I had been thinking of skipping Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, because, not in spite of, my abiding interest in ancient history. But a glowing review from Mark Kermode changed my mind.

I saw it in IMAX, which is how it was designed to be seen, and it was very, very good (although my neck was a bit stiff afterwards – the only tickets available were on the front row). There are plenty of reviews available by proper film reviewers, so I’ll just tell you what I liked and what I didn’t like about the 2026 film.

There are going to be spoilers in here, ok? So don’t read on if you haven’t seen the film, read the book, or absorbed the stories from culture at large.

What I liked

The Trojan horse

I loved the interpretation of the wooden horse. Usually it’s a big blocky thing on wheels. This was a beautiful statue of a rearing horse. Without wheels, it was much harder to get the horse into Troy, which increased the irony of them straining themselves to drag home their own doom.

The shades

When Odysseus goes to the land of the dead to speak with Tireseas, it is so eerie! The shades (spirits of the dead) rise out of the black volcanic sand, emerging looking dirty and disturbing.

The scale

I mean, obviously. That’s the point of filming it on IMAX cameras. My abiding image from the film is a tiny ship on a huge sea. Except the ship isn’t tiny, it’s a decent size, it’s just the sea that is unthinkably vast.

The pigs scene

Circe, played by Samantha Morton, changes Odysseus’ men into pigs (or reveals their true nature, as she sees it). Morton is excellent and the transformation into pigs, with no use of CGI, is weird and disturbing. In a good way.

The cyclops cave

I didn’t like everything about this episode, which was changed significantly from the book, but if you know the story you are on edge from the moment the sheep trots into the cage. Then when the cyclops appears he is properly scary, and frighteningly ugly!

Robert Pattinson

I was never a Twilight girlie, but in his adulthood Robert Pattinson has become a very good, and good-looking, actor. He plays Antinous, the chief suitor of Penelope. He is craven, cowardly, arrogant and venal, but also fun, stylish and charming. He is so enjoyable to watch! If you remember Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Antinous is giving the Sheriff of Nottingham. So much fun!

The Athena reveal

I don’t want to give too much away here, but it is the moral heart of the film. Odysseus keeps getting flashbacks to the head of a statue (of Athena) rolling across the ground. Meanwhile, he is visited by a figure of Athena who looks nothing like the usual, martial image of Athena. During the key scene in the whole film, you find out the connection between this girl, the statue, and what happened in Troy. Odysseus gives a moving speech that is worth reading in its entirety, but which also contains my favourite line in the film:

To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire.

What I didn’t like

The costumes

I mean, they were OK. Sort of. They looked “old” although very much from a generic “ancient times” playbook rather than anything specific. Odysseus was wearing a Roman helmet rather than a boar’s tusk helmet (one of the few things we know they actually wore).

Penelope’s clothes look rich in a modern way, but very plain in that context. It’s annoying that the cloth she is weaving has patterns in it but no one else seems to have heard of this phenomenon. Most of the men were wearing trousers, albeit often under skirts. I don’t know if the Myceneans wore trousers, but classical Greeks wouldn’t be seen dead in them.

But the worst offender is Agamemnon. He is wearing Batman-style armour that appears to be made from matte fibreglass, and which, for no obvious reason, has a bit of golden spine on the back of it. Apparently a lot of male viewers think he looks cool. I don’t. My uncle used to have a fiberglass car chassis in his garden. It would crack if you sat on it. That’s what Agamemnon’s armour looks like to me.

Also, what was even the point of Agamemnon in this film? Stand around and look (debatably) cool is not a key military role.

The score

Apparently this film had a score. I couldn’t hum you anything from it. It was mostly screeches and bangs. Sometimes very, very loud bangs. If you see this film too many times you would do well to book a hearing test before and after to tally the damage.

Defy the gods

This is the tagine of this film. Sounds kinda cool, doesn’t it? And Odysseus does say at one point “Then I defy tbt gods!” But the events of the plot make it clear that if you defy the gods, everybody dies. You might as well have a tagline saying “Stick damp fingers in electric sockets.”

Underused women

I think The Odyssey 2026 just scrapes a pass in the Bechdel test, but despite having some excellent actresses in it, they are sadly underused. Penelope (Anne Hathaway) gets a lot of screentime and some good lines, but Samantha Morton’s Circe isn’t in it for long enough (especially considering Odysseus spent a year with her in the book), and Charlise Theron as Calypso has nothing to do but look luminously beautiful and be supportive while Odysseus tells his story. The Calypso in the poem has a proto-feminist speech, but that sort of thing is given to Penelope here.

And then Athena. I would be saying “why was she even in it?” if it wasn’t for that key scene towards the end, but considering how much they must have paid to get Zendaya, it’s ridiculous that she does very little but stand around and look sad.

What I found funny

This isn’t a criticism, but when Odysseus and his men flee desperately towards the ships in their armour, pursued by deadly enemies (and this happens a lot), I was unavoidably reminded of Monty Python’s Holy Grail 🤣 “Run away! Run away quickly!”

So that’s my take on the Odyssey 2026 after a single viewing (and there are people who have seen it seven times at this point). What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Don’t care? Let me know in the comments.

Tags: The odyssey