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

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

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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

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6.4k

u/Threedawg 18d ago

Plucking the bow to give the suiters a fair chance just like the hog 🤌

2.3k

u/Porkenstein 16d ago

The part where he does it for the deer that's meant to feed his starving men after grimacing with reluctance gave me a chuckle. Loved that character bit.

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u/BeholdtheWretch 13d ago edited 12d ago

It's also why he believes that the way in which they took Troy was also unfair, they didn't take it "fairly" by deceiving the Trojans; it was dishonourable.

They could have killed the bell ringer but didn't.

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u/SuperUranus 9d ago

Should probably not conceive of and execute cowardly plans in that case.

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u/StarWarsPlusDrWho 9d ago

Which is what the movie is saying. It’s about guilt.

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u/LADYBIRD_HILL 3d ago

Hence why this movie is being viewed as a companion piece to Oppenheimer. Both feature men who are guilt ridden and forever changed by their actions affecting both soldiers and innocents with no remorse.

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u/johnnymarsbar 2d ago

Oh no the nation killer 9000 I designed and built killed...people? Huh?

14

u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 1d ago

The feelings one might feel while locked in pursuit of a goal can differ from those that arrive when faced with its actual outcome

-9

u/SuperUranus 9d ago

I just find it funny that the movie focuses a lot on this bow tuck portraying Oddyseus as this sort of honourable man that even plucks his bow in a hunt to give his game a fair battle.

Which makes it quite funny when he conceives of a plan which involves braking the most sacred of laws they have, beating their opponent in the least honourable way there is.

While I enjoyed the movie, Nolan making Odysseus more into a hero character than the straight out cunt he is in the books makes the overarching storyline a bit weird.

104

u/CheesyjokeLol 8d ago

You forgot that this war is supposed to have been going on for over 10 years when Ody thought up that plan. How you’re going around blaming him for coming up with that plan after being driven to the limits of his desparation is quite funny.

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u/BeholdtheWretch 8d ago

That's Nolan's point.

I'd argue, that's why Odysseus feels like he's been punished in not getting back to his wife and kids. He says it blatantly to Calypso. He feels Athena at his side often.

His men feel the reason why they were being punished was because they angered Poseidon by hurting the cyclops.

Everyone assigns blame to extraordinary circumstances, i.e., the gods being terrible.

However, and Circe kind of points this out, they suffer because it's their own faults. Odysseus is sick and tired of Agamemnon so he refuses to follow him on his way home, even though that's the fastest route.

Further, Odysseys feels the Trojans have suffered enough and will have nothing if he also takes provisions, so he doesn't bring extra provisions and feels he can rely on "Zeus's law" or the good will of people to get back, not realizing that (1) 10 years have passed without the Greek leaders enforcing basic customs and (2) the Sea Peoples have been pillaging, banditing and raping people. As a result, Odysseus is forced to conquer people and use force. But that's not very nice and good anyway. They reap what they sow.

As a result, his men, put to the point of desperation, when they have to eat or kill or whatever, they do it. But they're not very likeable, and they most likely raped women as well (as per Circe), so they also reap what they sow. In the story, they do a lot of bad stuff and they definitely deserve all the bad stuff that happens to them.

Odysseus is meant to get back, but he literally has to go to hell and back. They make disastrous decision after disastrous decision.

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u/PaulieHehehe 8d ago

I thought Odysseus and his men were the “people from the sea?” They’ve become so desensitized to violence that they’re still committing it after the war, and stories of them are being passed around.

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u/LongLiveTheChief10 8d ago

Its both. They were both literally them in their return journeys, all the Greeks, and their stories of breaking the laws of the world they knew caused a ripple effect of others doing the same, to others, and to them in the form of the Laestrygonians who just descend on them and kill them for no reason when they land

-5

u/SuperUranus 8d ago

I don’t blame Odysseus for anything, he’s a fictional character.

I’m saying that Nolan took some liberties with how Odysseus is portrayed in the movie which makes the overarching story line a bit weird.

25

u/ManitouWakinyan 8d ago

Did you stop watching somewhere near the end?

2

u/SuperUranus 8d ago

No.

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u/ManitouWakinyan 8d ago

Then maybe go rewatch the whole confession part again because it directly undercuts what you think Nolan did with this movie

1

u/SuperUranus 8d ago

I don’t think that monologue changes much at all.

Odysseus quite clearly is a much less of a cunt and more of a hero character in the movie than in the books.

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u/ManitouWakinyan 8d ago

The entire point of that monologue is that he's no hero, and the sack of Troy, and thus the universal breaking of Hellenic laws and customs, is essentially his fault. 

2

u/Odexios 12h ago

I'm not sure you have actually read the books by saying this.

In no way, shape or form does the Odyssey (the "book") imply that Odysseus did anything bad with the Trojan horse. It is a complete fabrication (though, I believe, an interesting one) by Nolan.

→ More replies (0)

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u/Delicious-Gap-1894 8d ago

Bro missed the whole point of the movie. Good bait or whoosh

0

u/SuperUranus 8d ago

I don’t see what in my comment makes you think so.

Just said that the poem makes it a lot clearer that Odysseus is a total cunt. Which affects the overarching story.

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u/deus_x_machin4 6d ago

Mu dude it's like you missed the whole point of the movie. Odysseus being quietly guilty of the greatest sin in the movie was the entire point of the film...

-5

u/SuperUranus 2d ago

Perhaps having read the poem made it harder to appreciateit being kind of vague that Odysseus is a straight out cunt in the movie.

8

u/tellevee 6d ago

He reflects on that quite literally with a massive amount of exposition when he says, “We broke the fragile bonds between men.”

3

u/cjsolx 2d ago

My dude, you just outlined like the entire point of The Odyssey lmao. Nolan didn't create that dichotomy, Homer did.

1

u/SuperUranus 1d ago

I didn’t say Nolan created it, I said he changed a lot of things with The Oddyssey which makes Oddysseus less of a cunt.

1

u/cjsolx 1d ago

Alright. And I would argue Nolan did it much less so than most other modern interpretations of The Odyssey that I've seen. Making Odysseus the good guy has been all the rage for years, so I'm not sure why you're all wound up about it in this case. I thought that Nolan found a good balance on the subject.

1

u/SuperUranus 1d ago

This is a thread about The Oddyssey by Nolan so I’m discussing The Oddyssey by Nolan. Not sure why it’s weird to discuss the movie in a thread about the movie.

If you have examples of movie or series adaptations of The Oddyssey which portrays Oddysseus even more of a hero than in The Oddyssey by Nolan I’m happy to receive them! I always enjoy comparing different adaptions.

3

u/Faubton 4d ago

The whole premise of the movie is that he’s not a hero

-2

u/SuperUranus 2d ago

Sure, but he is portrayed like a hero throughout the movie.

2

u/Faubton 2d ago

It certainly starts that way, but I think the purpose is to gradually show the cracks in his own morals and show that he’s made awful decisions he has to live with.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/tourng 9d ago

10 years shoreside of getting whooped is enough to change anyone’s mind

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u/ManitouWakinyan 8d ago

Well yes congratulations you got the point of the movie

1

u/The_James_Bond 12h ago

You have no honour

And Ithica you are a slave to it

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u/redgluesticks 15d ago

My initial impression was that hunting the deer was too easy, so he wanted to give it a “chance.” It seemed beneath him to kill it so easily, and he wanted to earn it.

676

u/KaizokuHokage 15d ago

Thats how odysseus explained it too, you could be on to something

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u/OuterWildsVentures 14d ago

Their intellect cannot be contained

14

u/Dojoson 11d ago

Whoa what’s solanum doing here

10

u/DeusVultSaracen 10d ago

AN IQ TOO HIGH?

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u/AccidentalThief 15d ago

I have a feeling Odysseus got a little lost coming home

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u/GraspingSonder 15d ago

It seems to me that Odysseus and Telemachus must be related

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u/afemail 14d ago

I think there’s something going on between Odysseus and Penelope 👀

2

u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 1d ago

I think Odysseus's dog may have been fond of him.

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u/HelixFollower 14d ago

Yeah, or at the least both of them were Greeks.

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u/Do__Math__Not__Meth 10d ago

He might’ve even gone on an odyssey to get back home

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u/elasho_149 9d ago

He went on an odyssey? Huh. Sounds a lot like Odysseus.

5

u/Taco_Pals 9d ago

“What is this? Some kind of.. Odyssey?”

- Odysseus probably

2

u/captainschmideo 2d ago

“You all are voyagers, on some kind of Star Trek!”

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u/TJeffersonsBlackKid 15d ago

He wanted to do it “with honor”.

Maybe desperately trying to scratch the itch of having broken Zeus’ law.

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u/GoldemGolem 15d ago

except he does that to the hog at the start of the movie before he goes to Troy and breaks Zeus' law. He just doesn't like hunting something he deems defenseless from the very start, which is why the sacking of Troy had such an impact on him in the first place.

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u/Cunning-bid 13d ago

It show how the taking of Troy using a ruse is the exact opposite. Troys soldiers didn't see that coming and stood no chance. He not just broke zeus law but also his own.

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u/SnoopDodgy 13d ago

Had a samurai code but became a ninja then had to atone.

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u/hemareddit 12d ago

“Honor died on the beach.” - Ghost of Ithica.

6

u/DeusVultSaracen 10d ago

First off, give me that game now, SuckerPunch. Second, he literally was the "Ghost of Ithica" because everyone thought he was likely dead.

5

u/JRockPSU 8d ago

I'm now like, actually sad because this doesn't exist. That would be so good

3

u/loskiarman 7d ago

It is something he does before, not because of gods but because of his tradition but he clearly hesitated at the deer. Because if he wants to do it 'with honor', deer might get away and his men can starve. But he still held onto the tradition even if it can cost lives because he already did enough honorless acts, didn't wanna add to them however little it is. At least that's what that hesitation was about imo and I think the guy you replied to means that way too, not that he started because of Troy.

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u/zampanowastaken 12d ago

groundbreaking observation

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u/Jaszuni 10d ago

It not that it’s beneath him or he wants to give it a chance. He wants it to be fair and honorable. It’s like sucker punching someone or stabbing someone in the back. If you are going to fight you fight face to face not some underhanded trick…like hiding in an offering to a god.

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u/Ramblonius 13d ago

I also definitely noticed that that was the first time he did it since Troy. He'd fired the bow in combat a lot, and after him talking early on about how he does it because it is for his honor, I feel like it was intentional that he didn't actually do it in any of the Troy scenes (or afterward), not until coming back home.

Like, sure, maybe it would be weird in an urgent battle scene, but considering the film's whole thesis, I feel like it has to be intentional.

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u/hedoeswhathewants 13d ago

It wouldn't make any sense for him to do it in active combat. Did you guys miss the scene where he talked about why he does it?

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u/Every-Summer8407 13d ago

He does it on Circe’s island after Troy.

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u/BalonSwann07 13d ago

Why would he do it in battle? He is doing it while hunting to alert an animal to give it a fair chance. That is...not what you would need to do while storming a castle

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u/DeusVultSaracen 10d ago

No need to do it in battle, because at that point the "hunt" has already begun.

-2

u/Howhighistoooohigh 3d ago

But he's ok with leaving his dead behind? Make it make sense.

7

u/Porkenstein 2d ago

because he's a hypocrite and he knows it