The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan, 2026)

[John Cope]

For such a foundational work of story telling, has there ever been a great film adaptation of The Odyssey?

I've been watching as many of these adaptations as I could find over the last year and all of them have at least had some merit, including the Konchalovsky miniseries version. Sticking only to the feature films I would have to say that Nostos is indeed the greatest of them all but that is in large part because of the very particular approach it takes of elision and evocation; an unorthodox approach but with genuinely poetic techniques that net great results and approximate best the actual poetry itself. I keep hoping that the renewed attention courtesy of the Nolan may finally get it the kind of video release it deserves. The 1968 Franco Rossi Odyssey, meanwhile, perhaps best captures the expansive nature of the work though this again is a miniseries rather than a film. I still have yet to see the longest and most exhaustive adaptation (the 2013 Odysseus), yet another miniseries treatment, because I haven't been able to find it anywhere with subs.

[black&huge]

very, very few public figures can stop me from supporting a movie theatrically these days but the newest trailer/spot whatever you wanna call it reveals Travis Scott has a role. I don't care to what capacity that guy is an absolute piece of garbage so I'll be watching this at home for free later this year. What is wrong with movie casting these days.

[Noiretirc]

But you'll still watch it?

(Edit: This thread delivers!)

[Brian C]

Well, see, I'm just not sure what to do now. On the one hand, I want to stick it to the online racists who are apparently upset that there are black people in this movie at all. But on the other, I'm utterly horrified at the thought of watching a movie with bad people in it. Not only Scott, but a Safdie brother! Although admittedly, I don't remember offhand if it's the good one or the bad one. I might have to watch it with my hand over my eyes but peeping through my fingers, like a kid with his parents watching a movie with some grownup scenes.

[Noiretirc]

"black@huge" was a bit of a warning sign for me. 900ish posts over 9 years? That's....Trumpian.

[jbeall]

For such a foundational work of story telling, has there ever been a great film adaptation of The Odyssey?

I'm not sure it qualifies as "great," but I thought The Return (Uberto Pasolini, 2024) was very good. That said, a) it's only the second half of The Odyssey, beginning when Odysseus washes up on Ithaca (instead of being delivered by the Phaeacians), b) it's definitely operating in a realist mode, so no gods or (mythological) monsters, c) it departs from the source material in other ways, too (no spoilers here).

Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche are absolutely terrific, and Marwan Kenzari is excellent as Antinous.

Also, responding to a few comments upthread, I'll note that there are Black actors in the film in supporting roles. I assume no one complained because the film was so under-the-radar.

[domino harvey]

Get ready for a fun year, internet racists are convinced Lupita Nyong’o is playing Helen of Troy (as far as I know her role hasn’t been confirmed) and they’re handling it as well as you’d expect

[Never Cursed]

Elon Musk apparently spent some of his time complaining about this very issue yesterday - an interesting thing to spend time on, given what was in the news about him that same day

[Mr Sausage]

I thought this would've happened sooner with Zendaya being Athena and other colourblind casting choices.

[wattsup32]

Get ready for a fun year, internet racists are convinced Lupita Nyong’o is playing Helen of Troy (as far as I know her role hasn’t been confirmed) and they’re handling it as well as you’d expect

My understanding of Helen of Troy's importance wasn't so much that she was "of Troy" and more that she was so beautiful that she was worth starting a war for. If we can't broadly agree as a society that Lupita Nyong'o is among the actors who should be considered, why bother being a society?

Of course, we are getting similar complaints from most would call the "other side" about Odessa A'Zion being cast in Deep Cuts.

[Mr Sausage]

Helen is barely even in The Odyssey. Telemachus sees her briefly in Sparta and she recounts a story of investigating the Trojan horse. Can’t imagine her having much of a role in Nolan’s film unless he’s including lots of flashbacks to The Iliad, which, admittedly, is a real possibility.

[Never Cursed]

The

Spoilers for this film's opening

Trojan Horse

sequence is apparently in this film, for what it's worth

[Mr Sausage]

Wonder who they’ve got to play Achilles. While some of the casting is intuitive (Tom Holland as Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Charlize Theron as Circe), some is unexpected, like Zendaya as Athena. She’s physically slight for a warrior god usually clothed in armour; I would’ve figured her for Nausikaa. Or Benny Safdie and John Bernthal as the Atreidai. Brian Cox and Brendan Gleeson in Troy are more how I pictured those two. But these unexpected choices are kinda exciting—makes me wonder what directions things’ll go.

[Walter Kurtz]

I just saw this trailer for the first time. The cinematography looks great. It looks like a really tough sea journey. I'm thinking Odysseus might not be in a great mood when he gets home.

[Matt]

I’m not sure if I’m ready for another grimly serious Nolan movie. Inception and Tenet have silly premises but pull them off by taking them seriously. And of course The Dark Knight has Heath Ledger’s terrifying but truly funny Joker. If this can manage to bring a little sword-and-sandal levity to the proceedings, it might be good. The lotus eaters and the Circe parts of the book could add some lightness, but I can also see Nolan skipping over those as inessential detours from the main action.

I’m rereading this now (and listening to the audiobook at bedtime as well), and I’d forgotten that most of the story is not about the famous obstacles Odysseus faces. He doesn’t even appear in his own story until Chapter 5 and he arrives in Ithaca in Chapter 13. Everything after (through Chapter 24) takes place in Ithaca. The lotus eaters bit is not even an scene but actually just one paragraph / stanza where Odysseus says “yeah, there were a bunch of guys eating lotus and they didn’t want to work, then they gave my guys lotus and they didn’t want to work either, but I forced my men back to work.” That’s it!

I know there are strong feelings about which translation to use, but I’m using the revised penguin Classics edition of E.V. Rieu’s prose translation. Readability was my main factor, not fidelity to the original verse setting. And I didn’t particularly like the translation choices in the newer Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn editions when I compared them with this edition.

[eerik]

New trailer

[Noiretirc]

Nearly everyone has 2026 hair.

I dunno. Trailers like this make me reach for the book and hug it.

[The Curious Sofa]

Is it any surprise that Nolan is bringing his utilitarian aesthetic of stripped-down design and earth tones to this? I don't think historical accuracy is his intention. He's going for a timeless or out-of-time quality, which is a valid approach for what is essentially fantasy.
I'm not sure if there has ever been a historically accurate film about ancient Greece. If there were, people would be shocked at how garish it might appear to modern eyes.

https://buntegoetter.liebieghaus.de/en/

[hearthesilence]

Funny to hear Nolan compare Homer to Marvel Comics because in college I asked a classics professor I knew very well whether he thought super hero comic books could be comparable to ancient mythology, something DC and Marvel themselves blatantly suggest by incorporating those stories into their "universes." He hesitated and without making eye contact, carefully said "there may be the potential for that...." and after leaving that thought hanging in the air, changed the subject.

[Mr Sausage]

I mean, Homer isn’t historically accurate! And I’m not even talking about all the fantasy elements. Its portrait of Bronze Age Greece is full of either anachronisms (a lot of its cultural descriptions are more true of Archaic Age Greece, ie. when the poem was composed) or outright invention (see: the way the battle are fought, with chariots ferrying heroes in and out of battle). M. I. Finley has a classic book exploring the specific cultural world created in the poems, The World of Odysseus, that’s worth a read to get a sense of how the poems really create their own universe.

So I could give a fuck if Nolan’s film is historically accurate. That’s not what the poems are doing anyway. An historically accurate version of the story would resemble The Odyssey about as much as The Northman resembles Hamlet.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Irrelevant to the trailer, but spoke with a couple technicians involved in the film who claim that the marketing of this being shot entirely on IMAX is incorrect and that portions of the film were shot in Vistavision.