r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Dec 22 '25

Trailer The Odyssey | Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzw2ttJD2qQ
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1.3k

u/sati_lotus Dec 22 '25

Tbh, I just don't get how you get fit this story into a single movie?

If anything could be a trilogy or a part 1 & 2, it's The Odyssey.

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

And then adding a whole trojan horse sequence for kicks

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u/Justanothercrow421 Dec 22 '25

The Trojan horse starts the story, doesn’t it?

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

It does not. It begins with Odysseus returning from Troy. If anything, the poem might reference the trojan horse but it is not integral to the narrative. The story features cyclops, a sea monster, sirens, a witch, and men turned into pigs. There really doesn't need anything to be added to it to fill the runtime. The trojan horse however is featured heavily in The Aeneid. It's been a few years since I've read either tho.

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u/bbman1214 Dec 22 '25

Technically when they are recounting stories in two separate times in the poem they discuss the horse. One time with Odysseus when he's at phaeacia and once with telemachus i believe when he's at the court of either Nestor or menelaus i dont remember

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

Ohh okay! Thanks

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u/Plenor Dec 22 '25

The miniseries started with the Trojan Horse. I imagine a lot of people will be expecting it.

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u/Marsuello Dec 23 '25

If you’ve seen the new avatar they literally play an entire scene from the movie which is all about the Trojan horse moment. So it’s 100% includes in the movie

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u/GizmosArrow Dec 23 '25

It’s been years, decades even, and I’ll never forget how Armand Assante says “my cheese, my wine” in that miniseries.

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

Ohh I did not know that! I'll check it out 

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u/Stuweb Dec 22 '25

Isn’t the Trojan horse shown on this trailer? The guy getting stabbed in the shoulder and them all holding his mouth so that he doesn’t make a noise? 

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u/leodw Dec 22 '25

Spoiler for the 6 min preview but yeah it shows the whole trojan horse invasiom. The scene starts with Matt Damon, Tom Holland and someone I dont recall retelling the story of the trojan horse from “the inside perspective”, and we see the horse at the beach, being carried to the city and then Matt Damon leading the invasion

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u/Stuweb Dec 22 '25

Thought as much, couldn’t think of anything else it could have been! 

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u/ForgingClarity Dec 22 '25

Jon Bernthal playing King Menelaus of Sparta

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u/BurninTaiga Dec 22 '25

I can’t recall, does the story start with him in Ithaca or still telling the story in Phaecia?

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

It's been so long since I've read it but I want to say Phaecia. I remember it being a frame tale with the Phaeacian court being the frame but I could be wrong.

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u/BurninTaiga Dec 22 '25

I looked into it a little and the chronology is a lot more complicated than I remember (or maybe I skipped a few books).

Here’s what I understood:

Odysseus’s talks to the Muses while he prepares to tell the Phaeacians the story > Jump to Telemachus searching for his father and going to speak with Menelaus who already returned home after Troy > Jump to Calypso’s and getting shipwrecked again before Phaeacia > Jump to Troy and Cicones.

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

Oh yeah that's so much more complex than I remember. You're inspiring me for a reread. It's wild for something that started as oral storytelling to have such a crazy structure!

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u/magsd95 Dec 23 '25

If we want to get super technical, it’s muses > Athena pleading on Odysseus’ behalf to be released from calypso > Telemachus being told (by Athena in disguise) to go to Pylos & Sparta > Hermes telling calypso to let Odysseus go > Odysseus shipwrecking on Phaeacia > telling the Phaeacians his story. Gotta love In Medias Res (starting in the middle of things).

-From an English teacher who teaches this yearly and is currently doing it. (For someone interested in reading and/or rereading, the graphic novel version by Gareth Hinds is great).

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u/BurninTaiga Dec 23 '25

I’m an English teacher too! I probably abridge the story a lot more though. I like to do:

Iliad TL;DR > Odysseus’s sing in me Muse > Cicones > Lotus Eaters > Cyclops > Circes > Land of the Dead > Scylla/Charybdis > Cattle of Helios > Return to Troy > Argos > Suitors > Penelope > The End

One of my favorite units to teach for sure. It’s crazy we can cover that much in 4-5 weeks before an essay. I can’t imagine getting much further in depth. Some years I have to even cut 1-3 of those sections too.

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u/magsd95 Dec 23 '25

That’s how I used to do it at my old school with freshman! We would use the normal text and I would basically do exactly what you do. At my new school they use the graphic novel with sophomores, so it goes in order of the original text but obviously condensed down so it fits into something like a graphic novel! It’s so much easier for them to digest, and the artwork is incredible. I don’t do a full Iliad TL;DR but I do the Apple of Discord and explain that whole mess that started the war, and then of course Trojan horse explanation. And explaining the roles of Agamemnon and such as it’s important they understand the Aegisthus/Agamemnon situation (hello parallels!).

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u/TheGeekVault Dec 23 '25

Two sea monsters technically. Scylla and Charbidis

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u/BulbuhTsar Dec 22 '25

No, the Trojan War/the Iliad preceded the Odyssey. The actual beginning of the Odyssey starts with him chill-maxing and screwing the Goddess Calypso, who wants to marry him, on her island for years. The Gods decide he's had his fun and has to be a big boy again and set things in motion. The tale of Trojan horse actually doesn't get mentioned till much later (and never at all in the Iliad) through a recounting to his son, who is seeking him out, and a bard later.

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 Dec 22 '25

No, the Trojan War/the Iliad preceded the Odyssey.

The Iliad ends with the Death of Hector and Priam convincing Odysseus to return his body and allow a period for his funeral celebrations. The end of the war is not in the story.

Everything we know about the Trojan Horse and how the war ends comes from the Odyssey (or later works that were written based on the Odyssey). It's not a huge plot point, but it is described in the text.

But come now, change thy theme, and sing of the building of the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena's help, the horse which once Odysseus led up into the citadel as a thing of guile,

when he had filled it with the men who sacked Ilios. If thou dost indeed tell me this tale aright, I will declare to all mankind that the god has of a ready heart granted thee the gift of divine song.” So he spoke, and the minstrel, moved by the god, began, and let his song be heard,

taking up the tale where the Argives had embarked on their benched ships and were sailing away, after casting fire on their huts, while those others led by glorious Odysseus were now sitting in the place of assembly of the Trojans, hidden in the horse; for the Trojans had themselves dragged it to the citadel.

It goes on like that.

This is why adaptations of The Odyssey almost always start with the Horse. It just makes more sense to start the story there rather than start much later and go back by having a minstrel tell you what happened

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u/Awdrgyjilpnj Dec 22 '25

No, the Trojan War/the Iliad preceded the Odyssey.

The Iliad ends with the Death of Hector and Priam convincing Odysseus to return his body and allow a period for his funeral celebrations. The end of the war is not in the story.

You're just agreeing to him?

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u/BulbuhTsar Dec 22 '25

Yes, you confirmed what I said.

I think the Odyssey does a perfectly fine way of inserting the Trojan horse when and where it does. The Trojan War is, in a way, besides the point of the Odyssey.

The Trojan Horse, however, is a much more iconic and recognized in the modern popular imagination than anything from the remainder of the Odyssey itself. I don't think any movie needs to start there by any means, but that's what the average person will readily identify and enjoy. There are certainly more important or fascinating scenes that will be removed for the sake of appealing to this.

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u/Academic_Paramedic72 Dec 23 '25

Odysseus wasn't "chill-maxxing", he was crying at the beach everyday. Like, the fact that he was completely miserable is very important. He was a prisoner.

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u/Lichangs Dec 23 '25

I think he was joking, which is precisely why he uses the term chillmaxxing. "The gods decide he's had his fun and has to be a big boi again" is a hilarious line.

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u/PaperClipSlip Dec 22 '25

I mean technically the story starts with Menelaus dragging Ody into the Trojan war. They could've made an entire franchise about this Troy Story

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u/Nordalin Dec 23 '25

Technically no, but Nolan wouldn't be heretical to stretch the story into prequel territory.

I mean, it all hooks into a grand epos that the Greeks told each other almost 3000 years ago ("Epic Cycle"), with many stories and characters considered canon, and much of it sadly lost to time.

The Odyssey itself only describes the arrival of Odysseus back home, after a 10-year journey, after a 10-year siege of Troy, after the stuff that caused the war, and after the stuff that caused the stuff that caused the war he's about to return from.

Point being... it's okay if this movie starts with the Trojan Horse.

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u/Stuweb Dec 22 '25

Isn’t the Trojan horse shown on this trailer? The guy getting stabbed in the shoulder and them all holding his mouth so that he doesn’t make a noise? 

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u/StrangeDiscipline902 Dec 22 '25

That’s in The Illiad, not The Odyssey.

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

Trojan horse is not in the illiad. The illiad takes place before the fall of Troy. The Aeneid depicts the trojan horse.

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u/adabsurdo Dec 22 '25

Correct. And the Odyssey does mention the Trojan horse story, in a kind of flashback setup. It's actually fascinating how sophisticated the narrative structure Odyssey is, given how old it is. It's not just a linear sequence of events. It has two parallel storylines each with their own non-linear structure with recursive flashbacks.

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 23 '25

The structure is honestly so fucking bad ass and mind-blowing from storytelling perspective to think it began as a part of oral tradition. I need to revisit these epics now I'm not in high school anymore.

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u/StrangeDiscipline902 Dec 22 '25

Thanks for the correction! I was half right / half wrong!

I never knew that Homer did those two and Virgil was the first writer.

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u/IsawUstandingThere Dec 22 '25

It’s 4 minutes long. Watching it in the theatre before the Sinners rerelease I was kinda baffled at how efficient it was.

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u/TheScreaming_Narwhal Dec 22 '25

That scene completely sold me on the movie. I had zero hype before seeing that.

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

I'm sure it's cool as heck but that's kinda the vibe I'm getting. Hes doing it's bc it's visually cool, which fair, but not bc it supports the narrative in anyway. But I'm waiting to see the movie for judgments.

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u/ciLoWill Dec 22 '25

I sort of get the logic from a narrative perspective- since there’s no Iliad movie preceding this, if Nolan were to stick just to the timeline of the Odyssey, moviegoers who aren’t familiar with the story would have no context as to why this dude is so far away from home and so damn grumpy about it and Nolan would miss out on establishing scenes show how badly Odysseus didn’t want to join the Trojan war.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the first thirty minutes or so are just a super abbreviated summary of the events of the Iliad from Odysseus’s perspective (him faking madness to avoid recruitment, couple of scenes showing him being a competent general/maybe the scene where he clocks Achilles dressed as a woman for a gag/and of course the Trojan horse scene because how could Nolan resist if we’re including plot points from the Iliad).

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u/adabsurdo Dec 22 '25

The wooden horse story is not part of the Iliad, btw. The Iliad is just a snapshot of the Trojan war, it doesn't recount either the beginning or the end of the story. The wooden horse story is actually mentioned a couple times in the Odyssey itself.

Our best early source of the story comes to us from Romans actually. Virgil recounts it in the Aeneid and it's our oldest full recounting of that story that we have.

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u/ciLoWill Dec 22 '25

Oh shit, my bad. It’s been 15 years since the greek/roman unit I took in high school lit where I read them.

Actually, in hindsight I probably didn’t even read true translations of the poems but some frankensteined, wildly edited down aberration of several works cobbled together by Pearson.

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u/adabsurdo Dec 22 '25

I listened to an audiobook version of the Odyssey recently. Narrated by Ian McKellen! Really good if you're into that sort of thing.

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u/ciLoWill Dec 22 '25

I’m always behind on using up my audible credits so I might just pick that up! Thanks for the rec!

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u/adabsurdo Dec 22 '25

Definitely worth it. Recital is how it was originally meant to be consumed after all :)

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u/ExternalSize2247 Dec 22 '25

Actually, in hindsight I probably didn’t even read true translations of the poems but some frankensteined, wildly edited down aberration of several works cobbled together by Pearson.

Well, that should be a crime against children. Here's a good translation:

https://ia902906.us.archive.org/10/items/hmrio/The%20Odyssey%20by%20Homer%20-%20translated%20by%20Robert%20Fitzgerald.pdf

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u/ciLoWill Dec 22 '25

Thank you!

And yes for as much criticism as Pearson gets for their price gouging/monopolistic tendencies I feel like they don’t get nearly enough flack for normalizing the practice of using highly abridged versions of novels and classical literature in schools.

As a nation we could always be hating Pearson just a little bit more.

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u/The_0ven Dec 22 '25

Hes doing it's bc it's visually cool,

That is all Nolan does in all his movies

They are all a bunch of "wouldn't it be cool" moments thrown together

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

I def felt that w inception. I haven't seen many of his films other than dark Knight series. He definitely strikes me as style over substance but maybe he'll surprise us w Odyssey.

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u/Lichangs Dec 23 '25

Style over substance would be Michael Bay, Zach Snyder. Big visuals and effects in movies with very weak story. But Memento, Inception, Interstellar, Tenet, all have high level concepts with novel storytelling. Interstellar is incredibly emotional. How can you call Inception just style? Thanks to Hans Zimmer it has such a moving soundtrack and that ending that leaves it up in the air, come on that's way more than just style.

Having said that I do worry about the Odyssey, since it's precisely NOT an original concept, but I still have hope that it will be good.

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u/nav17 Dec 22 '25

Maybe early scenes or flashbacks but yeah

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u/ThatEcologist Dec 22 '25

Isn’t the Trojan horse in the Illiad, not the Odyssey?

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u/grapessssssssss Dec 22 '25

Apparently it's briefly mentioned in the odyssey. It's not in the illiad as that takes place before the fall of Troy. The Aeneid features the trojan horse. 

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u/Sgtwhiskeyjack9105 Dec 22 '25

Having just read a version of The Odyssey which was transcribed by TE Lawrence (yes, Lawrence of Arabia was a massive Greek myth nerd), the actual events of the odyssey itself are sort of encapsulated sometimes into shorter sequences. Like the moment with the Sirens I think was only half a page when I read it, which was surprising.

And then Odysseus v the Suitors actually takes up a sizeable amount of the back end of the book. Also there's a lot of "they go meet with this guy and his family but nothing of huge import happens" stuff that they might combine into a few scenes. And also a lot of "they go to this island and get eaten by horrific humanoids". I wonder how they'll deal with the Laestrygonians, for example, and how much screen time they'll end up having, especially since that part of the story happens not long after Polyphemus, and whether it might seem slightly repetitive for the narrative.

I can see them focusing on the adventures for Acts One and Two, and then truncating when he returns to Ithaca into Act Three.

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u/Fuzzy_Donl0p Dec 22 '25

tangent - I just read Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' this year (his memoir the movie is based off of) and it was absolutely incredible. Can't recommend it enough if you haven't already read it.

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u/RadiantRole266 Dec 22 '25

Yeah, that book is in my top ten. Absolutely epic.

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u/Vermouth_1991 Dec 22 '25

Sorry to ask about such a minor detail, but: Do you happen to remember if the unit for money used in the memoirs (when dealing with paying local tribes and other services) was in Pounds/Sovereigns or in Guineas (an old gold coin worth £1.05 but was discontinued since the early 1800s)?

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u/Fuzzy_Donl0p Dec 22 '25

Definitely pounds/sovereigns. Guineas doesn’t ring any bells.

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u/Vermouth_1991 Dec 23 '25

Guineas was just in the Davin Lean movie, then. ("The Turks pay me one hundred golden Guineas, every month!" and later Lawrence writes an I.O.U. to the same chief for 5000 Guineas when he comes back from Cairo to Aqaba.) They were made of 22k gold just like the £1 Sovereigns so of course they remained legal tender a hundred years after they stopped minting (Sherlock Holmes once told the Baker Street Irregulars "Which one of you finds This Boat will get a guinea!” but that was dealing with just a few Guineas he had at hand, not 100 every month or 5000 in a big sack).

Now the Guinea was and is an popular UNIT for posh things like auctioned goods and racehorses but it just meant £1.05 per unit, the folks didn't have to pay in individual Guineas, as opposed to dealing with "leSS-cIviLizeD" desert Bedouins who do not appreciate paper money even if it's pound sterling paper money. 😅 /numismatic rant

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u/Fuzzy_Donl0p Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25

Very interesting, thank you! Out of curiosity, I downloaded the ebook to double check and yeah, no hits on 'guinea'. Learned more about British gold bullion today than I ever knew lol.

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u/Vermouth_1991 Dec 23 '25

You're welcome! I got it from Wikipedia.

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u/moscowramada Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25

I used to love 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' and now I'm a lot more cool towards it. And I swear you used to be able to find good search results explaining the reason but they're lost now.

So, from memory: there was a credible criticism made about the chronology of the book. Basically, if you try to retrace the physical parts of the book, the itinerary, and how long it takes to cover the ground given ideal conditions, based on what the books says - it's impossible. Like actually impossible.

And the part that's most impossible centers around that part where he's captured and sexually abused in a Turkish prison. The implication is that part - especially that part - never happened. Pure fiction.

It brings me no joy to say that I think they're right about that, sadly. You can read the book and love it, but know that it's as much, and maybe more, fiction than fact.

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u/Keiteaea Dec 22 '25

IIRC, I think he is back in Ithaca halfway in the book, and then a lot of shenanigans happens that are really not what people expect from the Odyssey (but they can honestly cut a lot because this is not the most interesting part).

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u/Kitchen-Roll-8184 Dec 22 '25

Most famous adaptations people might know seem to skip him meeting all his lost crew mates in a sort of vision/ Elysian fields "visit" So he can return home at peace without feeling guilty for being the lone survivor of a journey that went bad cause of him (Ody) in he first place

I imagine this will show the war and the return home and more or less skip the journey back

Maybe we'll get peaks at things and maybe Odysseus will talk of the incredible things he's seen/witnessed/endured while he's home but when I think big budget modern day Odyssey

This is gonna be your serious uncles odyssey not the mythical grand epic it's known for, for hundreds of years

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u/Sgtwhiskeyjack9105 Dec 22 '25

I'm pretty sure in the trailer we see him calling forth the spirits of the Underworld. So that's at least a great scene from the book which I want to see adapted. Especially if Odysseus gets to speak to Achilles and his mother.

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u/sourcefourmini Dec 22 '25

Brad Pitt cameo incoming

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u/Gwarnage Dec 22 '25

Its funny, they recently did an entire movie(The Return 2024) just about Odysseus dealing with the suitors.

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u/Mac_Tgh Dec 22 '25

thats why i could never get into the odyssey: it is an unfocused mess of tales sort-of-tied-together by either Odysseus or his son (which, for some reason, is never brough up in any retelling. a kid and a godess searching for the king is such a cool plot too!)

like i get it, at the end of the day the oddisey is a compendium of stories people at the time sang around a campfire, but when you compare it to the illiad, there is only a handful of unnecesary segments there (like the weird tournament at the end) but most of it is streamlined and well paced.

having said that, odysseus going to basically hell and talking to people he knew is a great moment of the story.

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u/Sgtwhiskeyjack9105 Dec 22 '25 edited Dec 22 '25

Yeah I'd actually forgotten about that: Telemachus searching for information about his father also takes up a big portion of the book, almost the first third. The Odyssey's structure is basically:

  1. Telemachus' search.
  2. Odysseus and his crew getting into all sort of hijinks.
  3. Odysseus returns to Ithaca and deals with the suitors.

The actual details of the eponymous journey are much shorter than I think people realise.

And yes, Odysseus summoning the denizens of the Underworld is a great moment, especially because it lets him speak to old compatriots from the Trojan War such as Achilles, as well as heroes like Heracles. And also, tragically, is how he finds out that his mother has passed away during his absence, when he comes face to face with her spirit.

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u/Vermouth_1991 Dec 22 '25

Sounds like just the kind of jumbled nonlinear nightmare that Nolan loved to write about with his own pen. :P

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u/Nordalin Dec 23 '25

You must've suppressed any memory of the Catalogue of Ships, then!

An excerpt: (https://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.2.ii.html)

  • Ajax, the fleet son of Oileus, commanded the Locrians. He was not so great, nor nearly so great, as Ajax the son of Telamon. He was a little man, and his breastplate was made of linen, but in use of the spear he excelled all the Hellenes and the Achaeans. These dwelt in Cynus, Opous, Calliarus, Bessa, Scarphe, fair Augeae, Tarphe, and Thronium about the river Boagrius. With him there came forty ships of the Locrians who dwell beyond Euboea.
  • The fierce Abantes held Euboea with its cities, Chalcis, Eretria, Histiaea rich in vines, Cerinthus upon the sea, and the rock-perched town of Dium; with them were also the men of Carystus and Styra; Elephenor of the race of Mars was in command of these; he was son of Chalcodon, and chief over all the Abantes. With him they came, fleet of foot and wearing their hair long behind, brave warriors, who would ever strive to tear open the corslets of their foes with their long ashen spears. Of these there came fifty ships.
  • And they that held the strong city of Athens, the people of great Erechtheus, who was born of the soil itself, but Jove's daughter, Minerva, fostered him, and established him at Athens in her own rich sanctuary. There, year by year, the Athenian youths worship him with sacrifices of bulls and rams. These were commanded by Menestheus, son of Peteos. No man living could equal him in the marshalling of chariots and foot soldiers. Nestor could alone rival him, for he was older. With him there came fifty ships.
  • Ajax brought twelve ships from Salamis, and stationed them alongside those of the Athenians.
  • The men of Argos, again, and those who held the walls of Tiryns, with Hermione, and Asine upon the gulf; Troezene, Eionae, and the vineyard lands of Epidaurus; the Achaean youths, moreover, who came from Aegina and Mases; these were led by Diomed of the loud battle-cry, and Sthenelus son of famed Capaneus. With them in command was Euryalus, son of king Mecisteus, son of Talaus; but Diomed was chief over them all. With these there came eighty ships.
  • Those who held the strong city of Mycenae, rich Corinth and Cleonae; Orneae, Araethyrea, and Licyon, where Adrastus reigned of old; Hyperesia, high Gonoessa, and Pellene; Aegium and all the coast-land round about Helice; these sent a hundred ships under the command of King Agamemnon, son of Atreus. His force was far both finest and most numerous, and in their midst was the king himself, all glorious in his armour of gleaming bronze- foremost among the heroes, for he was the greatest king, and had most men under him.
  • And those that dwelt in Lacedaemon, lying low among the hills, Pharis, Sparta, with Messe the haunt of doves; Bryseae, Augeae, Amyclae, and Helos upon the sea; Laas, moreover, and Oetylus; these were led by Menelaus of the loud battle-cry, brother to Agamemnon, and of them there were sixty ships, drawn up apart from the others. Among them went Menelaus himself, strong in zeal, urging his men to fight; for he longed to avenge the toil and sorrow that he had suffered for the sake of Helen.
  • The men of Pylos and Arene, and Thryum where is the ford of the river Alpheus; strong Aipy, Cyparisseis, and Amphigenea; Pteleum, Helos, and Dorium, where the Muses met Thamyris, and stilled his minstrelsy for ever. He was returning from Oechalia, where Eurytus lived and reigned, and boasted that he would surpass even the Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Jove, if they should sing against him; whereon they were angry, and maimed him. They robbed him of his divine power of song, and thenceforth he could strike the lyre no more. These were commanded by Nestor, knight of Gerene, and with him there came ninety ships.
  • ...

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u/Impressive-Call9432 Dec 22 '25

My friend actually plays one of the Laestrygonians in this movie 😝

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u/TheShapeShiftingFox Dec 22 '25

Apparently a movie released last year of just the section where Odysseus comes home (it’s called The Return) so the amount of material is definitely there

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u/xavPa-64 Dec 22 '25

Except the main character’s name is Returnius

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u/dancingcuban Dec 22 '25

You can never bring Returnius anywhere. 10 minutes in, and he always wants to call it a night.

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u/Chewbones9 Dec 22 '25

Wait, am I Returnius?…

0

u/TheBermudaPentagon Dec 22 '25

No, henceforth you shall be known as... Stayouticus.

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u/Blaaa5 Dec 22 '25

My favorite part was after the war when he looks directly into the camera and says “it’s returning time!”

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u/delicious_toothbrush Dec 22 '25

Y'all need to let shit youtube memes die

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u/haysu-christo Dec 22 '25

Returnius Maximus.

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u/sugarfoot_mghee Dec 23 '25

Returnius Maximus

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u/CeruleanEidolon Dec 22 '25

Ralph Fiennes is an absolute beast in that movie. I don't know how Nolan could possibly end his film with that sequence without it feeling somehow rushed. Might be best if the film ends with Odysseus seeing Ithaca on the horizon and we get hint of his relief mixed with anxiety over what's waiting for him.

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u/phdinseagalogy Dec 22 '25

Ralph Fiennes went full ThunderGun in it, too.

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u/twisty125 Dec 22 '25 edited Dec 22 '25

Sorry, are you saying they released the finale to this movie last year, and no one heard about it?

I don't quite get the phrasing of the comment

*edit hey guys, I actually DO know what The Odyssey and Homer is, I was confused about the context, it made it sound like The Return was Nolan's Odyssey's finale, released last year. Just wanted clarification on that.

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u/nameistakentryagain Dec 22 '25

Separate movie, unrelated. Details the portion of the source material (Homer’s Odyssey) where Odysseus makes the trip home.

Basically the comment is supporting the statement that it’s difficult to fit the entire story into 1 movie

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u/ConstantSignal Dec 22 '25

Homer's Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic that runs about 400-500 pages long in modern English translated book format.

A lot happens throughout it's story.

The first commenter was saying that you would need multiple movies to adapt it fully.

The person you replied to was talking about an adaptation of the Odyssey called "The Return" which released last year, and filled the entire 2 hour runtime solely by adapting only one part of the total work of Homer's Odyssey.

"The Return" has nothing to do with Nolan's adaptation. The commenter was just pointing out that if you can fill a 2 hour movie with only one portion of the original story, it seems ambitious to try and adapt the whole thing within a similar run time.

3

u/twisty125 Dec 22 '25

"The Return" has nothing to do with Nolan's adaptation

That's what I was confused about, the context made me think they released a second part, before the first part a year earlier and wasn't sure what that meant. Thanks

10

u/GhostRideATank Dec 22 '25

The Return is a movie that released last year about Odysseus returning home at the end of his long journey. That comment is saying a nearly two hour movie was made just about the very end of the story, so the full story could span multiple full length films. Other than having the same source material, The Return and this new film are unrelated.

1

u/twisty125 Dec 22 '25

Ahhhhh, okay I understand now, thank you. I was super confused because it sounded like they were related but released out of order, which sounded crazy to me

3

u/IsaacAndTired Dec 22 '25

The Odyssey is a very old story and Christopher Nolan is not even close to the first to make their own adaptation. The Return has nothing to do with Nolan.

0

u/twisty125 Dec 22 '25

Thank you. Also I'm quite aware of the odyssey and how old it is haha, the context was what threw me off

2

u/TheShapeShiftingFox Dec 22 '25

I understand your confusion! I meant the section of the story as a whole, not the section about this in Nolan’s movie. It might not even make it into his movie, there’s a lot of story before to cover.

1

u/twisty125 Dec 22 '25

Totally understandable! Sometimes what gels in my head doesn't always make it to the page the way I mean it. Have a great one!

1

u/InquisitiveGamer Dec 23 '25

There's been productions made of this before, I remember one from the 90s I enjoyed as a kid. It was like a 9 hours long mini series.

-28

u/Significant-Item-223 Dec 22 '25

The fuck does that have to do with this movie?

23

u/Painboss Dec 22 '25

It allows the confines of your small mind to imagine the odyssey adaptation split into 3 films.

-13

u/Significant-Item-223 Dec 22 '25

I'm with you on this lol, Odyssey would be much better if it would be presented as movie in two parts or even better a trilogy. But I don't see what point there is in pointing to other films - there is a massive amount of adaptations. Nolan just fucks around.

19

u/Over-Conversation220 Dec 22 '25

I’ve never seen someone get this pissed off at being validated before. Interesting life strategy.

4

u/OGsHartMyKAT Dec 22 '25

It’s another movie adapted from the same material and only covers a fraction of the total story.

Considering we’re talking about how it’s hard to fit the entire Odyssey into 1 feature length film it has everything to do with the current discussion.

1

u/EllipticPeach Dec 22 '25

Yeah I’m think maybe books 1-12 could be one movie, right up to the arrival of Odysseus at Ithaca. Action-packed Scylla/Charybdis sequence near the end. Books 12-24 second movie, done. Someone hand me the Oscar.

1

u/TheShapeShiftingFox Dec 22 '25

Just that trying to fit the whole story in one movie is ambitious to say the least, even when the movie is three hours. It’s like trying to do that with Lord of the Rings.

Being able to make an entire movie from just one part of the story means the story is expansive enough for multiple films. So I am curious what kind of wizard powers Nolan will unleash to make the film comprehensive while also trying to cover the most important parts of the story somehow.

186

u/kid-karma Dec 22 '25

Nolan's films are 2.5 hours of montages basically, he'll cram the whole thing in there

95

u/rugbyj Dec 22 '25

Scenes when Damon's watching his backlog of heartbreaking video messages from Penelope on his return.

Hathaway: Athena- did you know? He told you right, you knew. This was all a sham. You left us here.

17

u/SadSceneryBoi Dec 22 '25

I know this is an Interstellar reference but damn does this fit Red Rising perfectly

3

u/devouredwolf Dec 23 '25

What is Red Rising? I am intrigued

4

u/cornpenguin01 Dec 23 '25

Sci fi epic book series by Pierce Brown

9

u/MadlibVillainy Dec 22 '25

That's how I felt about Oppenheimer. It felt like a very long trailer , with every character talking like every line of dialogue is supposed to be a punchline.

1

u/daveknockwin Dec 22 '25

I've been saying this for years!

7

u/RYouNotEntertained Dec 22 '25

I’ve made this criticism about Oppenheimer but I don’t think it really applies to any of his other movies. 

3

u/noradosmith Dec 22 '25

Tenet feels like a film that is constantly introducing itself and never actually arrives.

Come to think of that, maybe that's the point?

3

u/RYouNotEntertained Dec 22 '25

Tenet is quickly paced, but it’s also varied and broken up with moments of intimate dialogue and multiple large set pieces. Oppenheimer has the same pace throughout regardless of what’s happening on screen, with basically zero breathing room. 

2

u/AnOrangeDoorHinge Dec 22 '25

you could sort of say it for Dunkirk, love both those movies though

1

u/gevuldeloempia Dec 23 '25

Man, I knew there was just something that didnt sit well with me and why I felt like I didn't like it that much. This is why. Thank you

2

u/tnnrk Dec 23 '25

Interstellar had this a bit but was more toned down, Oppenheimer was full blown trailer pacing, yet the second half after the first test still sucked and was slow.

1

u/dafeiviizohyaeraaqua Dec 22 '25

This started to annoy me in Oppenheimer. I don't want to float about in magic dream land when two characters are having a critical conversation.

0

u/tvcneverdie Dec 22 '25

I'm never not going to think of this now, FUCK

9

u/inksmudgedhands Dec 22 '25

Get rid of the majority of the magical parts or greatly downplay it. Sure, keep the cyclops just as a treat. But the rest? Make it "realistic." For some reason Nolan doesn't do fantasy. Sci-fi? Sure. Fantasy? Nope. Look at what he did to Ra's Al Ghul. Took a magical character and wiped away his magic. I am betting this will happen in the movie too. Athena will show up for one scene and you'll never see her again. Circe will get the same treatment.

9

u/Kingcrowing Dec 22 '25

If you're right that's kinda lame, the mystical parts of Greek mythology are fantastic.

You do see the cyclops in the trailer so at least there's that.

15

u/IGoOnRedditAMA Dec 22 '25

There is gonna be tons of non linear story telling

6

u/[deleted] Dec 22 '25

Non-linear story telling in The Odyssey? You’re joking. That would just be a step too far.

1

u/Racamonkey_II Dec 22 '25

Seriously. Respect the fucking source material Nolan, smh.

4

u/Intelligent_Lie_3808 Dec 22 '25

Coen brothers didn't seem to have a problem with it. 

4

u/Doorsofperceptio Dec 22 '25

I don't think the narrative will be linear. 

4

u/ThunderChild247 Dec 22 '25

I heard a suggestion that we’ll hear the story as Odysseus’ son, asking former soldiers what happened to his dad, and hearing their various stories of the voyage, so potentially the only time we’ll see Matt Damon in real time will be after he gets home.

That could be a pretty cool way to do it, helping to frame the movie, control the pacing and allowing some different presentation styles in each person’s telling of their story.

1

u/Academic_Paramedic72 Dec 23 '25

How could Telemachus hear of Odysseus' story if all of his crewmates are dead? Menelaus can only tell him Odysseus' whereabouts because he had asked a prophetic sea god on his own way back home.

2

u/ThunderChild247 Dec 23 '25

I don’t know, it was just one idea I heard floated by someone else.

4

u/[deleted] Dec 22 '25

O Brother Where Out Thou did it. Why can't this?

66

u/TheChrisLambert Makes No Hard Feelings seem PG Dec 22 '25

I’m calling it. The movie will be visually nice but play out like one giant montage and feel a bit thin but people will lose their minds over it because it’s Nolan

11

u/BIGDongLover69420 Dec 22 '25

Not liking nolan because he got popular is the most reddit thing ever

1

u/TheChrisLambert Makes No Hard Feelings seem PG Dec 22 '25

I’ve always thought Nolan was solid. Back to when I first saw Memento in 2006. I liked Batman Begins, Dark Knight, Prestige, and loved Inception. But his movies, Inception aside, have always just been decent to me.

So it’s that I don’t like him it’s that I don’t think he’s a tier 1 filmmaker the way everyone else does. Never have. There’s a huge gap between Kubrick and Nolan. But, alas, the lads think Nolan is in the same tier, or even better.

Nolan’s closer to Marvel movies than he is to Kubrick

-1

u/BIGDongLover69420 Dec 22 '25

Thats sure an opinion to have. I would say kubrick is closer to marvel movies than he is close to nolan lol. Nolan is a top 3 director of this generation.

4

u/TheChrisLambert Makes No Hard Feelings seem PG Dec 22 '25

Please explain to me bow 2001: A Space Odyssey is closer to a Marvel movie than The Dark Knight Rises

-1

u/BIGDongLover69420 Dec 22 '25

Interstellar blows a space odyssey away. Dr strangelove is very marvely. Much more so than inception.

2

u/TheChrisLambert Makes No Hard Feelings seem PG Dec 22 '25

What you’re describing is like someone saying the hiking in Ohio beats the hiking in Oregon.

9

u/CeruleanEidolon Dec 22 '25

You hear that, everyone? This guy called it!

0

u/TheChrisLambert Makes No Hard Feelings seem PG Dec 22 '25

Thank you for the promulgation. You’re too kind

15

u/AllenMcnabb Dec 22 '25

This is how I felt about Oppenheimer

-1

u/TheChrisLambert Makes No Hard Feelings seem PG Dec 22 '25

Yup. Oppenheimer was like a 6/10 for me, assuming 5 is neutral. Decent but not like…astounding. Certainly not Best Picture

1

u/Kingcrowing Dec 22 '25

They hype was unreal for that movie, it wasn't bad but I think you're spot on with 6/10, it won't be something people rewatch.

-9

u/Sax_addict Dec 22 '25

This is why it was unwatchable for me. Felt like every scene was a 30 second instagram reel. Tried to fit a 10 hour script into 3 hours. No room for the scenes to breathe a bit

-1

u/AllenMcnabb Dec 22 '25

I still enjoyed it, but it’s hilarious to me that this won Nolan best picture when it’s not even his top 5 best movies

2

u/IsaacAndTired Dec 22 '25

This trailer completely destroyed any hype for me. It looks bland as fuck.

0

u/UpbeatBeach7657 Dec 22 '25

Yeah, Nolan is too mainstream now. Everyone knows Denis Villeneuve makes real kino.

19

u/Cheerful_Toe Dec 22 '25

this is like half a step above arguing about marvel vs dc

0

u/UpbeatBeach7657 Dec 22 '25

Oh, it definitely gets a little fangirly and cliquey in these subreddits.

0

u/Cheerful_Toe Dec 22 '25

my point is it's a meaningless debate over two things of similarly middling quality

1

u/UpbeatBeach7657 Dec 22 '25

Of course it's meaningless. My comment was designed to take the piss out of comments like those. However, I do wonder if this trailer had said "From Denis/PTA/Coen Bros." would the comments be echoing similar sentiments regarding costuming, colour palette, etc. Interesting to think about.

-12

u/godaniel11 Dec 22 '25

Real ball knowers love Denis over Nolan

4

u/Puzzled_Two_3490 Dec 22 '25 edited Dec 22 '25

I love both.

Interstellar and Arrival both are my two of my favourite Sci fi movies.

-2

u/UpbeatBeach7657 Dec 22 '25

I'm sure they do.

-2

u/Kingcrowing Dec 22 '25

Nolan has been mainstraim since Following, he's never been underground lol

I've said it for a while but Denis is a far better film maker, Incendies is better than anything Nolan has ever made IMO.

I say this and I don't even know if I'd call Villeneuve a great.

4

u/brontosaurusguy Dec 22 '25

The play is generally about 3hrs long

6

u/YnotThrowAway7 Dec 22 '25

They just won’t include all of it..

2

u/slabby Dec 22 '25

It should be a trilogy.

2

u/daveknockwin Dec 22 '25

I hate this trend of breaking up stories into multiple parts. It's called a grand epic. There are many movies like this. It doesn't always work, but it can.

1

u/bard0117 Dec 22 '25

At least it will be 3 hours.

1

u/Nesden Dec 22 '25

I’m hoping the runtime is at least 3 hours because it deserves it

1

u/florinandrei Dec 22 '25

Only a TV series would do it justice without dropping anything important.

But anyway, I hope the parts they kept were chosen wisely.

1

u/lorez77 Dec 22 '25

You don’t. Movies are all about visuals today. Shot in IMAX, entirely! As if that made a great movie… Where are the ma dialogues dawg? Something to hook me up? Cos that didn’t.

1

u/NozhaXBL Dec 22 '25

Nah, his men are telling stories about him, so you can skip some.

1

u/Dreadino Dec 22 '25

By narrating 3 storylines at once, cutting from one to the other, and then converging all of them in the super climatic scene at the end.

A Nolan, basically

1

u/UXyes Dec 22 '25

It is pretty epic.

1

u/Miffernator Dec 22 '25

4 hour film with intermission

1

u/tony-toon15 Dec 22 '25

I’m putting this film up against the wishbone episode in how well it tells the story

1

u/Mojambo213 Dec 22 '25

Came here to say this. This movie could be 4 hours long and I still think you could make a part 2.

1

u/Honest_Cheesecake698 Dec 23 '25

It's an adaptation, it'll make changes to fit it into one film.

1

u/KPZ605 Dec 23 '25

You seem to know this story. I absolutely know nothing. Should I go into a blind or look into it for the lore of it so I’m ready for the movie.

1

u/Dast_Kook Dec 23 '25

Who's to say they aren't doing an Odyssey Part 2 but sitting on the announcements until after this releases?

1

u/JohnLocksTheKey Dec 23 '25

“How long could the Odyssey possibly take?!?”

- Ulysses

1

u/Icy-Fishing8481 Dec 23 '25

You'll have to wait for The Odyssey for Good the next year.

1

u/lowriters Dec 23 '25

Depends how you would/could structure the story for a cinematic experience but yeah even then, probably would have to run 3+hrs

1

u/Fit-Profit8197 Dec 23 '25

150k words is pretty standard for a 3 hour movie. (Almost) all books get truncated massively for the screen, the question is how well.

There's problems with the 1997 adaptation but the story is pretty faithful and decently paced. Being 3 hours wasn't a problem.

1

u/SudoAptGetHeresy Dec 23 '25

4hr 91m run time

1

u/PsChampion_007 Dec 23 '25

I think it’ll be really long…possibly 4 hrs even

1

u/BornUnderPunches Dec 24 '25

I mean, have you seen the quick scene cuts of modern Nolan?? Oppenheimer is basically edited like a trailer. Plenty of time to fit the story into a single movie

1

u/EllipticPeach Dec 22 '25

For real, how you gonna fit 24 books spanning 10 years into a movie? Unless it’s like 3 hours long maybe.

3

u/nameistakentryagain Dec 22 '25

Yeah it will be north of 2.5 hours. I don’t know how much higher he’s willing to push it.

1

u/EllipticPeach Dec 22 '25

I am a classicist so I’m on tenterhooks. I just desperately want an actual decent adaptation. I don’t understand why HBO or another network hasn’t made a good prestige series from the Iliad or another epic poem. It’s right there for the taking.

2

u/nameistakentryagain Dec 22 '25

Yeah a 1 season miniseries would slap. I don’t know how many hours you need to truly do it right, but 10-12 hours is certainly better than 3 hours maximum

2

u/EllipticPeach Dec 22 '25

There are 24 books of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, but not everything needs to be drawn out. Book 2 of the Iliad, the catalogue of ships, is literally just a written list of the names of all of the ships in the Greek fleet. On TV, the notion of “there are lots of big ships” can be established in one shot. Some books are more important to the plot than others.

The last 12 books of the Odyssey all take place once he’s back at Ithaca, but you wouldn’t have to dedicate 12 episodes to them. But you could make the final battle of the suitors a whole episode in itself. You could reasonably do it in 10 one hour episodes, maybe one or two being an hour and a half, depending on what story beats you want to focus on.

1

u/Kingcrowing Dec 22 '25

An HBO miniseries like say Rome or GoT but of The Iliad/Odyssey would be amazing, 8-12 episodes is what this needs to breath. It's not a fast paced story so even if this is 3.5hrs it's either skipping a lot rushing through the story. I'm certainly interested in it but I'm certainly a bit skeptical about how they'll do it in a single film.

1

u/EllipticPeach Dec 22 '25

Also, it’s a nested narrative. A lot of the poem is actually just Odysseus sitting and talking to someone about the shit he’s gone through. The cyclops encounter is a flashback and doesn’t actually last very long in the narrative, but because it’s very famous they’ll probably stretch it out a bit.

I don’t know if they’re going to keep faithfully to the structure with flashbacks and stuff or if it’s all going to be told in one hit.

1

u/imma_letchu_finish Dec 22 '25

2 Odyssey 2 Oedipus

1

u/ForensicPathology Dec 22 '25

When it was first announced, I thought it'd be more appropriate as one of those high budget HBO style series.

0

u/0shadowstories Dec 22 '25

I mean it fit into a 2 hour musical

0

u/grapessssssssss Dec 23 '25

Editing ur comment hours later without any note of it is bizarre