Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey, the director’s follow-up to Oppenheimer—the Cillian Murphy-starring historical epic that won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor at the 2024 Academy Awards—is being hailed as a cinematic triumph, according to some early reviews of the film.
Bite-sized X reactions from critics who’ve viewed The Odyssey paint an overwhelmingly positive picture of Nolan’s IMAX adaptation of Homer’s epic tale, which follows Matt Damon’s Odysseus on a perilous journey home from the Trojan War that’s fraught with mythical danger.
The ensemble cast supporting Damon befits such an ambitious cinematic undertaking—it includes Tom Holland as Telemachus, Odysseus’s son and the prince of Ithaca, and Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope, queen of Ithaca. Robert Pattinson plays Antinous, a suitor of Penelope, while Corey Hawkins plays Polybus, another Ithacan suitor. Lupita Nyong’o appears in a dual role as Helen of Troy, Menelaus’s wife, and Clytemnestra, Helen’s sister and Agamemnon’s wife.
On the divine side, Zendaya plays Athena, goddess of wisdom, warfare, and handicraft; Charlize Theron plays Calypso, a nymph from the island of Ogygia; Samantha Morton plays Circe, a witch and goddess from the island of Aeaea; and Bill Irwin plays Polyphemus, a Cyclops and son of Poseidon.
Benny Safdie plays Agamemnon, the Greek king of Mycenae and commander of the Achaeans, and Jon Bernthal plays Menelaus, the Greek king of Sparta. In Odysseus’s household and among his crew are John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, his faithful blind swineherd; Himesh Patel as Eurylochus, his second-in-command; Mia Goth as Melantho, a disloyal maidservant; Logan Marshall-Green as Melanthius, Melantho’s twin brother and Odysseus’s dishonest goatherd; and Will Yun Lee, Jimmy Gonzales (as Cepheus), and Andrew Howard (as Polites), all shipmates of Odysseus.
Additional roles include Travis Scott as a bard, Elliot Page as Sinon, a Greek soldier and Odysseus’s cousin, James Remar as Tiresias, a blind prophet of the Greek underworld, and Elyes Gabel as Elatus, a warrior.
Across the few available critical reflections on the film, “triumphant,” “monumental,” and “achievement” are commonplace. Variety writer Jazz Tangcay described a “spectacular epic,” praising the main cast and singling out the “perfection” of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s shots and the “breathtaking” battle scenes at Troy.
Andrew J. Salazar of Discussing Film honed in on Morton’s sequence as “perhaps the best of the entire film” and claims that Nolan taps into a “side he hasn’t really shown before.” Erik Davis of Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango called The Odyssey the culmination of “everything Nolan has been working toward with IMAX” and noted his “embrace of horror,” writing, “some of the film’s biggest moments are genuinely unsettling, adding a whole new dimension to his filmmaking while never losing sight of the humanity at the story’s core.”
David Crow of Den of Geek described Hathaway as the “sincere anchor” and saw parallels with Oppenheimer in the portrayal of titular characters dealing with consequences. In Odysseus’s case, that means “leaving and being unable to regain that domesticity [sic] bliss.”T
The Odyssey arrives in theaters on July 17. Watch the latest trailer below: