The Odyssey Prologue Shows Matt Damon Emerging From Trojan Horse

In its first released footage, Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” promises to be the director’s most expansive vision yet.

A six-minute clip from the film is playing before this weekend’s Imax 70-millimeter screenings of “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.” The clip depicts the story of the Trojan horse — ironically, not a major plot element in Homer’s Odyssey, though part of the mythology around Odysseus in general. For those unfamiliar, the story is one of warrior Odysseus’ canniest strategems: He ordered built an enormous, hollow horse that could be occupied by soldiers. If the Trojans accepted it as a seeming peace offering, the men within could breach the impenetrable walls of Troy and wage war from the inside.

All of which, it seems, will be explained onscreen. As the clip begins, Jon Bernthal’s Menelaus, king of Sparta, asks Tom Holland’s Telemachus, son of Odysseus, “Did you hear the story of the horse?” Telemachus indicates that he has. 

“Did you hear it from the inside?” Bernthal says. And then we’re off: Matt Damon’s Odysseus, Bernthal, and many others are shown huddling within a giant wooden horse that has landed ashore in Troy. The Trojans are shown cheering with delight as Odysseus listens incredulously — then, soon enough, he and his men are being jostled as the horse is brought onto land and are forced to dodge swords being plunged into the horse, seemingly to test for hidden Greeks within. 

Time passes, and the horse sits triumphantly at the steps of a massive building within the walled city of Troy. Appearing nervous in close-up, Damon commits to action; in a cut to a view of the horse from the outside, we see Damon drop a rope to climb down and silently attack an unsuspecting sentry. A dialogue-free assault ensues, with the Trojans sounding an alarm. A high volume of faceless guards stream out and attack the Greeks; Odysseus is shooting their men with arrows, but the real hope for his men lies in a ploy to which we cut repeatedly amidst the action. As the melee continues, the Greeks are effortfully turning the gears that will open the gates of Troy.

No student of classics — or fan of movies — will be surprised that they succeed. And as the gates open, a mass of Greek soldiers stream in. Odysseus’ men have been fighting with only the clothes they wore in the horse: These additional soldiers, though, are fully armed, and Menelaus raises his arms in triumph as he’s handed a helmet to wear. Odysseus bellows in triumph. Brief flashing images of men in full suits of armor, a cryptic monster, and a head being lopped off of a marble sculpture hint at the massive scope of the film before the footage ends. (Notably, cast members including Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson aren’t shown.)

While what we see plays like a grand-scale epic, Nolan hasn’t lost his touch with delicately intercutting between various developments — the chaos of the warfare against the precision of the gears gradually turning in the Trojan wall’s door — or for granular character detail in the midst of the spectacle. One might say the carefully wrought story within the massive drama is some kind of, well, Trojan horse. 

And the particular aspect of how the footage first finds audiences, attached to two Imax rereleases from Warner Bros., provides no small measure of poetic justice for Nolan. Having bolted the studio for Universal to make “Oppenheimer” and then “The Odyssey,” promo for his new film is being used to induce people to come see WB’s 2025 offerings.

“The Odyssey” is to be released July 17. 2026.