The Odyssey: A Homecoming Worth the Wait

Last week I finally watched Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and I went in with zero knowledge of the Homer poem it is based on. No prior reading, no refresher, nothing. I wanted to see if the film could stand on its own for someone who has never touched the source material, and for the most part, it does. This is my honest, spoiler light take on the movie, mixed with a few thoughts I picked up after reading what other critics had to say once I got home.

Going in blind

I think there is something valuable about walking into a film this ambitious without the homework. The Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in Western literature, and Nolan is famous for restructuring timelines, so I was a little worried I would get lost. I did not. The film lays out Odysseus trying to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, while his wife Penelope and son Telemachus hold off a house full of suitors who assume he is dead. The past and present threads weave together the way Nolan usually does it, but the emotional throughline never got muddy for me, even without knowing the poem. If you are on the fence about watching this without reading the book first, do not let that stop you. 

The cast was on point

I have to start with the performances, because this is genuinely one of the more stacked casts I have seen in a single movie in years.

Robert Pattinson plays Antinous, the most aggressive and calculating of Penelope's suitors, and he was excellent. I have not really watched him in anything since the Twilight days, and seeing him now made me realize how much range he has developed since then. He plays Antinous as smooth and charming on the surface with something rotten underneath, and every scene he is in, you can feel the tension. Watching this made me want to go back and catch up on what he has done in between, because clearly I have missed a lot.

Matt Damon was, as usual, outstanding. He carries the physical and emotional weight of Odysseus without ever overplaying it. There is a tiredness in his performance, the kind that comes from a man who has been at war and lost far too much on the way home, and Damon sells that completely. This is apparently his third film with Nolan after Interstellar and Oppenheimer, but his first time as the lead, and it shows that the trust between director and actor has paid off.

Anne Hathaway also did justice to her role as Penelope. She plays the character with a steadiness that never tips into passive waiting. There is a quiet fury underneath her patience, and you can tell she is holding a household together through sheer will while everyone around her assumes the worst. I read afterward that she wanted to bring out that anger and drive rather than just make Penelope a symbol of loyalty, and I think that comes through clearly on screen.

I wish I could have seen more of Zendaya and Elliot Page. Zendaya plays Athena, the goddess who guides and protects Odysseus through his journey, and every time she showed up the film gained a different energy. Elliot Page has a smaller supporting role as well, and again, I just wanted more screen time from both of them. Their parts felt like they were building toward something bigger that got left on the cutting room floor.

Now, about Tom Holland. After seeing him swing around as Spider-Man for years, I think he could have done a slightly better job here as Telemachus. To be fair, this is a very different kind of role than what he is known for, and he clearly is a talented actor who has done great work in Spider-Man and elsewhere. Maybe Nolan wanted to show a different, more restrained side of him on purpose, and if that was the goal, I understand the choice even if it did not fully land for me personally. Interestingly, when I looked into what other critics thought, several of them singled out Holland's performance as a genuine step forward for him as a dramatic actor, so this might just be a case of my own expectations from his blockbuster work getting in the way. It is worth going in with an open mind here rather than expecting Peter Parker energy.

One moment that stuck with me was seeing Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland play mother and son. They genuinely looked like they belonged in the same family, both in how they carried themselves and in smaller physical mannerisms. It is a small thing, but casting that actually reads as believable family resemblance makes a big difference in a film built around a household waiting for its patriarch to return.

Filming on real locations

One of the things that elevated this movie for me was the real location shooting. Nolan filmed across places like Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland, and the United States, and it shows in every frame. Nothing about this movie feels like it was built entirely on a soundstage or finished off with obvious green screen work. The coastlines, the caves, the palace interiors, all of it has weight and texture that computer generated environments usually cannot replicate. It grounds a story about gods and monsters in something that still feels tactile and real, which is a difficult balance to strike.

I could not catch it in IMAX during opening week, and I regret that a little, because Nolan reportedly shot the entire film using IMAX cameras for the first time in his career. From what I have read, that format was built specifically to pull audiences deeper into the classic story, so I am hoping to catch a rerelease or a return engagement next month to see it the way it was intended.

The score and the craft behind the camera

I do not usually pay close attention to a film score on a first watch, but this one was hard to ignore. Ludwig Goransson handles the music, and it shifts between something ancient and something almost modern depending on the scene, without ever feeling out of place. During the sea voyage sequences it swells in a way that makes the ocean feel like its own character, dangerous and indifferent to the people caught in it. During the quieter Ithaca scenes it pulls back almost entirely, letting the silence do the work while Penelope and Telemachus wait.

The cinematography deserves a mention too. Hoyte van Hoytema, who has shot several of Nolan's recent films, captures these locations in a way that makes the scale of the journey feel real rather than exaggerated. Wide shots of cliffs and open water are used sparingly enough that they still hit hard when they show up, instead of becoming wallpaper the way some effects heavy blockbusters tend to do.

A story that still feels relevant

What surprised me most, given that I walked in without reading the poem, is how contemporary some of the themes felt. The suitors overstaying their welcome in someone else's home, a family trying to hold itself together during an extended absence, a man trying to reconcile who he was before the war with who he has become after it. None of that needed ancient context to land emotionally. I think that is part of why Nolan chose this story to adapt in the first place, since the bones of it translate across thousands of years without much effort.

There is also a thread running through the film about hospitality and how a household treats outsiders, which apparently comes from a real concept in the original poem tied to Greek customs around guests. I did not know that going in, but the film makes the stakes of violating that code clear enough on its own, mostly through how obviously entitled and disrespectful the suitors behave toward Penelope's home.

Never boring, even at that runtime

Epic length films can drag, especially ones adapting centuries old material, but this one never lost me. Every act had a clear purpose, whether it was following Odysseus through his trials at sea or watching the pressure build back home in Ithaca. The editing keeps things moving without rushing the emotional beats, which is a tough thing to pull off in a film this large in scope.

What other reviews pointed out

After watching, I went and read a handful of other reviews just to see how my reactions lined up with critics who cover film for a living, and there was a decent amount of overlap.

A few outlets highlighted Robert Pattinson's performance specifically, noting that he brings both charm and menace to Antinous in a way that makes him hard to look away from, which matches exactly what I felt watching him on screen. Some critics also pointed to a striking transformation sequence involving the sorceress Circe, played by Samantha Morton, as one of the standout moments of the film, something I had not focused on as much in my own viewing but agree was memorable in hindsight.

NPR's review described the film as thrilling but uneven, framing it as something of a homecoming for Nolan himself, and pointing out how the film blends fantasy with a grounded skepticism that has shown up across his other work. That tracks with how the movie felt to me too. It never fully commits to pure myth or pure realism, and instead sits in between, which is part of what makes the real location shooting matter so much.

Roger Ebert's site also praised how the film handles its ensemble, noting that Nolan casts performers in ways that quietly respect who they are as people rather than just plugging them into archetypes, and it specifically called out how naturally Elliot Page fits into a warrior role. Reading that made me appreciate what little screen time Page did get even more, and reinforced my own wish that the part had been bigger.

Final thoughts

Overall, The Odyssey is a film that rewards you whether you know the source poem or not. The cast mostly delivers, the world feels lived in thanks to real locations, and the pacing kept me engaged from start to finish. My only real gripes are wanting more time with Zendaya and Elliot Page, and feeling like Tom Holland's performance did not hit quite as hard as everyone else around him, even though I recognize that may have been a deliberate choice on Nolan's part. I am planning to watch it again in IMAX next month, and I have a feeling that experience alone might change how I feel about a few of these smaller complaints.

If you have not seen it yet, go in without doing the reading first. It holds up just fine on its own.