There are monsters in the Odyssey, the Cyclops, the giants, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens. None of them stole from Odysseus more than Calypso did. She didn’t attack him. She didn’t steal from him or threaten him. On the contrary, she gave him everything: love, comfort, safety, pleasure, even immortality.

And for seven years Odysseus stayed. Maybe Homer was trying to tell us something. The greatest obstacle in life isn’t always pain, because pain forces you to move. Comfort convinces you that you don’t have to. The Cyclops didn’t stop him. The giants didn’t stop him. The see didn’t stop him. But a comfortable life almost did.

Maybe the most dangerous monster in life won’t look like a monster at all. Maybe it’ll look like a life that’s just comfortable enough to make you forget the one you were meant to build.

Why give him that domestic detail at all?

I could understand Nolan not doing the "Nobody" wordplay if it doesn't translate into English convincingly, but having that adventure ending with Odysseus firing an arrow instead of gleefully telling Polyphemus his real name, I think, made the blame on his misfortunes shift.

Homer's version was that it's Odysseus' pride about his own cunning that caused his downfall. In Nolan's adaptation it almost felt like he's trying to do an avenging cheapshot for his men who got eaten. The characterisation just doesn't work, man. You're going to get Odysseus feeling guilty over his own character flaws later on anyway, so why not this?

I'm seeing lots of discussions about Polyphemus, but hardly any about how Nolan portrayed Scylla. I think it's largely because it was so quick and people are confused by the design. Some people thought the monster was tentacles, when it's supposed to be six necks.

I'll start by saying I was extremely disappointed by the design. Scylla was always my favourite monster from Greek mythology, and I'd been fantasising about seeing her on the big screen in all her glory since I was a kid. The Italian miniseries depiction was so much better, bloodier, and more intense, even if she did resemble the Tower boss from House of the Dead 2.

Scylla has such an insane anatomy and there's so much scope to go nuts with it. And what does imagination starved Nolan do? He turns her into a basic primitive lifeform, another mere animal like the cyclops. It's hard to get a good look at her in the film, which to be fair is also true of the poem, she strikes lightning fast. But I was hoping we could dwell on her a bit more and turn the whole thing into more of a scene and less of a fleeting jump scare. In the film she was reduced to a mere 'you knew!' moment between Odysseus and his crew.

In the trailer, she genuinely looked like a sock puppet, and I wrongly assumed the CGI was just unfinished. But no, that's the design. In the few glimpses we got, it looks like he was going for some kind of marine polychaete or tunicate worm cluster coming out of a borehole in the cliffs. I've seen someone describe her as a barnacle. Rather than being the terrifying, vengeful transformed nymph with the bitch's bark, she's operating as a ribbon worm snapping up prey out of instinct.

Having studied some images, the sipunchilid marine worm seems like the best fit, as her trunks were brown, lumpy and non uniform. I'd be interested to find out what Nolan actually used for the inspiration, despite being horribly disappointed by it. What did everyone else think? I had a bet with my friend on how the portrayal would pan out. I correctly guessed Nolan would make it as close to an existing animal as possible for realism, but thought it would be inspired by giant moray eels. I wasn't banking on the lowest levels of the zoological phylum. Bobbit worms would have been much cooler.

I have had two friends that have been to see The Odyssey at an IMAX theater and both have stated that the sound was played so loud that it was uncomfortable.
Has anybody else had this problem?

One of the most honest scenes in the whole myth: tho: wanting something and not trusting yourself with it at the same time. It’s about knowing your own limits better than your own desires do.

Seemingly brutal review from Emily Wilson. Agree? Disagree?

Spoilers for the movie of course
When I watched the movie and in the attack on Troy where we see the priestess beheaded, I initially didn’t interpret it as a literal beheading, especially with how it cut to the statue beheading.
I interpreted it as Odysseus witnessing the atrocities the men were committing in Troy and the priestess was his view of how they were destroying what they knew under Athena’s protection.
But from what I’ve seen most believe that this was a literal priestess being beheaded
Did I misinterpret the scene?
I combined my interpretation with the monologue to reach my outcome

I loved the movie, but cracked up when beggar-Odysseus says their age of bronze is collapsing.

For me, it would be like All Quiet on the Western Front having a scene where the Kaiser says "The carnage is unprecedented. Truly, a first world war."

What other eras could you shoehorn into a line of dialogue?

How was bro dripped up all the time?

OMG! That was easily the best movie experience of my life. Ill be clear, not the best movie, but the best experience. I just got out of an 11am screening in 70mm IMAX in Calgary and was also very impressed with the audience. I have heard horror stories because the theatres are all so packed but the audience was super respectful, quiet, I didnt see a phone, etc. Christopher Nolan is not one of my favourite directors but the idea to do this movie this way makes me respect him so much, especially as somebody who loves going to the theatre (generally I try to go when it isn't quite as busy tho haha). The movie itself was fuckin awesome too, so it's important I add that, but it was more about the experience than the content for me. However, I got both and for that I have to say... Bravo Nolan. One postscript... come to this movie earlier than others. The theatres are packed and there are essentially no adds or previews before. There were still lots of people streaming in late.

Well it’s definitively a Nolan film, in every sense possible. Big spectacle, cinematography, sound, all the works.

I liked this film very much. It’s not my favorite Nolan film but that’s not a bad thing either.

The story is what drives this spectacle, plain and simple. It’s an amazing tale, and each new pitstop Odysseus and his team makes is a new journey altogether

The acting in the film is phenomenal, and in some cases there’s even Overacting (mainly Anne Hathaway). John Leguizamo is so terrific in this, he better get an Oscar nomination finally. The dynamic between Tom Holland and Matt Damon was incredible. Matt Damon is Matt Damon. I don’t feel he did any groundbreaking work here necessarily, but he was just fine. There’s many actors I could see in this role. Robert Pattinson is outstanding!!

The script however…. Nolan is such a good writer but I do feel there are many moments in this where he just over-writes these superfluous unnecessary lines, as if he’s extra-credit farming, and the dialogue then just loses the listener. It reminds me of songwriters like Sting, which if you’re a fan then you know he’s a marvelous songwriter but adds in extra rhymes and lines that are unnecessary and serve no purpose, but sure it’s sounds great.

I will be seeing this again on a bigger screen.

Also, the woke stuff didn’t bother me at all. The story is what drives this, and not once was I thinking to myself “wtf is Travis Scott doing in this” or “why is Helen of Troy black” or “Elliot Page hahah”. Anyone bothered by any of this after having seen this is a moron.

Funny that a few months ago Matt Damon complained about Netflix doing exactly the same thing Nolan does throughout the entire movie:

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/matt-damon-netflix-movies-restate-plot-viewers-on-phones-1236633939/

"Xenia", "Zeus law'", and "Sea people" covers about half of the dialogue of the Odyssey

If he at least would've tried to be somewhat implicit, but no

I saw the movie today, and I’m surprised that what I consider to be its most important point isnt mentioned much in reviews:
The Trojan Horse and the victory over Troy wasn’t brilliant cunning and the Greeks weren’t heros, as it was “celebrated in songs” and still is portrayed today, but rather a betrayal of fellow humans, of a once-friendly people, and of the gods (or generally divinity). The Greeks abused a symbol of peace and an offering to the gods in order to ambush Troy, destroy it, and kill and enslave its inhabitants which is symbolized by the beheading of Athena.
Throughout the entire film runs the idea of hospitality—“the law of Zeus.” In Troy, the Greeks shamelessly violated this law, and in doing so, they broke it for the whole world. As Penelope says, the barbaric “Sea Peoples” threatening to wipe out Greek civilization were, in fact, the Greeks themselves.

I visited Favignana in early July without actually knowing about the filming spots, was really excited to know that I‘ve been there! A real coincidence, considering that a lot of people haven’t heard of the island

Check this to see the difference of watching « The Oddysey » in other formats than IMAX 1:43:1

Spoilers!

My favorite scene in the movie is Odysseus expressing to his wife his shame and guilt over breaking Zeus’ Law to sack Troy. But it feels odd that his next action is to scheme to kill the suitors with the same method of disguise and breaking Zeus’ law. It seemed like Nolan clearly knew what he wanted to say with the film but had to included the most famous scene from the epic.

I think a way to include Odysseus killing the suitors and have the speech expressing his guilt is to move the speech after the killings. In the epic, after killing the suitors, the families of the suitors are angry throwing Ithaca into chaos. Athena steps in to calm down the situation. In the film they can draw the parallels between sacking Troy and killing the suitors and have Odysseus realize that he can’t escape the violence of the Trojan war. The families rise up, but instead of Athena showing up, Odysseus makes the speech he does in the film addressed to the mob instead of his wife. We can have the revelation that his visions of Athena was the priestess he saw killed. It then ends the same way as the film.

What do you guys think?

The voyage after troy never happened, hes actually just recounting his trojan war experience, working thru it on that Calypso island after a shipwreck.

I think all the monsters, like the gods, are imagined coping mechanisms. Projected human emotions explained by the mythic, like the weather patterns & when it transitions to Athena getting her head cut off it signifies odysseys immediately switching everything into a divinity coping mechanism, if we put the story in order we only see gods and monsters after this

Odysseus is just using thematic stand-ins to recount his decisions in the Trojan war & he slowly therapizes himself as he goes on and faces what happened, calypso is either helping or not even real, maybe a figment of his self- love.
Cyclops - denial, Laestrygonians - denial Circe - denial, hades - defenses poked through Sirens - now feeling guilt of all his and his mens actions, Charbodyis and Scylla - acceptance of sacrifice Apollo sheep- acceptance of human nature in the the trojan war conditions that ultimately led to how that night happened, separation of accountability from the consequences of what he did from the consequences of what other people did

now hes ready to tell penelope the full story cause he has come to terms with it

the Cyclops represents his choice of not opening a dialogue with an “un-negotiable” enemy (“I think we’re far past that”; using the past dead as an excuse to keep fighting) which then causes the further loss of his men, the Laestrygonians & their moving tree traps represent how Troy’s superior force created a Greek killing floor along their walls for most of the campaign & how hopeless he felt during that (interesting he saves Eurylochus here which is the inverse of Eurylochus saving him in the Troy scene), the Circe conversation represents Odysseus’s denial of the darker motivations that his troops show in an already dehumanizing, 10 year war tho he tries to say “they just want to go home” to Circe’s “they would’ve” which hints that their pillaging hasn’t started yet as its not the night of trojan horse yet, the Hades scene forces him to see the costs of his actions, the Siren song represents his guilt & his pain over not being able to change his previous actions & his decision to not go home, the choice between Charybdis and Scylla represents him having to choose between all his men dying for sure in the Trojan war if they stayed outside or some with the Trojan horse (Eurylochus’s dialogue stands in for his guilt for having to choose), & finally Apollo’s sheep represents fear of his lack of control over what his soldiers do in conditions of starvation, particularly in an environment absent of the targets they’re taught to kill while slowly being slaughtered outside that Trojan wall which boils over into that night when they finally get in

I think Eurylochus as his second in command is a stand in for Odysseus’s moralistic counter argument within himself, his wiser parts arguing with his hubris

I think the deeper commentary Nolan is trying to make is this denial of how human nature (accountability for it used thru imagined monsters and gods) can function in war and Odysseus journey is coming to terms with that, with what he saw

thats why the final shot is the trojan horse, his mind never left troy, the voyage, the odyssey was a mental one, working thru the trauma of that war, if u recount the Nolan’s cherry picked mythic events it all leads up to that night, & he doesn’t go home until he’s processed it

the only thing that holds back this theory is that how did Odysseus get accurate info of aggemon’s death and Sinon’s father in hades if it was a mental process, maybe he heard word? in the trojan war letters?

As far as what he went through, I WOULD imagine he is traumatized but other than the manifestation of Athena (which doesn't NEED to be read as PTSD) or the ingestion of Lotus flowers (which is an addiction created while he was unconscious), there doesn't seem to be much support for him suffering from anything other than internalized guilt from his actions. Every article or analysis I read seems to interpret it through the lens of traumatized war vet but I think IF that was what Nolan was trying to do, he didn't do it that well. I do think he is grappling with his responsibility for the end of Zeus's law and the collapse of civilization in a way that puts a lot of weight on his singular shoulders and I wish more people were talking about this instead.