Trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is my #1 most anticipated film of 2026 and this trailer has got me revved up! Nolan’s trailers never reveal much, but still, it looks gooood.
I am still skeptical of Matt Damon at Odysseus. Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Circe, and Hoyte van Hoytema doing the cinematography tho! And how do you fit this entire story into 2.5 hours? (Unless Nolan’s gonna go for 3.5 to 4 hours?) Opens in theaters July 17, 2026.
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I saw the trailer in the cinema today. It was all but unwatchable: I thought there was something wrong with the projector because it was so dark and the colours were so muted. I was too busy wondering if I should go out and comment before the movie I went to see started so they could fix it, but I expect the soundtrack was also both inaudible and extremely loud.
Christopher Nolan is the poster child for rockstar syndrome in film directors: a person who once made some fine movies and now thinks he is a very god. Nobody will disabuse him of this because everybody he talks to is on his payroll and the loyal fans just want to hear another album of 30-minute guitar solos in movie form.
I mean Dunkirk was his last good movie: Tenet was 96 hours of Nolan saying 'look at me I am very clever', and Oppenheimer obviously fooled a bunch of people who don't know the history of the Manhattan project or anything about Oppenheimer: it was the pop-science string-theory book of movies. It was the second-best of the two movies that came out on its day of release, and not by a small margin
And now this: a Big Important movie about Big Important Greek mythology – the only mythology that matters to 'educated' white people – that will have no female characters that are even slightly well-written: Nolan knows that women exist in roughly the sense that the people who wrote madæval bestiaries knew lions existed. And it will be dark, and loud, and it will be hard to hear the dialogue, which will be pompous and important.
And the audience will cheer, and he will win prizes.
You’re right about Tenet. But Nolan is high variance and imo high expected value. His movies are unique (and not always in a good way). I heard a podcast in which he talks about his process: he doesn’t write first, he visualizes scenes first. Which explains a lot. I won’t argue with what you say about his female characters, but I am curious why you think, in historical terms, Oppenheimer was so bad. I loved Interstellar, and I, perhaps generously, and notwithstanding the trailer, imagine it connects to the “coming home” ideas of that film.
Well, the sea is wine dark. I remain interested. Hope it doesn't turn into one noisy battle scene after another (e.g. LOTR trilogy).
I can't get past the familiar faces. I imagine CN needs big name stars in order to get big money to make his big film--or some similar kind of calculation. I've watched some of those faces for nearly 25 years and I can not not see *them* and their previous roles & their public appearances. Does this happen to every movie-goer at a certain age? Did people tire of seeing Katherine Hepburn? Or Mickey Rooney? One of my 2026 commitments is to limit streaming at home and see movies/films in the East Bay's few remaining movie theaters--but I can't imagine this is going to be one of them.
I feel the same way about the familiar faces. Matt Damon to me will always be a stranded astronaut and Anne Hathaway the Princess of Genovia. Also, the helmets look stupid.
I’m nervous about it, but I don’t know if that’s because I deeply love the messy sprawl of The Odyssey and its nested narratives or that it’s too much for anyone to adapt into a watchable film.
If ever there was a story intended for your mind to create the imagery and characters, The Odyssey is it…
I think my #1 most anticipated film of 2026 is Project Hail Mary 🥹
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