superhero movie. The notorious flop Batman and Robin had almost killed the franchise altogether back in 1997, but Batman Begins was a huge hit, and brought the character back in a big way. The following year he made The Prestige which is another classic film starring our very own Hugh Jackman, but then came the really big one - his Batman sequel The Dark Knight in 2008.

Remind me about that movie?
It was a genuine phenomenon - critically and commercially - and won another Australian actor, Heath Ledger, a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Joker. And from there, Nolan has basically never made a movie that wasn’t a big commercial success. 

What others might I know him from?
Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Dunkirk - all of those movies made heaps of money. Even Tenet, which came out in the pandemic period of 2020 and was actually the first big Hollywood movie to open in cinemas post-pandemic that year, did well - although it’s one of the rare Nolan movies that didn’t break even because it was so expensive… And then Oppenheimer came along and sent him to another level again. 

Just explain that a bit more…
Nolan’s films had always been well received and hugely popular, but he’d never been able to crack the big awards at the Oscars - things like Best Picture, Best Director or Best Actor/Actress for his stars. Oppenheimer changed that…

What other gongs did it win besides Best Picture?
Nolan won Best Director, and the film’s star Cillian Murphy won Best Actor. Robert Downey Junior also won Best Supporting Actor, and the movie won Best Cinematography. 

So why else is The Odyssey a big deal?
With the advent of streaming, cinema owners around the world have been broadly having a tougher time of it. There’s been lots of hand-wringing in the movie industry about whether cinemas will even exist 5 to 10 years from now as technology continues to improve. But one of the key things to know about Nolan is that he’s a fierce advocate for the cinema-going experience.

Go on…
He’s always been very clear that his movies will always go to cinemas first - he uses as many practical effects as possible in his films and he keeps his plots, even the ones based on very, very old, well-known stories, tightly under wraps. So he’s quite old-school in that respect, and that makes him and his success important to not only his films, but arguably, the film industry as a whole. 

Got it… Anything else to know?
Yep… The Odyssey has been filmed entirely in IMAX. You might know it best as a cinema if you live near one, but it’s actually a whole system that involves film formats, cameras and cinemas. Basically, it’s a very large and unwieldy way of shooting movies that delivers a really immersive cinema-going experience. Nolan himself is a big fan, as you might imagine, and filming this movie in IMAX meant it was quite the exercise…

What was involved?
In an interview, actor Tom Holland says that the cameras - which are the size of a table - use up so much film that they can’t film more than 3 minutes at a time. So for any longer scenes between actors, they had to pause midway to get what they needed.

Why film in IMAX?
Film fans love IMAX - tickets to those movies have been selling out for yonks, but there aren’t that many of them around. Some fans are travelling long distances - their own mini Odysseys - just to get to an IMAX cinema so they can see the film the way Nolan intended…

Is it living up to the hype?
So far, so good… Early reviews have been glowing, so we'll see if it can replicate the success of some of Nolan’s other movies and crack the $1 billion mark. The only thing that might stop it is the movie that comes out a couple of weeks later, Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Fun fact - it also stars Tom Holland and Zendaya, and it’s shaping up to be another of the biggest movies of the year. Pass the popcorn already…

Onto our Recommendations

Reading: This Time Magazine interview with Christopher Nolan about making the movie

Listening: This episode of The Rest is History where the host Tom Holland chats with the actor Tom Holland about the movie, and its links to history. It’s a great episode and they have a lot of fun with their identical names… 

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