{"id":6981,"date":"2026-07-15T21:11:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=6981"},"modified":"2026-07-15T21:11:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:11:33","slug":"cinema-peaks-with-christopher-nolans-epic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=6981","title":{"rendered":"cinema peaks with Christopher Nolan\u2019s epic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong class=\"dropcap big-read-dropcap\">T<\/strong>he word \u201cepic\u201d has been tossed around a lot over the last 3,000 years\u2026 Leave it to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/christopher-nolan\">Christopher Nolan<\/a>, then, to remind us what a <i>proper<\/i> epic looks, sounds and feels like. If <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/films\/oppenheimer\"><i>Oppenheimer<\/i> <\/a>was a small story made big, <i>The Odyssey<\/i> is a big story made impossibly huge: delivering yet another landmark summer cinema event that might just be the director\u2019s most accomplished film to date.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s certainly his most ambitious. Based on one of the foundational texts of Western civilisation, adapting <i>The Odyssey<\/i> is a bit like taking on The Bible. The story of a soldier, Odysseus (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/matt-damon\">Matt Damon<\/a>), taking the long way home from war to his wife (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/anne-hathaway\">Anne Hathaway<\/a>) and son (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/tom-holland\">Tom Holland<\/a>), Homer\u2019s original poem has provided the bones of basic storytelling that still shore up nearly everything we watch and read today.<\/p>\n<p>Take away all the baggage though and <i>The Odyssey<\/i> remains a daunting text to adapt. It\u2019s a salty, sad, human story about getting old, having PTSD and living with your mistakes. But it\u2019s also about rolling around the Med with the boys, fighting giant cyclopes and meeting sexy sea witches.<\/p>\n<p>Just like an old Hollywood blockbuster, Nolan casts just about everyone on the A-list. There\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/robert-pattinson\">Robert Pattinson<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/lupita-nyong-o\">Lupita Nyong\u2019o<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/zendaya\">Zendaya<\/a>. Samantha Morton, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/charlize-theron\">Charlize Theron<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/safdie-brothers\">Benny Safdie<\/a>. Jon Bernthal, Himesh Patel, Mia Goth, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/travis-scott\">Travis Scott<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/elliot-page\">Elliot Page<\/a> \u2013 all somehow standing out across the film\u2019s sprawling three-hour runtime beneath Damon\u2019s smart-dumb Odysseus.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Odyssey | Official Trailer (Universal Pictures) - HD\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z9kZNzmdSQk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Always a master of structure, Nolan\u2019s real coup here is cutting the poem up into bits and piecing it all back together again. Set in \u201ca time of apparent magic\u201d, the story\u2019s most fantastic elements play out like fever dreams; mini movies told by a mad middle-aged man who might have been there or might just be struggling to accept his part in it all; a story as much about our own world as the ancient one.<\/p>\n<p>Skipping around Odysseus\u2019 mental crisis, the film\u2019s towering set pieces are every bit as impressive as you\u2019d expect from a director obsessed with using as many real multimillion-dollar props and special effects as possible. Beautifully shot with texture and detail \u2013 all on mammoth IMAX cameras \u2013 expect storms so powerful they make you feel seasick, at least two genuinely terrifying dips into horror and a full-on restaging of the siege of Troy. Swords are swung. Boats are rocked. Eyes are well and truly poked.<\/p>\n<p>As ever with Nolan, it\u2019s a typically marquee release \u2013 with only three cinemas in the UK showing the \u201cfull\u201d building-sized frame \u2013 and the effect of sitting in the biggest screen around is an elemental experience. Add in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/artists\/ludwig-goransson\">Ludwig G\u00f6ransson<\/a>\u2019s visceral score and <i>The Odyssey<\/i> lands harder than even 3,000 years of cultural heft have a right to.<\/p>\n<p>Less a case of them not making \u2018em like they used to, watching the film leaves you with a sense that this sort of thing probably won\u2019t be made at all for too much longer \u2013 the sheer scale, ambition and weight of it seeming to belong to a different world already. It\u2019s hard to see how cinema can get much bigger than this.<\/p>\n<div class=\"game-review-verdict\">\n<h2>Details<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Director:<\/strong> Christopher Nolan<\/li>\n<li><strong>Starring:<\/strong> Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway<\/li>\n<li><strong>Release date:<\/strong> July 17 (in UK cinemas)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n  !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n  {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n  n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n  if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n  n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n  t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n  s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n  'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n  fbq('consent', 'revoke');\n  fbq('init', '370979561341328');\n  fbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word \u201cepic\u201d has been tossed around a lot over the last 3,000 years\u2026 Leave it to Christopher Nolan, then, to remind us what a proper epic looks, sounds and feels like. If Oppenheimer was a small story made big, The Odyssey is a big story made impossibly huge: delivering yet another landmark summer cinema&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/The-Odyssey.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}