Universal has offered a new look at The Odyssey, its Imax event film from Christopher Nolan that’s based on the ancient Greek epic poem from Homer. The filmmaker was in attendance to tout the project.
We’ve already seen a trailer unveiled for the film. But in Las Vegas this afternoon, we got a look at footage of Matt Damon’s Odysseus, king of Ithaca, speaking with Calypso (Charlize Theron), a nymph who’s kept him hostage on her island for seven years after washing ashore post-Trojan War.
“How long have I been here, Calypso?” He asks. “I don’t remember anything before Troy. Did I have a wife, children, maybe a son? If I had a son, how old would he be now?”
We cut to his son, Tom Holland’s Telemachus, who is told the tale of the Greeks’ raid on a Troy by Jon Bernthal’s Menelaus.
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After the Trojans pull the Trojan horse in from the ocean and pull it by cables through the sand, all the way into the city, they stand it up in the center of the fortress. By night, Menelaus, Odysseus and their fellow Greek soldiers emerge and win the 10 year Trojan War.
Accepting a standing ovation when he stepped onstage tonight in Las Vegas, Nolan explained his desire to tell this story, saying that it’s one “that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years. It’s not a story, it’s the story.”
He wanted to be the one, he explained, to seize “the exciting opportunity of being able to bring this to a modern cinema audience.”
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Nolan pointed to Holland, Damon and Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, wife of Odysseus, as the heart of the story, which is about “family” and “homecoming.”
Of course, given Nolan’s long fascination with large-scale event cinema, he wanted to tell this story in the most immersive way possible. “The long-held dream,” he said, was to figure out a way to film an entire project on Imax for the first time, shooting dialogue scenes the same way he would an action sequence, rather than shifting aspect rations, as he has for many years.
Undoubtedly, doing so wasn’t easy. He admitted that The Odyssey was “an absolute nightmare to film,” albeit “in all the right ways,” adding, “We had an amazing time doing it” and that the film is “almost finished.”
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Announced in December 2024, Nolan’s The Odyssey watches as Damon’s Odysseus takes a long and dangerous voyage home after the Trojan War, with an eye toward seeing his family again. Others in the star-studded cast include Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Benny Safdie, Jon Bernthal, Cosmo Jarvis, Michael Vlamis and Iddo Goldberg.
Nolan came to the film following his collaboration with Universal on Oppenheimer, which was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture and Best Director. He directed from his own script and produced alongside his longtime collaborator and wife, Emma Thomas.
The film is set to open in Imax on July 17.
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