Watching Christopher Nolan’s new Odyssey has raised questions from people in all fields. It’s been called controversial by some and genius by others. You may have seen confusing articles like “I’m an archaeologist and...” But! if you’re one of the few who went into this film expecting a Christopher Nolan film instead of a “historically accurate” epic (whatever that means), then you are perfectly sane. The film delivered exactly what was expected, and you deserve an audience award.
If you’re still unconvinced, allow me to explain. The Odyssey (2026) is next in the line of Nolan’s achievements, cleverly wearing the disguise of an epic. The film was released at a time when the future seems uncertain, war looms, and hot political topics like immigration and policy are hard to talk about because we’re missing the core argument: what people owe each other.
The film’s aspect ratio and format are an interesting tell that this will not be an epic. Nolan pushed the limits by filming on very expensive IMAX 70mm, but unlike classic epics shot on the same film size, this is a large-format square rather than the usual widescreen. Why not go super wide like its counterparts? Simply because this is not a classical genre epic. The square format is a time-proven way to compose shots around character performance, taking us back to previous releases like Memento (2000) and reminding me how important this is. Don’t be fooled by the all-star cast: this film reads as if it could have been acted by unknown indie actors, but with the budget, scale, and location, the big names were needed to sell the project at such a high budget line to the executives.
Relating a massive event during a war to a single character’s self-worth was not new to Nolan’s writing. Looking back at Oppenheimer (2023), a scientist who ended a war by creating a Superweapon he lived to regret is not so different from Odysseus wrestling with the Trojan Horse. It was his magnum opus that ended the war, but he lived to regret it, as it violated Greek law about gifts and hospitality set by the gods. Once the “rules-based order” of his time was broken, he acknowledged its rippling effects and the difficulty of rebuilding a society that had been tarnished.
The sea peoples come across as immigrants and deserters from collapsing societies as the world falls apart. As Troy was destroyed, it sent rippling effects across the Mediterranean trade region. Had Odysseus caused the end of the world as they knew it? Are we supposed to draw parallels with our own world? These are questions this review can’t answer, and I suspect Nolan doesn’t intend to either. Even Emily Wilson, whose landmark translation shaped the film’s more human-centred reading of Homer, came away unconvinced by where Nolan took it. But underneath the spectacle, the film keeps returning to the same thread it opened with: what people owe each other, in a world where the old rules no longer hold. That’s the loom this cinema is woven on, whether or not the pattern ever completes.