The Odyssey (2026) Review: A Rough Start, an Unforgettable Ending

When The Odyssey (2026) finally hit cinemas after two years of teaser trailers and IMAX-only sneak peeks, the expectation was “the biggest thing Christopher Nolan has ever made.” At 172 minutes, it certainly commits to that scale. What nobody quite prepared me for was how long the first two-thirds feel next to how good the last one is. This is a film that tests your patience through the Cyclops’s cave and Circe’s island, then spends its final hour delivering some of the most goosebump-inducing filmmaking Nolan has put on screen. Assessed honestly, that’s an 8 out of 10, not because every scene earns it, but because the ending retroactively makes the slow build worth sitting through.

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The eventual home-release format to catch everything Hoyte van Hoytema's IMAX cinematography captures on the big screen. Not available for pre-order yet.

The numbers alone tell you how big a swing this was. Universal poured a reported $250 million into production, shot the entire film on IMAX 70mm, and opened it to $120.5 million domestically and $257.8 million worldwide, the biggest global opening of Nolan’s career, ahead of The Dark Knight Rises’ previous record of $249 million and his earlier IMAX benchmark, The Dark Knight. For an R-rated, nearly-three-hour adaptation of a 2,700-year-old poem, that’s a genuinely strange box office story, and for the Dadnology community it raises a real question: family movie night, or “watch it alone after the kids are asleep”? Firmly the latter.

Beneath the IMAX spectacle and the record-breaking opening weekend sits a much simpler story Nolan is actually telling: a father fighting his way home, and a son growing up faster than he should have to while waiting for him.

Narrative Architecture: A Father’s Voyage, a Son’s Vow

The Odyssey runs two tracks in parallel, and the film is at its best when it remembers to. Matt Damon’s Odysseus is dragged from monster to monster on his way back from Troy, while Tom Holland’s Telemachus, a son who barely remembers his father, is left holding Ithaca together against a household of suitors circling his mother Penelope (Anne Hathaway).

The plot itself needs little introduction if you read the book in school: Troy falls, Odysseus sets sail for home, and a vengeful Poseidon turns a ten-day trip into a ten-year ordeal involving the Cyclops Polyphemus, the sorceress Circe, the Sirens, and the island of Calypso. Meanwhile in Ithaca, Telemachus, backed by Athena (Zendaya), has to decide whether he’s willing to fight for a house, and a father, he’s not sure is worth saving. If it’s been a while since you read the original, the deluxe Iliad & Odyssey hardbound or the more affordable paperback Odyssey are both worth revisiting before or after the film.

For any dad who’s missed real stretches of a kid’s life, whether to deployment, work, or just circumstance, this is the film’s most honest question: what do you actually owe a child who grew up without you, and what does it cost them to wait? Nolan doesn’t dwell on the theme, but it’s there under every Ithaca scene, and it’s the reason the ending lands as hard as it does.

The two halves don’t always get equal screen time, the Ithaca plot occasionally feels like connective tissue between monster set pieces, but when the film finally braids them together in the final act, it’s clear the whole structure was building toward that reunion the entire time.

Craft: Shooting Homer on 70mm, and Building a Real Cyclops

Nolan’s practical-effects instinct, the same one that’s defined his filmmaking since The Dark Knight, is on full display here. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan’s regular collaborator since Interstellar, shot the entire film on IMAX 70mm film, and it shows in exactly the moments you’d hope: the fall of Troy and the open-sea storm sequences have a scale and grain that CGI-heavy blockbusters simply don’t replicate.

The best example of that philosophy is the Cyclops. Rather than build Polyphemus entirely in a computer, Nolan’s team constructed a roughly 60-foot practical rig, an actual cave set, animal handlers, and physical-theatre performer Bill Irwin providing the creature’s movement and presence. The result is a monster that feels genuinely wrong to be in a room with, in the best and worst sense, more on that in a moment.

The single best-directed sequence in the film, though, isn’t a monster at all. It’s the fall of Troy: the moment the gates finally swing open from the inside, and Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) is simply standing there in the breach. No score swell, no cut away, just the reveal. It’s the kind of goosebump moment that justifies the IMAX ticket on its own.

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Filming The Odyssey: Inside the Making of Christopher Nolan's Modern Epic (opens in a new tab)

The behind-the-scenes account of how Nolan built a practical Cyclops, shot entirely on IMAX 70mm, and turned Homer into a $250 million theatrical event.

Where the Pacing Drags, and Where It Shouldn’t Have Bothered

Here’s the honest part of this review: the first two hours are a slog more often than they should be. There are genuinely great scenes scattered throughout, the Troy sequence chief among them, but the connective tissue between them is slower than a 172-minute film can really afford.

The Cyclops attack and Circe’s transformation of Odysseus’s crew into pigs are the two scenes I’d point to specifically. Both are staged with real craft, and both are faithful to Homer, nobody’s arguing Nolan invented this material, but on screen they land as repulsive rather than gripping, and neither ever quite settles into the rest of the film’s tone. It’s a strange sensation watching them: you know exactly why they’re there, and you still don’t want to be watching them.

That’s also the reason this isn’t a film for kids, and one worth thinking twice about even for teenagers. The R rating isn’t decorative. The violence is explicit, the Circe sequence is genuinely disturbing rather than just intense, and there’s no version of this where a 10-year-old should be in the room. More than once during those middle stretches I found myself wondering what Homer would actually make of it, whether this brutal, explicit staging is the epic he imagined, or something else entirely wearing its name.

The Final Hour: Where Nolan Sticks the Landing

And then the film turns a corner, and it’s genuinely one of the best hours of cinema Nolan has directed. The reunion between Odysseus and his father is quietly devastating. But the scene that actually got me was smaller than that: Odysseus finally arrives home in disguise, and the only one who recognizes him is Argos, his old dog, who dies moments after seeing his master return. The moment Odysseus lets himself be known, just to that dog, before anyone else, is the kind of staging that reminds you why you go to the cinema in the first place.

This closing stretch is not subtle, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s patient where the middle act wasn’t, it trusts silence instead of spectacle, and it earns every one of the goosebumps it’s chasing. It’s also, on its own, the reason I’d tell anyone to sit through the slower stretches rather than skip to a recap.

Cinema, Not Couch: Where to Actually Watch This

This is not a two-time watch. Once is the right number, the pacing issues in the middle don’t improve on a rewatch, but it is a genuine “you have to see this once” film, and specifically in a cinema. Much like our Dune: Part Two review argued for that film’s sandworm sequence, The Odyssey’s scale is doing real work that a television, even a good one, is not built to reproduce. The Troy siege and the sinking of Odysseus’s ship in particular rely on a physical sense of scale and a sound mix built for a cinema’s dynamic range. I’d be surprised if either scene carries the same weight once it’s compressed down to a living room.

The Sonic Signature: Goransson’s Loud-Quiet Engine

Composer Ludwig Goransson, fresh off Oppenheimer and Black Panther, builds the score around dynamics rather than melody alone, and as someone who plays music himself, this is the thing I noticed most. The score and sound design lean hard into the gap between near-silence and overwhelming loudness, and that contrast is what makes the loud moments actually land.

The two standout uses of it are the sinking of Odysseus’s ship with his crew still aboard, and the pitched battles inside Troy. Both scenes let the quiet stretch just long enough that the sudden bass and noise hit like a physical thing. I love bass, and I love a film that commits to being loud, so this is a compliment more than a complaint, but a handful of moments do push past “intense” into “too much,” even while, credit where due, that excess is clearly in service of the intensity rather than an accident.

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The Odyssey: The Official Screenplay by Christopher Nolan (opens in a new tab)

Nolan's shooting script, worth reading once you've seen how he restructured Homer's story into two parallel homecoming threads.

Movie night sorted: thousands of other films and shows are streaming on Prime Video, free for 30 days. Worth a look while you wait for this one to hit home release.

Is The Odyssey (2026) worth watching?

Yes, but go in prepared for a slow build. The first two hours of Nolan’s 172-minute epic drag through Cyclops and Circe sequences that land as more brutal than moving, but the final hour delivers some of the best filmmaking of Nolan’s career. An honest 8 out of 10.

How long is The Odyssey movie?

The Odyssey runs 172 minutes, just under three hours. Nolan front-loads the mythological set pieces and saves the emotional payoff, the reunions in Ithaca, for the final act.

Is The Odyssey based on Homer's book?

Yes, it adapts Homer’s Odyssey, following Odysseus’s journey home after the Trojan War alongside his son Telemachus defending Ithaca. Nolan takes real liberties with structure and staging, but the core mythology, the Cyclops, Circe, Calypso, and the suitors, is all there.

Is The Odyssey ok for kids or teens?

No, not for younger kids. The Odyssey is rated R for graphic violence and disturbing imagery, including the Cyclops attack and Circe transforming Odysseus’s crew into pigs. Older teens who handle intense war and horror content may be fine, but check the specific scenes first, not just the rating.

Should I watch The Odyssey in a theater or wait for streaming?

See it in a cinema, ideally IMAX, if you can. The sound design leans hard on the gap between near-silence and overwhelming loudness, and the scale of the Troy siege and the ship-sinking sequence is built for a big screen. This is one epic that genuinely loses impact on a TV at home.