Christopher Nolan's first film since Oppenheimer won seven Academy Awards is a $250 million IMAX adaptation of a poem written approximately 2,700 years ago, starring Matt Damon as a man who takes ten years to get home. It opened July 17, 2026, and it is currently doing exactly what Nolan films do. Here is everything you need to understand before you walk in — the mythology, the cast, the wild production facts, and the monsters Odysseus has to survive.
The Source Material: Homer's Odyssey, Explained in Five Minutes
Homer's Odyssey is approximately 2,700 years old. It was composed (and probably performed aloud, since most people couldn't read) sometime in the 8th century BC. It is technically the sequel to the Iliad, which is the poem about the Trojan War. The Odyssey begins when that war ends — specifically when Odysseus, king of the Greek island Ithaca, tries to sail home.
The Trojan War took ten years. The journey home takes another ten. This is either a navigational disaster of historic proportions or a sign that Odysseus was not travelling in a straight line, which, as it turns out, he absolutely was not. He is delayed by gods, tempted by supernatural women, trapped by monsters, blown off course by weather sent specifically to punish him, and detained on a paradise island for seven years by a nymph who wants him to stay forever.
Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, his wife Penelope is being besieged by over a hundred men who assume Odysseus is dead and want to marry her and take over the kingdom. Penelope holds them off for years by using an elaborate and impressive scam involving a piece of weaving she promises to finish before choosing a new husband — and then secretly unravels it every night so it's never finished. Classic.
Why Is Everyone Against Odysseus?
Odysseus blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus — who happens to be the son of Poseidon, god of the sea. Poseidon spends the entire epic actively trying to drown Odysseus and repeatedly succeeding in minor ways. When the god of the sea has a personal vendetta against you and you need to cross an ocean to get home, things are going to take longer than expected.
What Makes Odysseus Special?
Unlike other Greek heroes (Achilles = strength, Ajax = raw power), Odysseus is famous for his cunning and intelligence. He is the one who came up with the Trojan Horse. He survives not by being the strongest person in any room but by being the cleverest — which makes him genuinely unusual in the ancient Greek hero canon. He talks his way out of more situations than he fights his way out of.
Penelope's Weaving Trick — The Original Stall
While Odysseus is gone, over 100 suitors move into the palace and eat through the royal treasury. Penelope tells them she'll choose a husband when she finishes weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law. She weaves all day and unravels all night for three years before a maidservant rats her out. It remains one of the most creative delay tactics in literary history.
The Most Emotionally Devastating Part of the Whole Epic
When Odysseus finally returns home after twenty years, disguised as a beggar, only one being recognises him immediately: his old dog, Argos, who has been waiting by the gate for his return. Argos lifts his head, wags his tail, and dies. He waited twenty years for his owner to come home and died the moment he saw him. The ancient Greeks invented the gut punch and this is it.
💡 Fun Fact: "Odyssey" Became a Word Because of This Story
The word "odyssey" — meaning any long, eventful journey — comes directly from Homer's poem. When Matt Damon says in the production featurette, "There's a reason we call these things odysseys," he is correctly observing that the English language owes one of its most useful words to a 2,700-year-old travel complaint.
Who's Who: The Cast & Their Characters
Christopher Nolan filmed The Odyssey across Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland, and the United States. He assembled what one review called "a cast of thousands" to do it. Here are the key ones and who they're playing.
🎤 And Then There's Travis Scott as a Bard
Travis Scott appears in The Odyssey as a bard. Nolan explained in an interview that he cast Scott in order to draw a connection between rap and oral poetry as analogous art forms. This is actually a genuinely intelligent observation. In the ancient world, bards performed Homer's poems aloud with musical accompaniment in front of audiences — which is structurally similar to rap and very different from how most people imagine ancient poetry. Nolan is making a point about the oral tradition. Scott is making his acting debut. Both of these things are true simultaneously.
Wild Production Facts That Make This Film Even More Impressive
They used 2 million feet of IMAX film
The production used 2 million feet of IMAX film, 5,000 costumes, and shot across six countries. IMAX film is expensive, heavy, and logistically challenging. Nolan filmed the entire movie on it. IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond revealed that Nolan used never-before-seen IMAX technology for this film. It is the first film to bring Homer's saga to IMAX screens. If you're going to see it, see it in IMAX.
The cast hiked 45 minutes uphill daily in full costume
To shoot scenes at an ancient castle in Italy, Robert Pattinson revealed that the cast and crew had to make a daily 45-minute trek up a steep hill in full costume. Pattinson's exact description: "You really feel like you are on a quest going somewhere, and it's a great equalizer." The cast of one of the most expensive films ever made commuted to work on foot, in ancient Greek clothing, up a hill. This is the most Nolan thing that has ever been said.
They shot in the exact location where Odysseus supposedly landed
Nolan shot part of The Odyssey in the precise location where Ulysses (the Roman name for Odysseus) is said to have landed in ancient tradition. Voidokilia Beach in Messenia, Greece — a horseshoe-shaped beach with a nearby cave — was used for Odysseus's encounters with Athena and for the lair of the Cyclops. They didn't build a set. They filmed on the actual beach that ancient Greeks pointed at and said "that's where Odysseus came ashore."
They built multiple prop horses and are displaying them outside IMAX theatres
Multiple Trojan horses were built for use in different locations. Some of the screen-used horses are on display outside IMAX theatres in Los Angeles, New York, and London. If you're going to see the film in one of those cities, the horse outside the theatre is a real prop from the movie, not a promotional decoration. You've walked past something that was on set.
Nolan started writing in March 2024 and had it in theatres by July 2026
Nolan began writing The Odyssey in March 2024, secured the project with Universal Pictures by October, and announced the film in December. Casting through early 2025, shooting on 91 days across six countries, and releasing July 17, 2026 — that is moving at a genuinely remarkable pace for a $250 million mythology epic using experimental IMAX technology. Oppenheimer won Best Picture in March 2024 and the next film was already being written.
Charlize Theron's Circe role was changed from the original mythology
In some accounts, Circe is not explicitly named — Nolan's script appears to have cast Charlize Theron as Circe the sea-witch. The film also includes Sinon, a character who does not actually appear in either the Odyssey or the Iliad — Nolan invented mythology that fit the story he wanted to tell. Homer himself was probably working with older oral traditions he edited and shaped. Adapting mythology has always meant making choices.
"One of the things I like about shooting on location is we're moving countries every couple of weeks. It gives you this incredible momentum."— Christopher Nolan, on set of The Odyssey
The Monsters: Your Field Guide to What Odysseus Survives
The Odyssey is essentially a greatest hits of ancient Greek horror. The film depicts encounters with the Cyclops Polyphemus, the Sirens, and the witch-goddess Circe. Here is what you're walking into.
The Cyclops Polyphemus
A giant one-eyed son of Poseidon. Odysseus and his men are trapped in his cave. Polyphemus eats several of them. Odysseus gets him drunk, then drives a sharpened wooden stake through his eye. When the blinded Cyclops calls for help and his brother Cyclopes ask who hurt him, Odysseus had given the false name "Nobody" — so he shouts "Nobody hurt me!" and they go back to sleep. This is the cunning that makes Odysseus famous. The blinding of Poseidon's son is also why Poseidon makes the rest of the journey a disaster.
The Sirens
Half-women, half-bird creatures (not the fish-tailed mermaids of later tradition) who sing so beautifully that sailors steer toward them and crash on the rocks. Odysseus has his crew plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast so he can hear the song without being able to do anything about it. He then spends the entire experience screaming to be untied. The Sirens' song is described as promising knowledge of all things — the implication being that the desire for forbidden knowledge is more dangerous than simple pleasure.
Circe the Witch-Goddess (Mia Goth)
She lives on the island of Aeaea (yes, that's the name). Odysseus's scouts approach her palace; she invites them in and gives them food and wine. Then she waves her wand and turns them into pigs. They retain their human minds. Odysseus, warned by Hermes and given a magic herb, is immune. He confronts her, she backs down, and he then spends a year on her island. The pig-transformation is generally read as a metaphor for what happens when you're led by appetite rather than reason. Or she just really didn't like uninvited guests.
Scylla and Charybdis
The original "rock and a hard place." Scylla is a six-headed sea monster who grabs six sailors from any ship that passes. Charybdis is a giant whirlpool that swallows the entire sea three times a day. You have to sail between them. Odysseus chooses to sail closer to Scylla, accepting the loss of six men rather than risk losing the entire ship to Charybdis. It is a genuinely terrible choice that he makes correctly, and the ancient Greeks considered this one of his wisest moments.
The Winds of Aeolus
The god Aeolus gives Odysseus a bag containing all the adverse winds, so the voyage can proceed safely. They sail for nine days. Ithaca is in sight. Odysseus falls asleep. His crew, convinced the bag contains treasure he's hiding from them, open it. Every adverse wind in existence immediately escapes and blows them all the way back to the start. This is the ancient Greek version of losing unsaved progress in a video game.
The Plot — What Actually Happens (Mild Spoilers)
Nolan stays close to Homer's structure, with creative liberties
While Nolan's film preserves the broad strokes of Homer's work, it takes numerous creative liberties to condense the sprawling, episodic epic into a more cohesive story. The movie begins with alternating glimpses of the Trojan horse on a beach near Troy and Odysseus with Calypso, before starting the narrative in Ithaca.
There, Penelope is besieged by rude and insistent suitors, who are led by Antinous (Robert Pattinson). The film then cuts between Odysseus's journey — the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, Calypso's island — and Telemachus's parallel journey to find news of his father, while Penelope holds the fort at home.
The ending, which Homer wrote and Nolan keeps: Odysseus returns home disguised as a beggar, wins a bow competition that only he can complete, then reveals himself and dispatches over a hundred suitors with the help of Telemachus and two loyal servants. The final image is Odysseus reunited with Penelope after twenty years. She makes him describe their marriage bed in detail to confirm he's real — because the headboard is carved from a living olive tree rooted in the ground and impossible to move. Only Odysseus knows this. It is an excellent security question.
💡 The Sinon Twist — Nolan's Addition
In Nolan's version, Sinon is an honourable man who shows the wooden horse to the Trojans, believing it to be a genuine gift in honour of Athena (Zendaya). However, the character of Sinon is not actually present in either the Odyssey or the Iliad. Nolan invented a character to give the Trojan Horse sequence more moral complexity — making the ruse work because someone acted in good faith rather than simply because the Trojans were foolish. This is exactly the kind of creative reframing that makes literary adaptations worth watching even when you already know the story.
The Themes (For When Someone Asks "What Was It About?")
The Odyssey is about homecoming — specifically what home means and whether you can ever truly return to what you left. It is about identity (Odysseus spends much of the epic in disguise). It is about loyalty (Penelope and the dog Argos). It is about the cost of cleverness (Odysseus's intelligence saves him constantly but his pride also causes most of his problems). And it is about the relationship between mortals and the divine — the arbitrary, personal way the gods involve themselves in human affairs. Homer invented most of these themes. Most of Western literature has been working through them ever since.
Go See It. Preferably in IMAX. 🎬
2,700 years of story. 2 million feet of film. One very lost Greek king. The Odyssey is in theatres now — experience it at the largest screen possible.
