For years, Christopher Nolan has done big things, all technically leading to The Odyssey. He’s spoken before about the success of Oppenheimer helping him get this movie greenlit, but it’s also true that the making of Oppenheimer and probably half or more of his filmography has led him to this, a defining motion picture that is sure to consistently rank near the top of 2026 rankings, Oscar awards lists, and Nolan rankings.

The Odyssey Review

Believe the hype. Initial cries of woke that were concerned about casting, dialogue, and sets should not dissuade you. The Odyssey is every bit the movie it thinks it is and every bit the movie that everyone expected it to be.

I could spend all day praising pretty much each and every member of the cast. The usual suspects are brilliant, and I will get to them in a bit. There are some shockingly good supporting cast members that are going to go overlooked in a movie of this scale and with this many stars giving excellent work.

John Leguizamo is the best he has ever been, completely disappearing into the role of Eumaeus. Samantha Morton carries her entire scene as Circe, commanding the screen in a way so few do. Corey Hawkins is deliciously cruel as Polybus. Benny Safdie is incredibly imposing as Agamemnon.

The lead cast is excellent, too. You could make a strong argument that most of them deserve Oscars at this point. Matt Damon carries the duality of Odysseus as probably only he could. There is a weightiness to the performance, a burdened screen presence.

Tom Holland does his best work yet, but the bar is not exactly very high. He’s always been a talented actor who picks bad projects (other than Spider-Man, where he is perfectly cast), but his talents are fully realized here. However, it is maybe the first time ever that he has looked too old to play a young boy, so it’s good that he believes this is it for those roles. Robert Pattinson is highly effective as his foil, perfectly capturing the sniveling spirit of Antinous.

The true standout, though, is Anne Hathaway as Penelope. She brings an agency and a depth of character to the Ithican queen that is missing even from Emily Wilson’s more progressive translation. She is, in the original work, reduced to someone who simply misses her husband and cries about it, but she is so much more than that in Nolan’s version.

This truly feels like a culmination of Christopher Nolan’s career work. The Odyssey is very much in partnership with several other works of his. The cost of ego and ambition in Oppenheimer (and perhaps even The Prestige). The cruelty of war in Dunkirk. The value of memory in Memento. The perception of a hero from The Dark Knight. The journey home from Interstellar. Time’s ultimate importance from Inception.

Nolan has said he treats every movie like his last. He wants to put everything into the project at hand rather than leaving something to be explored later in something that may never happen. While it would be a tragedy for one of history’s best filmmakers to call it quits prematurely, this does carry some level of finality. The Odyssey brings together so much of what he’s done that it could easily serve as a finale to his illustrious career.

One of Nolan’s best gifts is, ironically, as a writer adapting other works. His son recently trolled him for not having a writing Oscar (which is highly likely to change this year), but I believe that to be his best strength. A lot of his movies are adapted from original works.

Memento, The Dark Knight trilogy, Oppenheimer, Memento, and The Prestige are all based on books. Even Dunkirk is adapting real-life events for the screen. Nolan is an expert at picking out things from existing works that will work well for the screen and provide the best narrative.

It is why I was so excited that Nolan was doing The Odyssey. It is the single most impactful piece of fiction perhaps ever, setting the stage and the formula for narrative fiction to follow. But it’s also needlessly dense and repetitive. It absolutely needed a modern writer to really refine and reshape it. The many translations do a good job of making it accessible, but they’re more burdened by book accuracy than Nolan is.

And in taking this on, he has done exactly what I’d hoped. He’s stripped the story back and contextualized it for our world. We do not live in the world of The Odyssey, but Nolan’s version positions the story as if we did. It’s set in the original setting but with a perfectly modern lens. There have been numerous adaptations (shoutout to The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie), and there will continue to be many from here, but this may end up being the definitive one.

That’s not to take away from the technical feat that this movie is. The realism that Christopher Nolan has become famous for is present and makes for a very lived-in movie. The sound design can be overbearing at times, but it truly does make you feel like you are right there with Odysseus, Eurylochus, Telemachus, Antinous, and the rest of them.

The set pieces are outstanding, too. On pretty much every technical level (especially Hoyt van Hoytema’s cinematography), The Odyssey is nearly flawless. Ludwig Goransson’s score, though, deserves its own mention. There are very few scenes that are without music, and it never grabs too much of your attention, perfectly backing the scenes and propelling the story forward. The instances in which more is needed from the score are met with aplomb, and they are some of the standout scenes.

On almost every level, this is borderline a masterpiece. Nolan is pretty much always firing on all cylinders, but it feels like everything comes together here. From his career and within this movie. The writing, acting, directing, score, cinematography, and everything culminate in a very important, very timely movie.

Score: 5/5