Odysseus is still him
July 24, 2026
I went into The Odyssey with one obvious disadvantage (or was it an advantage?): I knew The Odyssey.
Most people do, at least in pieces. The Cyclops. The sirens. Penelope waiting in Ithaca while Odysseus takes the longest route home imaginable. The story is almost three thousand years old, and so much of what came after it borrowed the same shape. Even if you have never read Homer, you have probably seen some version of the journey already, like the Spongebob Squarepants Movie, or that one Simpsons episode which literally parodied the Odyssey.
I knew where it was going. But, for almost three hours, that barely mattered.
Nolan makes the story feel immediate again. The sea looks big enough to make getting home feel impossible, and the creatures and characters have the weight I used to give them in my head. For example, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon worked so well because his face was kept well hidden. No shade to Benny, but I believe revealing his face would have lost major aura points for Agamemnon. The cyclops was terrifying, and though they didn't do the classic "Nobody" trick, they went a much darker and violent route with how darn loud the cyclops roared.
Benny Safdie's Agamemnon, mostly helmet.
Shooting the whole thing in IMAX sounds like the kind of fact made for a press tour, but you can feel the reason for it in the movie. People have carried this tale for millennia. Here, it fills the biggest screen possible and somehow feels new. Unfortunately, I was NOT able to watch this in IMAX, but wish I would have.
Matt Damon has an absurd amount of presence as Odysseus. You can see how tired he is and still believe everyone around him would follow him. The man spends years getting thrown around the Mediterranean by gods and monsters and somehow keeps the posture of someone who expects to win eventually.
And who could forget the Trial of the Bow scene? The man is Aura Incarnate, to put it in a Gen-Z fashion. Odysseus might be the original template for being HIM. He outthinks kings and survives things that should have killed him several times over. Then he returns after twenty years with unfinished business. Damon sells the legend because the tired man is always there too.
Robert Pattinson, meanwhile, makes Antinous incredibly easy to hate. Every look has just enough smugness in it. He walks around another man's home, eats his food, tries to take his wife, and acts as if he is the reasonable person in the room. I wanted Odysseus to get home faster every time Edward, I mean Batman, I mean Antinous appeared.
Robert Pattinson, unbothered as always.
This one also landed harder because I was a mythology kid. I tore through Rick Riordan's books back in the day, starting with Percy Jackson and following wherever the pantheons went next. God of War is also my favorite video game franchise. I love both eras of it, but those Greek games had me reading about every god and monster I could find.
So watching Nolan give this world this kind of scale felt personal in a way I had not expected. I knew these names. I knew the broad turns of the journey. Still, seeing them look this good made me feel like the kid who used to disappear into those books, now sitting in front of a screen and getting the version he would have lost his mind over. Euphoric is the word.
Three thousand years is a ridiculous test of time. The story passed that test again.
Safe to say that I walked in knowing what happens, yet I left wanting to hear and watch it one more time.