Nolan Debuts Odyssey Trailer, Dodges Gods Question
SkimNews Take
Preserving Homer's in-medias-res structure suggests Nolan is betting that audiences schooled by non-traditional formats can now sustain classical narrative complexity at blockbuster scale.
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- Christopher Nolan released a new trailer for his Odyssey film this week and gave a rare interview on Stephen Colbert's US chatshow, with the film scheduled for 17 July and starring Matt Damon as Odysseus.
- The trailers show glimpses of the Cyclops, the whirlpool Charybdis, Odysseus summoning the spirits of the dead, and the crisis on Ithaca — where Robert Pattinson plays suitor Antinous opposite Anne Hathaway's Penelope and Tom Holland's Telemachus.
- Nolan's fidelity to Homer is selective: the wooden horse features prominently in both the first trailer and December's prologue, though the Odyssey only alludes to the ruse through a bard's retelling rather than dramatizing it.
- Nolan's interest in the Odyssey traces back to being lined up to replace Wolfgang Petersen on Troy (2004) before being stood down and pivoting to Batman Begins — an experience he told Empire left the Greek epic 'at the back of my mind for a very long time.'
- Nolan called the Odyssey 'the original non-linear narrative' on Colbert, a framing consistent with his track record from Memento through Inception, Interstellar and Tenet — and confirmed the film's action starts in Ithaca without Odysseus, mirroring the poem's opening.
- Nolan declined to confirm whether gods appear directly in the film but hinted that divinity would be treated as a pervasive force — a pointed contrast to Troy (2004) and The Return (2024), both of which dispensed with divine intervention entirely.
- Several of the Odyssey's most troubling elements remain unresolved: whether Odysseus's sexual encounters with Circe and Calypso will be shown, whether the poem's reliance on slavery will be addressed, and whether the hanging of 12 enslaved women — Mia Goth is reportedly cast as one, Melantho — will make the final cut.
Why it matters: Nolan is bringing Homer to a big-budget stage for arguably the first time, and his choices on violence, sex, slavery and divine intervention will shape how a global blockbuster audience encounters the poem. His evasion on the gods is the real signal — divinity treated as atmosphere rather than literal deities, a high-wire act that could define the film's identity.
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