Why is The Odyssey Film Such a Big Deal?
The Greatest Story, Meets The Best Director and Acting Cast Assembled
We are a few days a way from a historic event, one some could call epic.
Friday July 17th 2026 marks the worldwide release of The Odyssey which could be the best film in the history of cinema.
Based on Homer’s epic collection of stories, The Odyssey represents one of the most enduring pieces of literature, dating back nearly three millennium. It follows Odysseus as he attempts to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, a voyage that should have taken weeks but instead lasts ten years. This wasn’t just bad navigating, he had to contend with mythical creatures, cannibals, monsters and singing women. Meanwhile 100 men have taken up residence in his home and compete to marry his wife. Who can’t relate?
Bringing The Odyssey to the screen is one of the most ambitious projects a filmmaker can make. Trying to give justice to the 24 books, has never been achieved. There have been many adaptions but none have managed to capture the full essence of what makes The Odyssey an incredible story.
This is because this feat has not been attempted by a director worthy of such a challenge. Amongst active filmmakers, Christopher Nolan is currently the undisputed heavyweight champion. One could say this film represents an Odyssey of his own.
Coming off the success of Oppenheimer, Nolan could do any project he wanted. He took the biggest swing he could, adapting a work from Homer, a project that eluded him for 20 years. Nolan was hired to direct Troy in the early 2000s before the studio reversed course and returned the project to Wolfgang Petersen. Warner Bros. offered him Batman Begins as something of a consolation prize.
Now to pull off this project, he boasts one of the strongest casts in recent memory. Matt Damon & Anne Hathaway have headlined major projects for 20+ years. Robert Pattison and Zendaya are amongst the busiest leading actors in Hollywood today. Not to mention usual leads getting downgraded to supporting roles.
Some casting choices have been met with controversy but it doesn’t matter. This film will be a work of art people will still be talking about thousands of years from now.
Keep reading to learn why this will be the greatest film ever!
(*I have not seen the film yet and this does not contain any spoilers beyond what is common knowledge about a story that’s been out for 3,000 years)
Book I’m Currently Reading:
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World by Liaquat Ahamed
Related Reading:
The Odyssey by Homer
The Illiad by Homer
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The Odyssey is The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Lindy Effect suggests the longer something exists, the more likely it will in the future. By that measure, we shouldn’t be surprised The Odyssey is one of the most anticipated films in recent years.
How can a story written 3,000 years ago still resonate with people today? The story is about a universal feeling, about somebody longing to go home.
Odysseus is gone for 20 years. The first ten spent for The Battle of Troy which precedes the events of The Odyssey. It was Odysseus who came up with the idea of the Trojan horse. His side won, although they lost many other great warriors because Helen and Paris couldn’t be discreet.
Odysseus isn’t impressive because he’s the greatest warrior, like Achilles, or the most powerful king, like Agamemnon. He is impressive because he is clever. He can fight, but his real talent is thinking his way out of seemingly impossible situations. Kind of like Jason Bourne if you dropped him in Ancient Greece.
Odysseus is not your perfect fantasy hero either. He’s not Aragorn. Odysseus is arrogant, dishonest and occasionally his own worst enemy. These flaws make his journey more interesting and his character more relatable.
Love him or hate him, Odysseus is ultimately just a guy who left home 20 years ago as a king and now wants to return to his land and his family, unsure of what will be waiting for him when he gets there.
Most of us don’t have to worry about our partners entertaining more than 100 potential suitors whenever we leave town. Yet the yearning to return home, wherever home may be, is a universal experience that cuts across time and space.
Christopher Nolan is the right person to capture that feeling.
Christopher Nolan is The Greatest Director of The 21st Century
Hitchcock, Coppola, Cameron, Spielberg and Lucas dominated the 20th century. Some remained active through the early part of the early of the 21st century, but ever since The Dark Knight hit theaters in 2008, there was a new king of Cinema. Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson battled for supremacy during the 90s and 2000s, and with respect to Dennis Villeneuve none have matched the quantity and quality of hits Nolan has displayed since 2010.
A director could have survived decades from the success of having made just one of Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight Rises or Dunkirk. Nolan made all of them, and Tenet for good measure. Although the latter wasn’t as well received, it’s incredible. If you didn’t enjoy it, it’s because you made the mistake of only seeing it once.
At a time when the film industry is dominated by franchise sequels, recycled intellectual property and algorithmically assembled ensemble casts, Nolan has consistently produced original films that perform at the box office without insulting the audience’s intelligence.
Instead of relying on big explosions, CGI and cheap gimmicks, Nolan makes films, that make the audience feel something. Films like Inception, Interstellar and Tenet aren’t linear and formulaic accessible to the lowest common denominator. Not everyone will understand it on the first watch, and that’s ok. Having people need to think about what they just watched after leaving the theater is what good filmmakers should do.
There’s enough mindless slop on Instagram, TikTok, don’t even get me started on Linkedin. It’s great when content is worth reflecting and re-watching. All of Nolan’s work falls into this category. Nolan isn’t mass producing next seasons fashion, like a H&M or Shein. He’s a craftsman, like a Hollywood Hermes.
Nolan insists on shooting in IMAX film cameras, which in 2026 is seen as an insane choice. Remaining one of the very few holdouts while everyone else has moved on to Digital. Nolan can only shoot scenes up to 3 minutes at a time, the cameras make loud noises, not to mention how much harder the entire downstream process becomes.
Nolan uses CGI as sparingly as possible, trying to capture as much as possible practically. He built a rotating hallway for Inception, flipped a real truck in The Dark Knight and crashed a 747 into a building for Tenet. Nolan still uses visual effects, but usually to support something physically captured by the camera rather than manufacture the entire spectacle afterward.
If there were any doubts about his abilities, Nolan followed up Tenet with Oppenheimer, which was among the biggest commercial and critical smash hits of the decade. Earning nearly one billion dollars at the box office and Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. Nolan did this without the usual A-lister leading man films of this scale usually command. Opting for long-time collaborator Cillian Murphy, a respected actor, but not somebody thought capable of headlining a 3 hour, R-rated film about nuclear physics, moral responsibility and government bureaucracy.
Coming off that success, he chose the oldest, largest and most ambitious story he could find. To do this, he needed to assemble a murders row of thespians capable of living up to the epic legend.
This Is One of the Best Casts Ever Assembled
Matt Damon is an all time great. He’s played Will Hunting, Private Ryan, Jason Bourne and Mark Watney among countless others. Damon worked with most of the great directors of his era including Spielberg, Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh and Ridley Scott. His run from 1997 to 2007 is among the greatest decades for any actor ever. During that stretch, Damon made Good Will Hunting, Saving Private Ryan, The Talented Mr. Ripley, all three Ocean’s films, the entire Bourne trilogy and The Departed.
(Matt Damon reading The Odyssey on the set of The Talented Mr.Ripley (1997))
Like any actor with a career that long, he’s had bad films but it never took him long to bounce back. Few movie stars of his stature would have accepted such a small role in Interstellar. What the role lacked in screen time, it made up for in substance. This demonstrated Damon did not need to be the lead. He just wanted to be part of a great film. That choice paid off. Less than a decade later, Nolan cast him as General Leslie Groves in Oppenheimer. Now, at 55, Damon is playing Odysseus and leading the largest production of Nolan’s career.
Anne Hathaway has demonstrated similar longevity. She became a star through The Princess Diaries in 2001 and followed it with iconic films such as The Devil Wears Prada, The Dark Knight Rises, Les Misérables and Interstellar. She has shown she can lead a romantic comedy, anchor a major studio film or enter halfway through a Nolan movie and provide its emotional center. She occupies a rare place in popular culture where Boomers, millennials and Gen Z audiences all recognize her from different stages.
Robert Pattinson is one of the busiest leading men in Hollywood today. It took him years to escape the shadow of Twilight. Instead of immediately chasing another franchise, Pattinson spent the following decade working with directors such as David Cronenberg, James Gray, Claire Denis, the Safdie brothers and Robert Eggers. Performances in Good Time and The Lighthouse proved he was considerably stranger and more talented than his early reputation suggested. He eventually returned to blockbusters with Nolan in Tenet, Bruce Wayne in The Batman and in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17. He now moves between enormous franchises and unusual independent films without seeming out of place in either.
Damon, Hathaway and Pattinson would already constitute an exceptional cast. When you realize Tom Holland and Zendaya, two of the most recognizable actors of their generation, are also in the film, they almost feel like afterthoughts. Other members of the supporting cast includes Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Mia Goth and Benny Safdie to name a few. Actors who regularly headline their own projects, now occupy roles that would normally be filled by much smaller names.
The clearest indication of his power may be how quickly everyone agreed to participate. Robert Pattinson was reportedly the only actor who asked to read the screenplay before formally accepting. Nolan seemed surprised. Everyone else had simply said yes.
The closest recent comparison might be Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino began with Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, then filled the smaller roles with Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning and Bruce Dern. The cast looks even better in hindsight because Austin Butler, Margaret Qualley, Mikey Madison and Sydney Sweeney appeared before reaching their current levels of fame.
Some of Nolan’s casting decisions were not without controversy. For months people were up in arms over the rumored casting of Elliot Page as Achilles. Page is a fine actor, but not who comes to mind when picturing the greatest warrior in Greek mythology. Brad Pitt made immediate sense in Troy. He looked capable of defeating an entire army by himself, even if Pitt was never particularly enthusiastic about the film. His indifference helped the performance. Achilles was the best warrior alive, knew it and seemed perpetually annoyed that everyone else was wasting his time. Any actor playing Achilles would inevitably be compared with Pitt, but this was irrelevant since Page is playing Sinon, not Achilles.
The other casting choice that drew the public’s ire was Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. Helen of Troy’s beauty was deserving of 1,000 ships and the greatest battle the world ever knew at the time. Needless to say, whomever was cast would get a large bill to live up to. Some dismiss the casting choice as a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) hire. Others don’t think her beauty reaches the level of 1,000 ships, perhaps 300-400 at the most. Still a lot of ships. Others believe Zendaya could have made more sense. Regardless, this is largely irrelevant to whether the film will be good or not. People forget, there was a massive outcry when Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker in The Dark Knight. That portrayal worked out quite well.
It’s 2026, people spend too much time online. Every major project is met with some backlash. If a film is historically accurate, people whine about lack of representation. If a film tries to represent everyone, others will whine about historical accuracy. The filmmaker and their studio should be less concerned about what a few journalists or people on X say, and focus on making the best film possible. A lot needs to go right for a movie to be good and profitable.
I didn’t have an issue with the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy up until she said she would ask Homer how he felt about the limited attention given to women in his epics. I’m not sure if this is a PR strategy to help generate more buzz or her own personal views, but these comments come off as somebody trying to gain clout by holding somebody who died thousands of years ago to account for today’s standards. It’s unnecessary and frankly a distraction from what promises to be a historical event.
The film marks Christopher Nolan’s own personal Odyssey, having spent 20 years making incredible films, all so that he can make the Odyssey the way its never been captured on screen before. He has the budget, the cast and goodwill from audiences to permit him to take on such an ambitious trial, to which I’m certain like Odysseus, he will find a way to succeed.
There’s a reason The Odyssey is one of the most highly anticipated films in years and we continue to read Homer’s epics thousands of years later. It speaks to a truth that lives inside all of us, and we can be confident we will still be reading these works thousands of years from now.
Thank you for reading this weeks article. Please let me know your thoughts by commenting below
You really don’t have a clue apart from using superlatives like greatest at every other sentence, do you?