The Odyssey will take audiences by storm
Wednesday, July 15, 2026, 8:07 PM
The Odyssey famously begins “Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many talents,” or words to that effect, depending on your preferred translation. There is an irony Homer himself might have enjoyed in the fate of his poem — a work about the malleability of truth, fame and reputation — now translated into a Christopher Nolan film that stands accused of being woke, excessively revisionist and rather too fond of its own casting choices.
All of which came as a surprise to those of us who had Sir Christopher down as a small-c conservative — a filmmaker whose work tends to affirm the sanctity of the nuclear family and, in at least one Batman picture, takes a dim view of insurgency. But Elon Musk and many others have made their objections known on X and elsewhere, and their views, however vociferously expressed, count in the field of public opinion.
Personally, as someone who has always enjoyed Nolan’s work, I had been looking forward to The Odyssey more than any other film this year — and yet the trailers gave me pause too. Why were British actors delivering Homer in American accents? What was with all the talk of “dad”?
Reader, I can report that the doubts survive roughly four minutes of the finished picture. From its opening frames — a wine-dark sea that genuinely feels wine-dark, photographed on large-format film and projected at a scale that makes the theater seem to breathe — the movie simply takes the arguments away from its critics.
The much-litigated casting turns out to be the point rather than the provocation. This is a story about stories — who gets to tell them, and what telling does to the teller — and the ensemble plays it with a conviction that makes the discourse feel very small and very far away.
It is the rare blockbuster that treats its audience as adults and its source as a living thing rather than a relic.
There will be quibbles. The middle hour compresses episodes that scholars have spent careers upon, and one significant character is reduced to little more than a memory. But these are the complaints of a viewer who has already surrendered.
Nolan has made the case, once again, that the biggest canvas in popular art can hold the oldest material we have. Audiences, I suspect, will not need persuading. The storm is coming, and it is well worth sailing into.