Meanwhile, at home, lead suitor Antinous (Robert Pattinson) pursues Ithaca’s throne with a chilling contempt for its true king, while even Odysseus himself—wrecked with grief and guilt—contends with the horror he unleashed upon Troy.

Less strong, to the dismay of Homeric purists, is Nolan’s depiction of the sirens or the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), the latter holding Odysseus hostage on her island for seven years despite being portrayed more so as his saviour. Even less is said about the unwilling sex part. In fact, Nolan’s women once again in The Odyssey, perhaps besides Penelope, have blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles, like Zendaya’s performance as goddess Athena, whose ghostly omnipresence acts more as Odysseus’ guilty conscience than anything to do with her divine roles of wisdom or warfare.

This elopement, for Dark Knight-esque Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), was a good enough excuse to destroy a nation in the name of seizing Trojan trade routes. Sound familiar? Nolan leans heavily into parallels between political exceptionalism and trivial warmongering to bolster economic strength taking place offscreen; themes similarly explored in Dunkirk (2017) or his previous three-hour feature Oppenheimer (2023).

Dragged into a war puppeteered by political ambition, both Odysseus and the titular Oppenheimer are tormented by the guilt of mass destruction from the hands of their own intelligence. Like Oppenheimer’s A-bomb, Odysseus wins the Trojan war with tactical deception, tricking the Trojans into dragging a huge horse statue half-buried in the sand into city walls, only for its victims to find it filled with an ambush of Greek soldiers.

Was The Odyssey Nolan’s best? No. There’s plenty to say about poor historical accuracy, overworked action sequences sacrificing emotional depth, and nothing particularly “Nolan” to write home about. (Besides the subtle twist that it was not “people from the sea” who overthrew Ithaca as Penelope feared, but her husband—in another clever disguise—reclaiming his throne instead).

Regardless, The Odyssey is another thundering triumph of Nolan’s filmmaking, this time raging at our absurd political playground on an enormous IMAX screen we cannot turn away from.