What a journey it has been waiting for the release of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” A lot of public criticism and discourse surrounding the film’s casting, costumes, and dialogue had already been circulating based on the trailers before the movie’s mid-July release. In an ironic classic case of life imitating art, many online “battles” were sparked over Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy. Whether you agree with the casting or not, Helen’s going to start a war.
But I do think this brings up a great topic surrounding context. What is the context of the movie’s setting? One of my favorite adaptations of Homer’s Odyssey is 2000’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” by the Coen Brothers. Set in Mississippi during the Great Depression, no one questions the creative choices in the film because it is true to the era in which it takes place.
Nolan’s film is set in Ancient Greece, so there is a natural inclination for the audience to expect that many of the cast will at least look Greek and have some ancient-sounding dialogue. That is not the case in this movie. The context is that this is Christopher Nolan’s movie, and it is told through his eyes and creative direction.
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has a more diverse cast with some of today’s most bankable talent who are likely to clean up during award season and uses modern dialogue. Honestly, the casting and dialogue choices didn’t bother me for most of the movie. Some dialogue choices were noticeable and took me out of the story.
I would ask anyone criticizing others who are put off by these choices to consider the same criticism if there were movie adaptations of Journey to the West or Arabian Nights set in their original cultural and chronological contexts with casts and dialogue that did not seem to represent the period. Consider further what the discourse would be if the recent live-action “Moana” movie did not have a cast of Polynesian-looking people on the Island of Motunui.
RELATED: ‘Moana’ (2026) Review: Worth the voyage?
Context is key when understanding the story of Salvation. Few contend that we don’t have to read the Old Testament because we live in the New. However, if you ignore the Old Testament, then you miss why God the Son needed to incarnate on Earth to live, suffer, die, and resurrect for the sake of our souls.
Those who try to find ways to criticize Christians for not adhering to the dietary laws of the Israelites miss the context of Mark 7:18-19, where Jesus, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17), says, “‘Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.)”
As St. Augustine said, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.”
Putting all of that aside, I have to contend that the biggest controversy in the casting of “The Odyssey” is that I, your humble reviewer, did not receive one phone call about being cast. Christopher Nolan must not have known that I had what my mother calls the performance of my generation as a Greek Wedding Guest in one episode of Freeform’s “Chasing Life.” The three seconds I had on screen should have been enough to inspire a casting of me as a Greek soldier in the movie, but such is my lot in life. Chris, I know you are reading this. You know how to reach me for the next one.
Let’s get into the movie itself. One big surprise is that the major themes intentionally surround faith. The movie appears to be made for modern audiences, but the themes of honoring the divine law, understanding how the divine speaks, and controlling your fate versus following the divine are prevalent throughout the film.
Honoring the divine law
The major hinge of the movie surrounds honoring Zeus’s law, also known as xenia. The golden rule of treating others as you want to be treated (Matthew 7:12) is literally quoted in the movie with the addition that a stranger may be a god in disguise. Xenia is an ancient tradition of hospitality laws that set rules for both the host and the guest. In the movie, it is one of the highest laws that has serious consequences if broken, and many break it.
The biggest violation, which haunts Odysseus (Matt Damon) throughout the film, is the Trojan horse. It becomes a gift that enables the Greeks to invade Troy and assault the city. Though the trickery results in a victory for Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) and the Greeks, it is the crux of why Odysseus and his men are being punished on their journey home and a source of Odysseus’s reluctance to come home. To the latter point, it is revealed that Odysseus did not want to see what Ithaca had become because he had violated Zeus’s law by devising the plan for the Trojan horse. His regret over the devastation that occurred in the invasion of Troy is palpable.
The other major violation of Zeus’s law comes with Antinous (Robert Pattinson) and the suitors taking advantage of Telemachus (Tom Holland) and Penelope’s (Anne Hathaway) hospitality. Penelope remains faithful to Odysseus and reinforces the importance of Zeus’s law to Telemachus, as it was a rule that his father stressed as an important custom for Ithaca.
The suitors’ consequences come into fruition in the next point.
Controlling your own fate versus following God
In the world of the Odyssey, you are blessed or cursed by the fate the gods decide for you. No matter how hard Odysseus tries to defy the gods and save his men, he fails. He must suffer watching the fate of his men as punishment for violating Zeus’s law.
Luckily for us, our God is as merciful as He is just. Despite what Calvinists believe, our fate is not predestined. No matter how much we defy (sin against) God, He still gives us the free will to repent sincerely and be forgiven.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance for all sinful members of his Church: above all for those who, since Baptism, have fallen into grave sin, and have thus lost their baptismal grace and wounded ecclesial communion. It is to them that the sacrament of Penance offers a new possibility to convert and to recover the grace of justification. The Fathers of the Church present this sacrament as “the second plank [of salvation] after the shipwreck which is the loss of grace.”[1] (1446)
What is interesting about Odysseus in Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is that he is given the opportunity for repentance. Calypso (Charlize Theron) helps him build a raft to float on in the open sea and give up control of his fate to the gods. They choose to let him live, and he arrives on the shores of Ithaca.
This leads to the consequences of the suitors breaking Zeus’s law. Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus, with the help of Telemachus and Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), completes the challenge of stringing his bow and shooting an arrow through a row of axe heads. This scene gave me chills. As Odysseus completes the challenge, thunder cracks. Zeus is on his side, permitting him to punish the suitors for breaking Zeus’s law.
Click here for a spoiler based on specific changes of the story for the movie.
At the end of Homer’s poem, Odysseus takes his place as ruler of Ithaca. At the end of Christopher Nolan’s movie, Odysseus installs Telemachus as king and then sails into the sunset with Penelope. The reason for going into this exile is to honor the dead. The scene seems to depict a husband and wife sailing toward Paradise after suffering their own purgatories.
How does God speak?
There is an exchange between Odysseus and Athena (Zendaya) in which he asks why the gods don’t speak in ways that humans understand. Athena asks him if men understand elements like pain, storms, and other natural occurrences.
This exchange invites one to think about how God speaks to us in prayer. Many struggle with prayer primarily because they think God will answer in the same way that Zeus or Poseidon speak in dramatic ways through lightning and storms. However, God chooses to speak to us in subtle ways, like in 1 Kings 19:11-12. In this passage, Elijah travels to Mount Horeb. He does not hear God in the violent wind, an earthquake, or a fire. After all this occurs, he hears God in a whisper.
We tend to do the talking in prayer or give in to distractions and do not leave room to hear God in the silence.
Meditating on the Bible, the Catechism, church documents, the lives of the saints, art, or creation can help frame our mind for when we enter into a more contemplative time where we listen to what God wants to tell us. Often, it is through thoughts that come with a supernatural sense of peace and clarity. It is always good to talk about these thoughts with a priest or spiritual advisor.
Where the movie worked
Cinematically, “The Odyssey” is stunning. It comes packed with a plethora of iconic moments, the kind that seem to be lost in a lot of movies of the digital age. The practical effects mixed with a little CGI of the Cyclops, the giant Laestrygonians, and Circe (Samantha Morton) turning the men into pigs are incredible (albeit nightmare-inducing). This movie definitely delivered on the scale it set out to achieve.
The score stood out as well. Though I think the score of “Oppenheimer” was a bit better, composer Ludwig Göransson delivered in the moments where it counted and enhanced the emotions of the scenes.
Many of the performances stood out as well. Matt Damon’s portrayal of Odysseus was near perfect (one moment will be described in the next section). Other standouts include Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, Jon Bernthal, Himesh Patel as Eucrylochus (Odysseus’s second-in-command), and Samantha Morton. Tom Holland was generally great, but did slip into his Peter Parker American accent now and again.
RELATED | Young Washington Review: Does failure define us?
A lot was cut from Homer’s poem, but the changes made sense for what Nolan was trying to achieve in keeping a giant story to 2 hours and 52 minutes. For example, Odysseus’s sexual encounters with Circe and Calypso were cut from the movie, but that made Odysseus come out better as a husband trying to get home to his wife.
In fact, there is only a lead-up to a sex scene between the married Odysseus and Penelope, but the scene cuts away before any nudity is shown. In fact, the only nudity in the film is non-sexual in nature. There are only seconds of a man’s naked buttocks shown on screen after Odysseus shoots him with an arrow, believing the man to be a deer because of a curse Circe has put on the man.
Where it fell short
Elliot Page simply did not work as Sinon. If Christopher Nolan wanted to give his friend a role in the film, fine. However, Page was not believable as a Greek soldier, especially when Sinon speaks in Hades.
The dialogue in general was fine, but there were certain moments where it was out of tune and took me out of the film a bit.
There is little cursing in the film: about 3 f-words; a few uses of the s-word; one use of “bastard.” Except for the last curse mentioned, the rest of the cursing felt out of place. The only time Matt Damon’s performance was off was when he cursed, saying, “Let’s get off this f***ing island.” The f-word he used sounded straight out of Boston and out of step with the rest of his portrayal. Cursing doesn’t always turn me off to a movie. To take another Matt Damon movie, cursing makes sense in “Good Will Hunting” where the plot mostly takes place in South Boston.
Benny Safdie’s dialogue in Hades was also out of place. Agamemnon is shown to be this imposing, larger-than-life ruler. Agamemnon standing at the opening of the Trojan gates was another chilling moment. His only dialogue comes at Hades, and it did not have the same gravitas as his physicality displayed in the rest of the film.
One minor area of critique is that the close-ups of some characters felt out-of-focus in a way not intentional, but derived from difficulty in focusing the IMAX characters. For a film that is otherwise breathtakingly cinematic, these little errors stood out.
Click here for a spoiler based on specific changes of the story for the movie.
It is revealed in Hades that Sinon did not know about the men hiding in the Trojan horse. This is a change from Virgil’s Aeneid (Sinon does not appear in the Iliad or the Odyssey), where Sinon was not only in on the deception, but also is the one who convinced the Trojans to bring the horse into the city. This change is made to add to Odysseus’s regret because Sinon is killed in the movie version, but it really is not needed because Odysseus is already in despair over violating Zeus’s law and causing devastation to the city of Troy.
The only exclusion I missed most was the “Nobody” exchange between Odysseus and the cyclops Polyphemus. In the myth, Odysseus says his name is “Nobody” before he and his men blind Polyphemus while the cyclops is in a drunken sleep. This causes the other Cyclopes to think a divine power is at work when Polyphemus says nobody hurt him. The scene with Polyphemus is still haunting, and the resulting storm at sea still happens because he is Poseidon’s son.
Final Thoughts
At the end of a long movie and a long review, Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is essentially about a man trying to get home to his wife and child while dealing with the immensity of his actions and breaking of the highest law of his civilization. What appears to be a movie that checks all of the current award season boxes ends up teaching those who are willing to watch it that humbling yourself before a higher power matters.
“The Odyssey” is a movie made for IMAX 70mm theaters. There are only 41 in the world. My IMAX digital experience did not seem to affect the quality of the experience. If you want to see the movie, I recommend seeing it in theaters. I am curious about how its viewing will translate to smaller screens.
[1] Tertullian, De Paenit. 4, 2: PL 1, 1343; cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1542.
