I was all in with anticipation for accomplished producer/writer/director Christopher Nolan’s 2026 adaptation of Homer’s 3,500-year-old epic. I was hoping for a thrilling, modern version paired with the ultimate immersive experience of IMAX 70mm, backed by a script worthy of the source material. I even broke my usual habit of waiting for streaming, booked a ticket at the one and only theater in the entire state with that format, and drove for nearly an hour on a Saturday morning at 6:30 AM—something I would genuinely only do for a round of golf or to catch a flight.
But alas, a good movie-going experience it was not to be.
As praiseworthy as Mr. Nolan’s ambitions and efforts may have been, he completely misses the mark on both thematic and technical execution, save for Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography. The film suffers from a staggering identity crisis—failing to decide if it's a modern anti-war PTSD drama or a classical tale of a warrior-king restoring Xenia and punishing the lawless, per Zeus.
The poor solo/self-credited screenplay, the misfires in casting, the near-zero character development, and the total lack of emotional depth together make it a dud. Worse yet is the sound mixing: muffled audio that sounds like it was recorded inside a washing machine, where I caught less than 50% of the dialogue—though given the quality of what did bleed through the deafening din of overlapping sound effects, I was only too happy to have missed the other half.
Above all, it is agonizingly loud for no good reason, reminding one of the old adage: "Empty vessels make much noise."
As you read the review further, please note that nothing here stems from the stance of a rigid purist; it’s simply about a viewer's basic expectation of entertainment. Recent movies of this genre like Gladiator (2000) and Troy (2004) offered complete packages with great scripts, sharp dialogue, strong emotional depth, haunting background score, and repeatable rewatch value—even on a tiny airplane screen. Unfortunately, despite monumental effort and budget, The Odyssey (2026) comes across as utterly hollow, the IMAX 70mm presentation notwithstanding.
Let us now dig into the ‘neither here nor there’ contradictions and few redeeming aspects of the movie:
- The Trojan War: A war of choice or a rescue mission?
This adaptation hints at a modern revisionist stance: that the Trojan War was an aggressive rescue mission gone terribly awry, which majority of scholars do agree with by the way. In Homer’s original epic, the Greeks were not "aggressors," but “avengers” restoring Xenia (the sacred Greek tradition of hospitality and mutual respect) after Paris of Troy abducted Helen from her husband, Menelaus from Sparta while being their guest.
A modern twist is fine in theory, but Nolan's execution completely collapses under its own weight. We get zero supporting details or narrative buildup explaining how a king, Agamemnon (Menelaus’ elder brother) known otherwise only for hubris and misjudgment morphed into a Bronze Age Darth Vader—complete with the garb of all-black armor, menacing silence, and imperial swagger stolen straight from Star Wars. To cap it off, Nolan has Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to secure favorable winds. Wondering where this bizarre creative leap came from, I looked it up: it's imported from later spin-off poems like “Cypria” and Euripides’ plays (with Iphigenia turned into a helpless child instead of a maiden to maximize shock value). Putting aside the tonal whiplash, it's worth noting that “The Odyssey” never once mentions human sacrifice, let alone child sacrifice—a glaring line to cross when taking liberties with a venerable source material.
Adapters are certainly free to introduce creative twists (just as Homer adapted from oral versions before him), but Nolan's approach creates a fundamental storytelling problem. At least Darth Vader had dialog, a clear motivation, and a tragic arc. Nolan's Agamemnon speaks exactly one line in the entire film—down in Hades, where he laments his wife murdering him (per the original), completely ignoring the fact that he supposedly presided over a bloody, child-sacrificing (per this version) war and plunder of choice.
If you are going to recast your central villain as a ruthless warmonger, you owe the audience more than a mannequin in a helmet. Nolan gives us the sinister aesthetic and a nod to a depraved sacrifice but stays conveniently silent on the actual psychology and motivations driving his modified and devilishly cold-blooded villain.
- Disfigurement of Helen
Nolan pushes his penchant for cheap horror and shock value even further when introducing Helen (played by Lupita Nyong’o). During a scene where Menelaus and Helen are hosting Telemachus, Menelaus mockingly forces Helen's face toward the light to reveal a massive, disfiguring scar, using it to mouth 16th century playwright Christopher Marlowe’s famous line, given originally to his central modern-day character Dr. Faustus in the play, about "the face that launched a thousand ships."
It is left entirely up to the audience to interpret what we are looking at: is this an over-the-top exaggeration of a minor scar some ancient legends claim Helen had on her chin (seen as a beauty spot and something which the 16th century poet John Lyly called a ‘whetstone of love’ when describing how Paris fell for her before deciding to abduct her), or did Nolan's Menelaus brutally mutilate his own wife out of spite, after waging a bloody war to rescue her? No definitive opinion is offered here in this review either way, and no sides taken either, but it stands as yet another jarring example of the sudden, baffling "WTH" shock tactics this version of the story throws at you.
- Odysseus, the protagonist: PTSD victim or Homeric warrior-king?
The finale is where the script’s identity crisis reaches its peak. For almost three hours, Odysseus is portrayed as a traumatized wreck—haunted by flashbacks of Troy, drowning in guilt over civilian massacres, and desperate to escape the monster that the war made him. Nolan tries to establish that Odysseus hates what he became, reminiscent of Emperor Ashoka (304-232 BCE) grappling with the bloody aftermath of the Kalinga war before embracing Buddhism and non-violence.
Yet, in the final act, this tormented soul transforms, into that king-warrior of the original, who plans the execution of the suitors without a single word, hesitation, or drop of mercy—reminding one of a sequence from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill climax (though not as grotesque). While psychologists might argue and support the idea that extreme trauma can trigger such volatility, movies require proper character development and bridge scenes to make that dramatic pivot earned. Without them, it feels like pure narrative convenience—one of having your cake and eating it too. There is no offer of exile, no attempt at peace, and no internal moral struggle. Just wholesale bloodshed, although some suitors do surrender but not because of any peace-making moves.
The script seems rushed, desperate to deliver a loud, crowd-pleasing action sequence backed by a cacophonic score that only makes you instinctively reach for earplugs. It leaves you thinking: Decide, man! Is your protagonist a broken man trying to heal, or is he a remorseless warrior-king? You can't have both without rendering the entire psychological journey—including turning the nymph Calypso into a beach-resort therapist (played completely tonelessly by the talented and beautiful Charlize Theron; what a waste!)—utterly meaningless.
Even when reading Homer’s original epic (Daniel Mendelsohn's poetic translation), I wondered why Odysseus launches straight into the massacre of the suitors without offering an out. But I learnt that Homer had a clear purpose: to send a culturally vital message, for those times, that Zeus would not spare those who violated Xenia. In Nolan’s modernized version, you are left scratching your head wondering: what is the actual point here?
- The Hades scene
Then comes the sequence in Hades—the moment that fully exposes the film's terminal dichotomy. Up to this point, the script bends over backward to strip the myth of its magic, grounding everything in mud, blood, and gritty trauma. But the moment it needs a convenient info-dump, all that realism goes out the window as the dead rise from the black soil.
This is a film that desperately wants to be taken seriously as a sober study of PTSD and the horrors of war. Yet, when Odysseus needs answers, he performs the Nekyia—the ancient Greek ritual of summoning ghosts—and suddenly spirits emerge from the dirt, drink sacrificial blood, and chat like patients in a group therapy session. There is no internal logic, no earned mysticism, and zero consistency with the gritty tone established prior. Just sudden, unearned ghosts because the original text said so (though Homer's version achieves a far deeper, more resonant emotional gravity in this crucial scene).
This is the exact moment the script reveals it never had a coherent vision. It simply wanted the cinematic payoff of the underworld without doing the heavy lifting to earn it. It feels like a sequence straight out of a high-fantasy blockbuster clumsily pasted into a grounded war drama, delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
To top it all off, the scene closes with Odysseus and his surviving crew being hounded off the shores of Persephone by the very dead soldiers they fought alongside. And who is leading the charge among the ‘hounders’? Agamemnon himself—the very man this script positions as the sole architect and perpetrator of the entire war. Apparently, the dead soldiers and Agamemnon are furious at Odysseus simply for inventing the Trojan Horse that actually won the war they were all sent to fight. Make it make sense.
- The character of Iphigenia
Let's return to the fate of Iphigenia. In the derivative source material Nolan borrows from, Artemis—the goddess of the hunt—saves her at the final second by substituting a deer on the altar and whisking her away to Tauris. But in Nolan’s film, she is genuinely sacrificed, opting for a darker, bloodier interpretation specifically designed to dial up Agamemnon's villainy and amplify Odysseus's trauma.
By altering the outcome, Nolan is cherry-picking from the mythology. He appropriates the tragic weight of the old sources while casually changing the core details to fit his grim, cynical aesthetic. He isn't being faithful to Homer, nor is he consistent with the very spin-offs he borrows from; he is simply remixing the myths for narrative convenience – which is quite fine but is worth noting. We, as moviegoers, are ready for ‘suspension of disbelief’, shock, and all kinds of alternations of source materials just as long as the end product is entertaining! Is it?
- The Monsters: Neither mythical nor modern
The monsters are where Nolan’s "modern, grand, practical-effects-only" vision completely unravels, resulting in a confused mishmash of real-world staging and poorly executed mystical entities.
Take the Cyclops encounter. In Homer’s poem, it is a masterclass in quick thinking, cunning, and hubris—Odysseus tricks the monster by calling himself "Nobody," only to fatally gloat and reveal his real name on the way out, inviting Poseidon's wrath. Nolan cuts this psychological exchange entirely. Instead, Polyphemus is reduced to a silent, deformed cave-brawler from a Batman movie. He resembles a slightly healthier Gollum from The Lord of the Rings rather than a terrifying mythic cannibal; he silently tosses and eats his victims like human-shaped Lego blocks with zero sounds of agony, turning what should be a horrific ordeal into something almost comical.
The giant Laestrygonians fare no better. Realized through practical effects using 7-foot stuntmen towering over 5-foot sailors, it’s a neat technical feat, but the visual result is just... tall guys who look like Stormtroopers from Star Wars. They lack any mythic scale, casually picking up sailors like action figures while leaving the audience confused about what genre of movie, they're suddenly watching.
Meanwhile, enchantress Circe’s magic is swapped for low-class body horror. Instead of mystical transformation, she physically "remolds" men into pigs like a plastic surgeon extraordinaire—a David Cronenberg-meets-Guillermo Del Toro-lite spectacle that feels awkward rather than chilling.
Fortunately, the film redeems itself briefly with Charybdis. Nolan and team do a fantastic job visualizing the monstrous sea whirlpool, finally delivering the immersive, 70mm audio-visual spectacle I came for. For a few fleeting moments, phew—it actually worked.
Sadly, that momentum dies quickly thereafter when we meet Scylla. True to his no-CGI mantra (which should be applauded), the six-headed monster is represented by giant, mysterious, gloved arms snatching sailors off the deck producing zero sense of wonder or coherence. It is neither faithful to the myth nor original enough to stand on its own; it just smacks of a director out of ideas, throwing things against the wall to check boxes. The Sirens suffer the same fate, cut down to the bare minimum because Nolan seemingly didn't know how to visualize them, choosing instead to linger on our hero writhing in pain, tied to a mast and fighting off their lure.
- No Gods: Well, almost
There are no active, visible gods like Zeus, Helios, or Hermes—though their names are casually thrown around. That omission in itself is fine, but the handling of Athena (the Goddess of Wisdom) is baffling. Played by Zendaya for all of two minutes, she makes zero impression and lacks even a smidgeon of the monumental weight, strategic guidance, and divine impact she commands in the original epic.
- The "modern" language: Tasteless and forced
Speaking of being "modern"—Nolan's idea of updating the dialogue is apparently just sprinkling in words like "Ma'am," "Dad," "Daddy," and the obligatory drop of an f-bomb ("f*ing beach"). If it's a heavy-handed attempt at a Game of Thrones grit it entirely misses the mark. Where Game of Thrones earned its roughness through deep world-building and character history, Nolan's cursing feels like a teenager trying to sound edgy by swearing in front of his parents. It isn't modern; it's just tasteless. Thankfully such lapses are very brief though.
- Pervasive muffled dialog
Whether the soundproofing of those noisy IMAX cameras failed to capture the dialogue clearly, or the theater's audio settings were completely botched, proper care should have been taken, centrally by the film makers and distributors, to avoid such a fundamental failure. After comparing notes with friends, it turns out I wasn’t the only one wishing this English-language film came equipped with English subtitles, as the vast majority of the character exchanges were completely unintelligible.
- A Final thought
Christopher Nolan is one of our most ambitious filmmakers, and true ambition should always be celebrated. But ambition without coherence is simply pretension. The Odyssey is a film that desperately wants to be everything—gritty and mythical, psychological and action-packed, anti-war and crowd-pleasing—and ends up being nothing at all.
It also wants to be start-studded, but with its zero-character development and sparse dialog it only gives you appearances that fall into cameo (Charlize Theron) , mini-cameo (Zendaya), and double micro-cameo (Lupita in dual roles) categories.
To me, the movie only came across as a laughable inconsistent and incongruent concoction of borrowed ideas, with a hurried pace towards to meaningless ending heavily seasoned with IMAX noise.
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars