Christopher Nolan has been my favorite director since The Prestige, the first movie of his I saw, after which I went back to see his previous films and eagerly anticipated the next one—which has never disappointed. His latest film, The Odyssey, was no exception. It is another tier-1 cinematic masterpiece, though I wouldn’t put it in my top five favorite Nolan films, which include Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar in some order. Ranking those films against each other is pointless, as they are equally great.

Nolan is a cinematic master on every level: writing, editing, sound, music, special effects, and cinematography. He is like a mix between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, combining Kubrick’s cerebral content and technical mastery with Spielberg’s action set-piece spectacle and mass audience appeal. That combination is what led to The Odyssey’s box office success (and likely Oscar success).

As with most of Nolan’s movies, the story of The Odyssey is told non-linearly, using flashbacks to cycle between different timelines, eventually coming together in the end. That technique worked well for The Odyssey, which is so long and epic in scope that it was probably the only way you could tell it all in under 3 hours—though the film didn’t feel that long to me in the theater. The special effects were especially impressive because Nolan does everything practically, building all the sets and creatures (instead of using CGI), and filming on location (instead of green screens).

I am not against using AI for movies, but if you have the budget and means (as major Hollywood studios do) you should spend the money to do things for real, which adds to the verisimilitude and makes the movie feel more immersive. AI is good for independent nobodies without financiers, allowing them to create something rather than nothing. For the major studios to compete with AI, they need to avoid CGI, to give viewers something AI cannot: realness and physicality.

Certain scenes of The Odyssey veered into the horror genre, which makes me want to see a full horror movie directed by Nolan (like his hero Kubrick did with The Shining). Perhaps an H.P. Lovecraft story? If anyone can bring Cthulhu to life¹ on the big screen it is Christopher Nolan. Though The Shadow Out of Time may be more up Nolan’s alley, considering his obsession with time.

My only gripe with the film was some of the controversial casting choices, which were more distracting than anything else, taking me out of the story. As for the source material, I’ve never read Homer, so any deviations didn’t bother me, but I’ve heard others critique the alterations and omissions Nolan made. I plan to read The Iliad and the Odyssey eventually, after which my opinion of this film may change. But as a Christopher Nolan movie, The Odyssey was amazing. As a faithful adaptation of Homer, that remains to be determined…

1. “That is not dead which can eternal lie…” ↩︎