Atreyee Poddar
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey hits theatres July 17. The film was shot for the first time ever entirely on IMAX film cameras, and packed with a cast including Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o... the list keeps going. Before you queue up for opening weekend, here’s your crash course on the 2,700-year-old source material.
Homer’s epic, composed somewhere around the 8th century BCE, picks up right after the Trojan War ends. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, should be a quick boat ride from home. Instead, an angry sea god and a string of monster problems turn the trip into a ten-year odyssey.
Homer opens partway through the action and lets Odysseus narrate his own backstory as one long flashback. Whether Nolan keeps that structure or tells it straight is one of the film's biggest open questions.
The Cyclops, the Sirens, the sorceress Circe — they’re all obstacles, but the deeper conflict is with Poseidon himself, who spends the whole poem trying to make sure Odysseus never sees Ithaca again.
While Odysseus is off battling monsters, his wife Penelope is fending off a house full of suitors who’ve decided she’s a widow and Ithaca’s throne is up for grabs. In the film, that role of chief suitor, Antinous, goes to Robert Pattinson, opposite Anne Hathaway’s Penelope.
Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, was a baby when his father left for Troy and is basically a stranger to him by the time the story catches up. Tom Holland plays him in the movie — a coming-of-age arc happening in parallel to dad’s monster-fighting.
Forget the sword — his signature trait across the poem is cunning. He talks his way out of danger, tricks a Cyclops, and eventually sneaks back into his own home in disguise before revealing himself. If the movie leans into trickster, it’s being faithful.
Athena, goddess of wisdom, is Odysseus’s protector throughout the poem, nudging events in his favour whenever things look grim. Zendaya takes on the role on-screen.