The Odyssey

The great director Christopher Nolan has taken the challenge upon himself to create the definitive…or at least his version of The Odyssey. Will lightning strike twice after the brilliant Oppenheimer? Well, you know what they say about lightning striking twice.

Ten years after the Trojan War ended, Odysseus (Matt Damon), the king of Ithaca, still hasn’t come home. The cunning strategist who dreamed up the Trojan Horse scheme to defeat Troy and won the war for the Greeks vanished on the voyage back, along with his entire fleet, and was written off as dead. But Odysseus is very much alive — stranded on a remote island with the mysterious Calypso (Charlize Theron) by his side. He struggles to remember the events that got him here, left with only a yearning for the family he thinks is waiting for his return.

Back home, things are falling apart. With the king presumed dead, a mob of suitors has moved into the palace, eating Odysseus’s food, drinking his wine, and demanding the hand of his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway). The queen keeps stalling, but the suitors — led by the smug and dashingly handsome Antinous (Robert Pattinson) — are losing patience with her. Her son Telemachus (Tom Holland) has very little memory of his father, as he was just an infant when Odysseus left for war.

“Ten years after the Trojan War ended, Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, still hasn’t come home.”

Refusing to accept that his father is dead, Telemachus leaves Ithaca against Penelope’s wishes to find answers and track down the war veterans who fought beside his father at Troy, including Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), the king of Sparta. Menelaus tells young Telemachus of Odysseus’s brave exploits and believes that Odysseus is still alive.

What I expected to be a grand tale of epic proportions from the great Christopher Nolan turned out to be a boring, pretentious, three-hour slog of Hollywood actors chewing the scenery. The cinematic storytelling was subpar at best, leaning into its own self-importance.

I’ll start with the editing, which was relentless. It felt like the three-hour final product was an attempt to squeeze in an eight-hour movie. There are very few stops and virtually no breaks in the story. Moments of quiet felt like they were edited out for time. Every transition was a quick cut, and stories felt like an adventurer’s highlight reels.