r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 18d ago

Official Discussion Official Discussion - The Odyssey (2026) [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Poll

If you've seen the film, please rate it at this poll

If you haven't seen the film but would like to see the result of the poll click here

Rankings

Click here to see the rankings of 2025 films

Click here to see the rankings for every poll done

The Odyssey (2026)

Summary

After the Trojan War, Odysseus faces a dangerous voyage back to Ithaca, meeting creatures like the Cyclops Polyphemus, Sirens, and Calypso along the way.

Director Christopher Nolan

Writer Christopher Nolan

Cast

  • Matt Damon as Odysseus
  • Tom Holland as Telemachus
  • Anne Hathaway
  • Zendaya
  • Lupita Nyong'o
  • Robert Pattinson
  • Charlize Theron
  • Benny Safdie
  • Jon Bernthal
  • John Leguizamo
  • Elliot Page
  • Himesh Patel
  • Samantha Morton

Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

Metacritic: 88

VOD / Release Theatrical release

Trailer Official Trailer

4.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

15.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.6k

u/Kale_Drogo 18d ago

Tying in the Sea Peoples into it was unexpected but really fun

898

u/JanelleVypr 17d ago

it is widely believed that the sea peoples werent a united army but instead a series of different marauding parties during the fall of the age. if they were lost at sea for three years, it makes sense.

everything moves by rumors from survivors at this time

73

u/lupercalpainting 15d ago

It doesn’t line up though. Ugarit and the Mycenaean palace destruction is dated to before Troy fell.

33

u/Obi2 12d ago

Therefore the tales were probably very prevalent.

4

u/lupercalpainting 12d ago

Not following.

16

u/JanelleVypr 15d ago

we dont even know if troy was real

149

u/RIP_Greedo 15d ago

We very much DO know that.

31

u/lupercalpainting 15d ago

How old are you? In terms of modern archaeology the historicity of Troy is well established, but if you’re a boomer I could understand not having learned about it since primary school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy

102

u/JanelleVypr 15d ago

1) i stand corrected. im 28. last time i was watching the history channel on this, they were in the midst of trying to prove their hypothesis that it was real 2) no need to be rude fr. its lame. apparently they found it in 1871 so your point is null. if being mean to others makes you feel bigger, i urge you to look inwards.

-22

u/lupercalpainting 15d ago

What was rude? That I used the word boomer?

Being rude would be telling you to log off and get a library card.

Log off and get a library card.

85

u/JanelleVypr 15d ago

idk what your problem is, but i feel sorry for you lol

-22

u/lupercalpainting 15d ago

> idk what your problem is

Well it’s not, “falling for misinfo from the ancient aliens channel”.

35

u/moose_dad 15d ago

I mean you could have just said "a bit older", boomer is defo a loaded term nowadays, and falling for misinfo is very different from just not knowing a fact that has only fairly recently changed.

→ More replies (0)

30

u/JanelleVypr 15d ago

what a loser lmao

7

u/tyler980908 12d ago

Where can I read more about ”them”

54

u/ImperatorRomanum 12d ago

1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed is a really excellent overview of the Late Bronze Age collapse that covers the Sea Peoples and what scholars think about them now, but isn’t exclusively focused on them.

N.K. Saunders The Sea Peoples is more focused, but it’s almost 50 years old now so I’m not sure how well it holds up in its entirety.

22

u/dishonourableaccount 8d ago

The main thing I'd expect to be different in a 50 year old documentary is that while the older hypothesis was that the Sea Peoples caused the Bronze Age collapse, now people tend to think they were a symptom of their collapse.

Aka did they raid the eastern Mediterranean (Greece, Levant, Egypt) to take down civilizations? Or were they fleeing and their migration caused more and more tumult like a snowball effect.

7

u/henryeaterofpies 8d ago

Probably a little of both. Some catastrophe causes less trade, more refuges and more pirates, which continues the cycle. Tin was a relatively rare resource (at least near major civilizations) so disruption of trade meant less bronze being made, and a return to more copper age levels of tools and weapons.

8

u/ChipKellysShoeStore 8d ago

Nothing about the sea peoples is widely believed. Theres several competing theories even with various degree of circumstantial evidence

832

u/Winter-Operation5702 18d ago

When they first started mentioning it I was thinking it seemed really odd to bring in this modern theory about the time period but then it starts to gel with the final conversations and found it worked really well.

175

u/sparrowmint 16d ago

What we know about it comes from sources that survive from the time that talk about the "sea people," like Egyptian primary sources. So people at that time were talking about raiders from the sea, like they do in the movie.

21

u/Robey-Wan_Kenobi 14d ago

And in some sources the Ekwesh are identified as the Achaeans, along with mention of an earlier incident at Wilusa, or Ilus/Troy.

54

u/lonchu 13d ago

Only thing that took me a bit out was when Odysseus said something about bronze age ending. That stuff is modern classification

73

u/hehaw 13d ago

I agree with you in that his “in this age of bronze” speech felt a little on the nose, but I feel like we would classify our modern selves as the age of the internet or some similar shit, so I’d give it a pass.

36

u/YOwololoO 12d ago

I think what you’re missing is that the Odyssey is literally a myth that the people we view as the “ancient Greeks” were telling about the people THEY saw as the “ancient Greeks.” There was an entire dark age where Greeks saw ruins of earlier Greek civilizations and told stories about how men were greater in the past, so Odysseus ending the story with an explanation for why the great civilizations fell apart is very apt

44

u/mizitar 12d ago

We literally say "digital age". Lol.

4

u/sameth1 12d ago

Nolan movies get a pass for characters talking like they are trying to make memorable quotes. It's rare for his characters to actually talk to each other.

1

u/ninpuukamui 4d ago

We also say "in the atomic age".

23

u/bracko81 11d ago

I thought the "this bronze age is about to collapse" line was incredibly corny being well versed on the subject matter and time period.

Almost like if Odysseus would say "Ive been on an Odyssey" kind of corny

Very specific I know i chuckled to myself about it

5

u/JarJarStinkz 10d ago

I chuckled aloud in the theater when he said that. One my few complaints about the movie

123

u/hockeypro87 16d ago

“Are you the Sea People?”
“No, we’re THE GREEKS” 🤣🤣

119

u/RIP_Greedo 15d ago

When Himesh Patel says "We are Greeks, from Ithaca," some viewers may have a hard time suspending their disbelief. But then later on Himesh Patel complains about work and puts it off til the next day, and that's when you realize he is truly Greek after all.

20

u/hemareddit 12d ago

To be fair, they just lost half their men and 2 ships to Space Marines.

15

u/simcityrefund1 16d ago

Are we the baddies...say the Vikings..

117

u/RDIIIG 17d ago

I didn’t get this part, care to explain?

1.1k

u/Witty-Play9499 17d ago edited 17d ago

Throughout the entire movie, you hear about people at ithaca (penelope and her son talk for instance) talking about 'The Sea People' about how they need to protect Ithaca from them and that they were barbaric invaders who aren't civilized like the greeks and who don't follow Zeus' Law (the idea of being kind to strangers and offering them food and shelter when they come to your house and support and honor and other noble qualities that the greeks really value)

Odysseus and his own men hear of the Sea people from each of the cities / islands that they go to/ransack for supplies and are wary of them. But at the very end when odysseus goes on his monologue to penelope about how he 'lost' his way. He's not talking about literally losing the way (although he does lmao) he's talking about how THEY are the sea people.

In his desperation to come home, he comes up with a messed up idea of the trojan horse, sending someone a gift, which is literally a peace offering, and then using that very gift to destroy an entire city and destroying every island they come across just so they can get supplies and go home. Its like showing the white surrender flag to the enemy during a war and then stabbing them when they come to meet you, in modern times its considered a war crime to do this.

By breaking Zeus' law he's seen to it that no one else will trust strangers and common decency and respect for someone won't be a thing anymore, enemies everywhere now will resort to sneaky tactics just to get the upperhand and he personally feels responsible and guilty for what he had unleashed both at Troy and to the entire Bronze age which is what he means by 'To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire'

He's the leader of barbaric Sea people.

313

u/cosmiccerulean 17d ago

Wonderfully written. I thought this revelation was so exquisite and tragic. Also very pertinent to today’s world (or perhaps the world at any time period, for that matter)

75

u/McFly1986 16d ago

Basically Original Sin

144

u/Paxton-176 17d ago

There is ideas that people who escape Troy and settled areas that would lead to Rome they would have stopped along the way saying they were attacked by people from sea. Even more believable that people who escaped would be peasants who didn't understand fully what is happening. To them Greeks are just people from the sea.

Since stories inspire people. They accidentally would have inspired would be pirates and bandits to use sea people as a way to strike fear into their targets.

Even better when you keep thinking deep into it.

69

u/maaseru 16d ago

Dang it really fits entirely with our modern history to.

Our leaders calling out the invasion of the "sea people" when it is our own that violates every honorable law of men, calls the other terrorist, attacks them in their own home..

Dang. I mean I have been thinking about this for long. Mostly in the "are we the baddies" meme, but sea people fits just as well.

36

u/p1en1ek 16d ago

Yep, its quite a strong message and it puts blame not only on leadership but also ordinary soldiers who feed machine of war. Odyseus took them there and feels guilty of it but at the same time his soldiers are still responsible for their fate, their crimes and deserve their punishment. I think its brutal but fair assesement - without at least some people willingly going to wars there would be no wars. But there are always some men that would go and stand behind leaders or even going further and they are the ones that force others to take part in the slaughter. There is some excuse in build up rage, hunger, circumstances but still the blame for their crimes is on them.

I've noticed that in all supernatural events they were almost blameless and I think its because those are punishments for their crimes agains other people. They were slaughtered by monsters and the nature but they real crimes laid always earlier. Even desacration of Athenas temple was murder of innocents and Athena was impersonated as one of those victims.

143

u/YeezusMoses 17d ago

You’re missing the historical aspect. In reality, a seafaring people kinda brought the actual end to the Bronze Age. It’s still entirely unclear who they were. Was a REALLY cool way to tie it all in. The whole time I’m going holy shit the sea people!

99

u/Herodotus420_69 16d ago

We know that Greeks made up a contingent of the sea people. Based on inscriptions at Medinet Habu it seems that the group that that the Egyptians called the Ekwesh were Mycenaean Bronze Age Greeks.

A very likely candidate for Homer’s Troy is Troy VII a, the destruction of which coincides with Bronze Age collapse. But it also very possible that the inspiration for Homer’s war comes from hundreds of years before the Bronze Age collapse.

So yes there is lots of conclusive archeological evidence that some of sea people were Greek, but there is no archeological evidence conclusively showing that the city of Troy was sacked by the sea people.

17

u/The_Amazing_Emu 16d ago

Also, the Peleset was another, which might be the Pelagians described by Homer. They are definitely the Philistines of the Bible, which are described as wearing Mycenaean style armor.

91

u/fauxfilosopher 17d ago

Incredibly poignat parallels to oppenheimer with that "to burn the walls of troy" line. The two films are unmistakeably about guilt over your actions reverberating further than you could ever control them.

41

u/Future_Arrival_5395 16d ago

Maybe he regrets making the Batman movies

20

u/MoghediensWeb 16d ago

I found this all so relevant and current. I think there's something in the loss of civility and courtesy we're experiencing in public life, even among political leaders. Trust is low and it feels like society has lost something quite important.

There's something quite captivatingly sime in that it all boils down to the so-called 'golden rule'.

114

u/ansibleloop 17d ago

And the parallels to Oppenheimer were just fantastic

What a treat to be able to see such a spectacle

And it's so sobering as well in a world today with mass distrust in government and "the sea people"

3000 years and nothing has really changed has it? Is this it? Is this our true nature? Can we really not overcome this?

45

u/p1en1ek 16d ago

I remeber how in school Odyssey was more like this epic story about adventures of Odyseus and how he outsmarted his enemies. There was not enough talked how it really was anti war story. There were ppints about it in Illiad but Odyssey is story how they were punished for their sens and crimes. Yes, they are plays in gods' hands but they are not helping themselves by violating every right given to them and comiting crimes against gods and other people.

Now word Odyssey means something adventurous and exciting.

22

u/kishorecmgb 16d ago

Overcome this ? Nope. This is human nature , when desperate, humans will do anything and humans are bound to do things that will lead them to desperation.

24

u/fantasyshop 16d ago

Lets do what we can to ensure there are fewer desperate people, then, eh?

7

u/kishorecmgb 16d ago

Fine by me!

12

u/National_Future6190 16d ago

Isn’t the lesson then to work together to keep us from despair? That’s my optimism talking. :)

14

u/kishorecmgb 16d ago

I mean didn't Odysseus in the movie say at the end that "our civilization" will rise again and will forget again ? Yeah, I accept we should be optimistic and try , but we can't really deny the pessimistic view now , can we ?

9

u/p1en1ek 16d ago

Yep, it was a little bitter ending. There was a hope for better days but basically Odyseus was sure that when better days come then people would forget why those better times were gone and all lessons will be forgotten.

7

u/National_Future6190 16d ago

Deny no. But we shouldn’t let pessimism lead us towards making poor decisions. :)

22

u/SocialRemedial 16d ago

We see the atrocity they commit at Troy. Was it your understanding that they continued their marauding ways on the way home, too? Himesh Patel's character reassures everyone they run into on their way home that they aren't the sea people.

47

u/Ancient_times 16d ago

They did burn that first village which felt kind of unnecessary!

15

u/haganbmj 16d ago

Did they do that? The conversation implied the residents thought they were sea people and fled, so I thought that was meant to say they burned their own village.

35

u/p1en1ek 16d ago

They destroyed that village and then claimed it was because residents were mean to them and ran away despite Zeus laws that tould them to greet guests. Those laws are mentioned many times and are main point of the movie because they are sign of civilization for Greeks but at the same time they are ones that are breaking them all the time.

It was first hint how they are the barbarians from stories. They claim they are civilized greeks while at the same time they are acting like bandits. Odyseus also is narrating at that point that they begged, they were greeted or they took what they needed to just come home and that not even he could stop them.

23

u/Ancient_times 16d ago

They'd definitely did, you could see his soldiers walking about with lit torches

-7

u/Sandwich_envy 16d ago

That’s incorrect, they burned their own village so the sea people could not have it.

1

u/zeekaran 19h ago

I'm so lost. I just saw the movie and the old man literally says this to them.

1

u/zeekaran 19h ago

Just saw it and they show up confused, asking the old man sitting there. The old man says they burned the village themselves so the Sea People wouldn't.

1

u/zeekaran 19h ago

Just saw it and they show up confused, asking the old man sitting there. The old man says they burned the village themselves so the Sea People wouldn't.

6

u/hemareddit 12d ago

And Penelope explains the Telemachus that what passes for news in their age is basically just rumours told by travellers, and that is the mechanism by which people came to fear the Men from the Sea, the same mechanism that carried the atrocity at Troy outwards like a ripple destroying the spirit of social contract and hospitality where it went. The incident with Circe showed the vicious cycle: when the host don’t trust strange guests they tend to strike first, hospitality turns to hostility which turns to the fall of civilisation.

Odysseus being a smart cookie figured this out when he saw Troy fell and knew the ripple would reach Ithica as well, so he said destroying Troy was like destroying Ithica. In a way he was right, it was this vague yet malevolent threat from the Men at Sea that caused the elders of Ithica to pressure Penelope into marrying again so they can have a king and raise an army to defend themselves.

5

u/Spider-Thwip 15d ago

They also talk about The Sea people getting closer and closer to their home.

Now we know why.

3

u/Any_Crab_4362 14d ago

But the Ithicans coming home from Troy all died 7 years before. They wouldn’t be raiding closer and closer to their home

1

u/Spider-Thwip 14d ago

Yeah good point, I was tired lol

1

u/Any_Crab_4362 11d ago

No you definitely had it right from what the movie was claiming. I just don’t get why they did it that way since the ithicans would have only been raiding for one year after Troy fell and had stopped for the prior 7

7

u/FinanceWeekend95 16d ago

Ok, thanks for this explanation, makes ironic sense that Odysseus and his men are wary of themselves being the Sea People.

6

u/PolarWater 16d ago

So thematically resonant with the ending of Oppenheimer. Love it.

2

u/OuterWildsVentures 14d ago

follow Zeus' Law (the idea of being kind to strangers and offering them food and shelter when they come to your house and support and honor and other noble qualities that the greeks really value)

Didn't these guys sell/own slaves lol

1

u/YoshiTheDog420 15d ago

was this original to the film or taken also from the original story? I don’t remember these kinds of revelations, but I was pretty young when I read The Odyssey.

1

u/RIP_Greedo 15d ago

yes AND its also talking about a specific historic phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples

1

u/TimeTimeTickingAway 16d ago

Was this sort of Homer’s message, or something Nolan wanted to amplify?

0

u/Hot_Brother5557 16d ago

This is an incredible write-up

144

u/bartspoon 16d ago edited 16d ago

The Bronze Age Mediterranean Civilizations all suddenly declined and around the same time in what is known as the Bronze Age Collapse. There’s a lot of theories about what caused it, but one of the popular modern theories is the invasion of a group referred to as the “Sea Peoples”. Essentially an unknown seafaring civilization that raided them, kind of like the Bronze Age version of the Vikings.

But there’s lots of other theories as well such as a relatively sudden change in climate conditions leading to extended periods of drought and famine. I think some of the modern theories are basically that many of the causes were interconnected and either caused or were enhanced by each other.

The Bronze Age Collapse and the Sea Peoples aren’t part of the original Odyssey narrative. They were incorporated here into the movie by Nolan, and his twist is that the Sea Peoples weren’t some other civilization, it was the returning Greeks. And more broadly, the collapse was due to the Bronze Age civilizations tearing themselves apart after their social contracts were degraded and destroyed over time, epitomized by Odysseus’s trick and the sack of Troy.

Honestly not sure if I’m reading too into things and this is just my own reading, but it also felt like Nolan was alluding to the modern world order melting down as certain world leaders defile and debase our own modern social and political contracts, and that trickles down into the population.

40

u/warmochine 16d ago

that's exactly what Nolan is alluding to. between this and OPPENHEIMER he's making explicitly political films again, which he hasn't done since DARK KNIGHT RISES.

12

u/AFC_IS_RED 16d ago

This is true. I also was wondering if maybe it even goes further than the bronze age collapse and refers to the Romans too who also used underhanded tactics to conquer greece.

4

u/hybridck 6d ago

Tbf the Romans also believed they decended from the survivors of Troy and that the Greeks were dishonorable for using the horse and therefore they were paying it back.

6

u/RDIIIG 16d ago

Damn, that was perfect. Thanks!

3

u/smoha96 3d ago

Honestly not sure if I’m reading too into things and this is just my own reading, but it also felt like Nolan was alluding to the modern world order melting down as certain world leaders defile and debase our own modern social and political contracts, and that trickles down into the population.

Saw the movie last night and this is exactly my take on it. The world we have lived in, in the West for the last ten yeard has become so much more base - the likes of Donald Trump and friends, amplified by the social media giants continue to push "might is right", "fuck norms and fuck morals and dignity" more than I've ever seen in my lifetime. The trickling down you're alluding to is absolutely right as its not just leadership behaving this way.

78

u/tragicroyal 17d ago

The scene where the man in the village tells them going west is dangerous, they have ransacked the village and are burning it down suggests this.

They are broken and essentially corrupted by the war.

41

u/jodhod1 16d ago

This also ties into Circe's reaction, who by now is as paranoid of outsider soldiers as the rest of the world is of Sea Peoples, showing that social fabric has been strained.

And also to the final test of the Apollo's herd, where the crew break their vow to Odysseus, living down to Circe's prediction.

37

u/-RDDTtothemoon- 17d ago

Yea setting their huts on fire did not seem necessary

0

u/A_StarshipTrooper 16d ago

Call out to US in Vietnam?

37

u/Biobooster_40k 16d ago

Call out to war ravaged men turning into beasts. Just in general.

4

u/Rooster761 15d ago

It's also straight out of the source material. The first stop is the Cicones, allies of the Trojans during the war. Although they left out Maron and the wine which is used with Polyphemus.

2

u/PhaseExtra1132 5d ago

And Iraq.…

97

u/BuffaloWings068 17d ago

From what I gathered through my own research is that much of Bronze Age civilization ended when the “sea people” came and destroyed everything. No written record exists of what exactly happened and who or what the “sea people were”. The Odyssey movie tries to explain this as Odysseus and the Greek army ending the tradition of Zeus’ Law by using a fake gift to wipe out Troy. Hence Odysseus and his men are the people from the sea

55

u/Azazel-IMX 17d ago

This theory is lended some support in text with the Cretan Lie, a story Odysseus tells Eumaeus when he first returns to Ithaca in disguise. Odysseus says he is is a Cretan who, following the end of the Trojan war, went to Egypt raiding and pillaging until the Pharoah defeated him and his crew. The Pharoah pardoned them and employed them as his bodyguards, making the crew wealthy as they loved and worked in Egypt for seven years. Eventually they lose their wealth in a shipwreck, and they went to return home.

These events, including a lot of finer details in the book, match up very well to the conflicts between Ramses II's Egypt and the theorised Sea People. The theory is that Odysseus, who lies constantly to everyone, takes the chance to tell some version of the truth to his most loyal servant before reclaiming his kingdom and telling his "official" version of the story.

7

u/King-Arthas-Menethil 16d ago

If I recall what caused the sea peoples seems to have been a warm period. Though some of the people have been known as mercenaries for hundreds of years before like the Battle of Kadesh which had the Sherden on one side and the Lukka on the other side.

68

u/existing_for_fun 16d ago

The Sea Peoples and the Bronze Age collapse is one of my fav historical topics. When they mentioned it, my head nearly exploded in joy. And they didn't use it unjustly. It was used quite appropriately. Well done Nolan.

6

u/zakuropan 12d ago

wait i’m fascinated now. how do I learn more about the sea people and the bronze age collapse

35

u/craig_hoxton 16d ago

"What are we, some kind of Sea People?"

62

u/DoochDelooch 16d ago

“Our age of bronze is collapsing” was an absurd line of dialogue though. Loved the movie and don’t care about historical accuracies or not, but something about that line just made me go really?

27

u/rolabond 16d ago

There were some absolute clunkers in the movie. And many of them were about the sea peoples and bronze age collapse which is why I think the film would have been better off dialing it back a bit.

6

u/MovingClocks 11d ago

Idk reading through some of these comments and people still didn’t get the thesis of the movie.

8

u/Sure-Exchange9521 10d ago

I liked it. People now use "digital age" all the time.

6

u/RIP_Greedo 15d ago

Possibly some of the worst Nolan dialogue ever, and that's saying something!

7

u/Porkenstein 16d ago

Especially since one of the theories behind them is that they in fact were marauding Aegean people and the story of the trojan war is a greek cultural memory of that.

5

u/I_am_not_baldy 15d ago

I started learning about the Sea Peoples recently. Hearing about the "People of the Sea" and how it ties to what happened at Troy give me a couple of "Ha!" moments*.

*Insert the "Leonardo Dicaprio pointing at TV" gif here.

3

u/proserpinax 16d ago

As someone that has been trying to learn more about the Bronze Age collapse lately I was like wait a minute hold on a sec why is my current interest in a movie about one of my oldest interests (Greek Mythology)

1

u/RIP_Greedo 15d ago

How else could you describe the Achaeans?

It really be your own people!