The Odyssey Review
Studio: Universal Pictures
Release Date: July 17, 2026
Runtime: 2h 52m
Director: Christopher Nolan
After seeing The Odyssey in both IMAX and a standard theater, I figured it was finally time to put my thoughts together.
I’ll start with something that may be unpopular: I really didn’t like Oppenheimer.
I could appreciate what Christopher Nolan accomplished visually, but the movie never worked for me personally. It felt like a dialogue-heavy suspense ride that kept building toward a level of payoff I never felt it reached. So when Nolan’s next massive project was announced, I wasn’t automatically sold simply because his name was attached.
I just hoped The Odyssey would land better for me.
It did.
The Odyssey is a really good movie, and from a technical standpoint, it’s difficult to find much to criticize. The cinematography is exceptional. The sound is incredible. The scale is enormous. And when Nolan lets the movie fully embrace its action and mythology, it produces some of the best sequences in the entire film.
But even after two viewings, I walked away feeling like something was missing.
A Movie Made for IMAX
I don’t want to review The Odyssey based entirely on its IMAX presentation. A movie still needs to work regardless of which theater you happen to watch it in.
That said, ignoring IMAX here would almost be dishonest.
This is a movie built for that experience.
The beautiful landscapes, ships cutting through the water, battles, creatures and sheer scale of Odysseus’ journey benefit tremendously from the larger presentation. The sound is just as important. There are sequences where you don’t simply hear what is happening—you feel it.
Seeing the movie again in a standard theater only reinforced how much IMAX adds.
That doesn’t mean the standard presentation suddenly makes The Odyssey a bad movie. Far from it. The cinematography remains beautiful and the action still works. But if you’re deciding where to see it for the first time, IMAX is absolutely the way I would recommend experiencing it.
My score, however, isn’t an IMAX score.
It’s a score for the movie underneath the spectacle.
Do We Really Need Spider-Man, MJ and Batman?
One of my first reactions when the cast was announced was admittedly a ridiculous one:
Do we really need Spider-Man, MJ and Batman in the same movie?
Think about it for a second. It’s a little funny.
Tom Holland, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are three actors who are so closely associated with massive modern franchises that there was always a chance their familiarity could become distracting in a story this iconic.
But when you’re making something on the scale of The Odyssey, I also understand the appeal of filling it with some of the biggest faces in Hollywood.
And thankfully, the performances deliver.
Matt Damon is also excellent as Odysseus. He carries himself like someone who has experienced an exhausting amount of war, loss and hardship while still possessing the intelligence and determination that define the character.
With a cast this stacked, you’d expect that to be one of the movie’s strengths, and it is.
My issue isn’t that the performances fail to bring these characters to life.
It’s that I never became as attached to those characters as I wanted to.
The Mythology Is Where The Odyssey Shines
The supernatural portions of The Odyssey were easily some of my favorite parts of the movie.
Circe’s sequence, including the transformation of Odysseus’ men into pigs, immediately brings a different energy to the journey. These are the moments where this ancient story feels strange, dangerous and unpredictable again.
The Cyclops sequence is even better.
It’s tense. It’s visually incredible. And it’s one of the few stretches of the movie where I felt myself sitting forward waiting to see what would happen next.
For a story that has existed for thousands of years, that’s an impressive accomplishment.
These were also the moments that left me wanting more.
Not necessarily more creatures for the sake of having creatures, but more sequences that carried that same combination of danger, spectacle and suspense.
When The Odyssey reaches that level, it’s phenomenal.
It just doesn’t stay there often enough.
The Action Needed Just a Little More
The same applies to the fighting.
When the action arrives, it’s fantastic.
The climactic battle is one of my favorite portions of the entire movie. Nolan’s filmmaking style works incredibly well when everything finally erupts—the sound, scale, choreography and cinematography come together to create exactly the kind of spectacle I wanted from this story.
Maybe my expectations were wrong going in, but I expected more of those moments.
That’s a strange criticism because I don’t think The Odyssey is particularly lacking in content. This is a long story with a lot to cover.
But its best action sequences are so good that they made me wish there were just a few more of them.
So Why Didn’t It Hit Me Harder?
This is the part I’ve struggled with most since leaving the theater.
Almost everything about The Odyssey is good.
Some of it is great.
The presentation? Incredible.
The cinematography? Among the movie’s greatest strengths.
The sound? Outstanding.
The acting? Excellent.
The dialogue? Strong.
The mythology? Responsible for several of my favorite scenes.
And yet when the credits rolled, I didn’t have that overwhelming feeling that I had just watched something unforgettable.
I think some of that comes down to emotional attachment.
I understood what these characters wanted. I understood what was at stake. But I rarely found myself deeply worried about what was waiting for them on the other side of the journey.
That isn’t because the story is poorly told.
If anything, the problem may be the exact opposite.
The Odyssey is one of the most famous stories ever written. Its characters, creatures and major events have been retold, referenced, adapted and reimagined countless times.
Then Nolan takes that already familiar story and fills it with faces we’re incredibly familiar with.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But for me, it created a strange distance between watching these characters and truly becoming emotionally invested in them.
I admired the journey more than I felt it.
The Question I Couldn’t Stop Asking
My two viewings left me with one question that ultimately shaped how I scored the movie:
What would I have thought if my first experience with The Odyssey had been at home?
Because in IMAX, this movie can be overwhelming in the best possible way.
The screen is enormous. The audio surrounds you. The landscapes feel endless. The battles have weight. The creatures become intimidating simply through their scale.
Strip that away, and the movie has to stand on its own.
And it does.
Very well, actually.
But I’m not convinced I’d be talking about it the same way.
There are individual sequences I continued thinking about afterward—particularly some of the supernatural encounters and the climactic action—but the movie as a whole didn’t stay with me for nights afterward.
That’s the difference between something I think is technically exceptional and something I personally consider exceptional.
The Odyssey comes incredibly close to being both.
For me, it never completely gets there.
The Verdict
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a massive, beautifully made adaptation that deserves to be experienced on the biggest screen possible.
Matt Damon delivers as Odysseus, the stacked supporting cast does exactly what you’d expect from a group of actors this talented, and the technical presentation is outstanding. When the movie dives into its supernatural mythology or unleashes its biggest action sequences, it becomes quite thrilling.
The Cyclops encounter and climactic battle in particular show just how incredible this movie can be.
I only wish I felt that level of intensity more consistently.
For all its technical brilliance, The Odyssey never created the emotional connection or sustained suspense that would have pushed it into truly unforgettable territory for me.
I left impressed.
I left entertained.
I absolutely recommend seeing it—especially in IMAX.
I just didn’t leave obsessed with it.
And for a movie this massive, that small missing piece ends up making a surprisingly big difference.
