Review: How Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ aims to prove audiences still have an appetite for true epics

For years, Hollywood has insisted audiences don’t want epics anymore.

Sure, studios still spend hundreds of millions of dollars on superheroes, dinosaurs and disaster movies. But “big” isn’t the same as “epic.”

There’s a difference. A spectacle leaves you talking about what you saw. An epic leaves you thinking about what it meant.

One is built on special effects. The other is built on story.

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” reminded me that we’ve never stopped loving epics. Hollywood has simply stopped making them.

Nolan’s biggest swing yet

Adapting Homer’s epic was already an enormous challenge. It’s one of the oldest surviving stories in history, and one that’s been retold countless times in books, movies and on television.

Leave it to Christopher Nolan to make the assignment even harder.

Rather than telling Odysseus’ journey in a straight line, Nolan fractures the timeline, weaving together different points in the hero’s 20-year journey home after the Trojan War. It’s a storytelling device Nolan fans will recognize, but here it feels less like a gimmick and more like a way of slowly revealing the emotional cost of the voyage.

The scale is breathtaking: Massive practical sets, sweeping landscapes, enormous battle sequences, and unforgettable encounters with monsters and gods combine to create a movie that genuinely feels epic.

Not just expensive — epic.

Hollywood still makes plenty of big movies. It rarely makes movies that feel this monumental.

Spectacle with a purpose

One of the film industry’s biggest misconceptions is that bigger automatically means better. It doesn’t.

A massive battle means very little if we don’t care who’s fighting.

A giant monster is only memorable if it stands in the way of something that matters.

That’s where “The Odyssey” succeeds. Every island, every storm and every impossible obstacle exists for one reason: to keep a man from getting home.

That’s the difference between spectacle and an epic. Spectacle asks: “How can we amaze the audience?” Epic asks: “Why does this journey matter?”

Nolan delivers both.

The visual spectacle isn’t there simply to impress us. It reflects the emotional and physical distance Odysseus must overcome. Every breathtaking sequence pushes the story forward rather than interrupting it.

Too often, modern blockbusters confuse size with significance. “The Odyssey” understands that the biggest moments only matter because they’re attached to one of the simplest and most universal stories ever told: a man trying to get home to the people he loves.

The return of the epic

For years, conventional Hollywood wisdom has suggested audiences have shorter attention spans and little patience for slower, more deliberate storytelling.

I’m not convinced that’s true. I think audiences have simply been waiting for someone to make an epic worth investing in.

“The Odyssey” asks a lot of its audience. It runs nearly three hours. It isn’t interested in racing from one action sequence to the next. It takes its time introducing characters, building relationships and allowing moments to breathe.

The patience it requires from its audience won’t work for everyone. There were stretches where I found myself wishing Nolan had tightened the pace, particularly early in the film. But epics aren’t meant to feel rushed; they’re journeys — and when the destination finally arrives, the payoff feels earned.

Matt Damon delivers one of the strongest performances of his career, carrying both the physical toll of war and the emotional burden of a man desperate to find his way home. Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway provide the emotional anchors that keep the story grounded even as gods and monsters surround them.

By the time the credits rolled, I wasn’t just impressed by what Nolan had put on the screen. I was encouraged that a filmmaker was still willing to ask this much of an audience.

Final thoughts

When my wife asked if I loved “The Odyssey,” I honestly didn’t know how to answer. That’s not because I disliked it, but because I wasn’t finished thinking about it.

Over the next few days, scenes kept replaying in my mind, performances grew richer, and moments that felt merely impressive at first revealed deeper emotional weight the more I reflected on them.

That process has become surprisingly rare.

Too many movies are designed to deliver an instant rush before quickly fading from memory. “The Odyssey” chooses a different path.

I still wouldn’t rank it alongside my favorite Christopher Nolan films like “Interstellar” or “Inception.” Still, the longer I sit with it, the more I appreciate what he accomplished here in telling a story everyone knows in such a captivating way

Maybe that’s exactly what great epics are supposed to do.

They’re not simply meant to entertain us for an evening; they’re meant to stay with us long after the journey ends.

“The Odyssey” is rated R for violence and some language.

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