Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey gets an all-new trailer: Here are 6 things we spotted
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If you’ve ever ended a night out later than planned, with nothing but a cigarette and 34 pence credit on an Oyster Card by means of assets to aid your journey, you might have experienced something not too far off a modern day Odyssey. From encountering all sorts of different people, narrowly avoiding disasters, and a series of diversions which leave you questioning if you’re ever going to make it back, Homer’s epic poem is more relatable than you might initially think.
Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the ancient classic, The Odyssey, has been gently building hype for well over a year now. With a stellar cast, his biggest ever budget, and the whole thing shot exclusively on IMAX 70 mm, it has got film critics and academics alike dusting off their vitriolic Mont Blancs, ready to reveiw. After teaser trailers and leaked first looks, we have another full trailer for the film. And there’s plenty to get your head around.
Here are six things we spotted:
There are plenty of creatures from Greek mythology
Anyone raised on a diet of Rick Riodan’s Percy Jackson series will be thrilled to see the big screen return of some of Greek mythology’s coolest creatures. From a cyclops to sirens, Matt Damon’s grizzly Odysseus will be facing some serious opponents as he attempts to return home. And thanks to the $250 million budget, these monsters look more marvellous than ever, guaranteed to make you have at least one poorly-concealed scare.
There's no glimpse of Zendaya yet
Whilst the cast is undoubtedly stacked (see next point), a lot of them are still in unnamed roles. One of the few who we do know is Zendaya who is playing Athena who has a pretty central role in The Odyssey. The god of wisdom and warfare intervenes throughout the poem, helping Odysseus return home. She first appears to Telemachus (Odysseus’ son) telling him to seek out news of his father.
However, apart from a leaked BTS picture from a couple of months ago, we don't have any new scenes of Zendaya as Athena. The only visions we have so far show her disguised as a mortal when she appears to Odysseus, with the actress notably absent from the trailer, leaving fans excited to see her take on the role.
The cast is ridiculously stacked
As mentioned, the cast is ridiculously stacked – and we’ve known this for a while. But to see it in action is a whole new shebang. Matt Damon is looking grizzled and, well like a man who has just been in a very intense war, followed by 10 years of trying to get home. It would take its toll on any man.
Anne Hathaway is giving us a shrewd and poised Penelope – Odysseus’ wife – as she battles the 108 suitors that are hammering down her door, or rather filling her court. Would be nice, eh? One of the most keen suitors is Antinuous, looking incredibly well cast with Robert Pattinson taking on the nasty, calculated, and ruthless man desperate to take over Odysseus’ throne. And we have Tom Holland brilliantly cast as Telemachus, Odysseus' son with a lot to prove.
It's sticking to the full 24 books
Any book-to-movie adaptations tends to take the employer-looking-at-a-CV approach, covering roughly between 50 and 70 percent of the actual material. When it comes to an epic like The Odyssey which is split across a whopping 24 books, it’s a fairly safe bet that they’ll be missing out some bits here and there. Or you might think they'd go for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows approach and split it into multiple films. However, it’s looking as though Nolan’s not shying away from the content, taking on a seriously hefty proportion of the text and leaving out as little as possible.
Translation: it has plenty of action – like seriously, we’ve got boats, gods, stranded heroes on islands, nymphs, storms and boats and whirlpools, and monsters and more. It's like they've taken any kind of action you’ve ever seen in a film and put it on steroids.
It's not in Homeric verse
Before Shakespeare popularised Iambic Pentametre, Homer used Dactylic Hexametre, which became known as Homeric hexametre. So much so that the entire poem (yup, all 24 books), are pretty much all in dactylic hexametre. And for anyone who didn’t do an English degree, let me save you 27 grand and explain that it’s a poetic structure consisting of six feet per line, where each ‘foot’ is made up of one long syllable, followed by two short syllables.
Basically, when you read the Odyssey – whether in the traditional ancient greek or one of the more modern translations, the whole thing will be in verse rather than prose (a poem, not a novel) and have the same rhythm running throughout it. Unfortunately for us but very thankfully for the writers, Nolan’s Odyssey looks as though it’s in the standard English. It would have been a seriously ambitious adaptation otherwise.
We really don't have long to wait
The good news is that after years of teasing and being drip fed information, the release date is on the horizon. Luckily, Nolan hasn’t gone meta and made us wait 10 years for the film. The trailer confirms the release date as 17th July 2026, meaning we have just a few months before we could be seeing all the ancient action.
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