Nolan's Odyssey is a rocking summer adventure film

Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' has already grossed over $727 million this year at the box office. The story of King Odysseus and his epic deeds during the Trojan War and the legendary adventures he had making it back home were immortalized by the Greek poet Homer. Nolan, while leaving the cyclops, the sirens, and other mythical elements to the Odyssey is a modern take by Nolan on the epic poem.

Most of us read Homer's epics – the Iliad (about the Trojan War between Greece and Troy) and the Odyssey (about Odysseus's difficulties returning from that war) in school. Hopefully the schools have not been so dumbed down by 'Leave No Child Behind' and the Common Core curriculum that this is still no longer required reading today.

Nolan is the latest Hollywood producer to revisits the Bronze Age and the legendary King of Ithaca. The events in the Odyssey are set in Mycenean Greece during the bronze age. This was believed to be entirely myth until archeologists in the 19th century discovered that Troy and Mycenean Greece were indeed real. Greece and most of the Bronze Age world went into a two century long dark age that saw civilizations across Europe, Asia, and Africa collapse with the arrival of 'the Sea Peoples' (maritime raiders and conquerors who were the first to master iron).

The Illiad and Odyssey are set very roughly in 12th Century B.C. - over a thousand years before Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ. There is no mention specifically of Greeks in the first five books of the Bible, but for Bible scholars Odysseus would have lived just after Moses in most traditionally accepted timelines.

Homer wrote his epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey four centuries later in the eighth Century B.C. after Odysseus, Hector, Achilles, Ajax, Priam, Paris, Helen, Penelope, and Agamemnon had already passed into legend.

Matt Damon plays Odysseus. For those, who like me, thought that Damon was a little too small and too soft to play the legendary Greek warrior, he spent a massive amount of time building up his body to be a credible Odysseus and he pulls it off.

Odysseus and his crew battle monsters, the cyclops, storms, a witch, and bigger better equipped soldiers as they travel from island to island in the Mediterranean trying to get home.

Ann Hathaway plays Queen Penelope – who is back home in Ithaca wanting Odysseus to come home. Meanwhile the palace has become full of suitors who are demanding that she declare the lost Odysseus dead and marry one of them – making them king before Odysseus's son reaches adulthood and seizes the throne himself.

Charlize Theron plays the immortal sea nymph Calypso who drugs Odysseus to have the hero forget so she can enjoy his company. The movie dramatically changes this character from a possessive, jealous immortal lover who is holding Odysseus prisoner to a lover/therapist who is trying to help Odysseus recover his memories.

The movie also changed Odysseus into a more introspective hero who is suffering from PTSD and blames himself for atrocities the Greeks committed in the sack of Troy. The movie moralizes and takes an anti-war view – something that is difficult to find in Homer's original writing. The glorification of combat and the Greeks' glorious ancestors is why we remember these characters in the first place – and the movie does have a lot of all kinds of combat along with long segments where they are on the boat.

Nolan does take some artistic liberties with the casting.

The ancient Greeks were Caucasians (White). Admittedly the legendary Mycenean Age is so far back in time that we cannot be entirely certain that is true of the Greeks of that era – largely only known by the Odyssey and the Iliad and archeology. Did Mycenean Greeks looked entirely like their classical ancient Greek descendants of the better known historical age that gave us Leonidas, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Themistocles, Phillip of Macedon and Alexander during the seven centuries before Christ? We cannot really know.

A Black actress, Lupita Nyong'o, plays Helen (the wife of King Menelaus) – whose abduction by Prince Paris of Troy was the incident that sparked the war between the Greeks. She also plays her twin sister who is married to Agammennon. There are Black actors among Odysseus's crew and Black suitors at the Ithaca Court. The Bronze Age Greeks were a maritime people so the multi-racial complexion of the cast (which reflects our own time more than our classical view of the Greeks) is not entirely impossible.

On the other hand, Nolan may have cast the film like he did to pay homage to the role that this story has played in our culture. There are books which were written centuries before the Trojan War and Homer's epic retelling, but most of these – like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses' battle with the Hittites at Megiddo – were lost to us for centuries until modern times when archeologists learned how to translate hieroglyphics and cuneiform. Even the Old Testament doesn't exist in its current form that far back. Homer was a contemporary of the Kings of Israel and Judah, and it is very likely that those courts would have been aware of his work.

Nolan did cast a transman as a Greek soldier – the first person who is killed in the movie. Elliot Paige is a woman who transitioned to a man. He/she just looks like a short effeminate man. That was nod to political wokeness angered some conservatives.

Sedaya's portrayal of the goddess Athena was the most perplexing casting choice for much of the film. Not just because she – a biracial actress - looks nothing like surviving representations of Athena; but because her character acts little like we would expect the Greek Goddess of War to behave. The ending when Odysseus flashes back to the sacking of Athena's temple in Troy explains all of this and both the character and the casting then makes a lot more sense in Nolan's retelling.

Hector, Achilles, Priam, Menelaus, Paris, Ajax, and Odysseus have been part of literate people's vocabulary for the last three millenniums. These tales were songs and stories told around camp fires and hearths long before Homer wrote his masterwork. Homer blended legendary Greek ancestors like Menelaus and Odysseus with pagan religion and myths, creating arguably the first two masterworks of literature in the world that were passed down to us. The Iliad and Odyssey have inspired song writers, poets, playwrights, artists, and generations of movie makers of all races for centuries. In that regard this is the story of all humanity where something of their legacy has passed down to us so it is perhaps appropriate that the cast looks more like modern society than it does Bronze Age Greeks – or at least our belief of what Bronze Age Greeks looked like.

This is not an not entirely faithful retelling of Homer's masterwork, but it is the best film of 2026 (thus far) and is worthy of Oscar consideration.

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