Epic fantasy film The Odyssey is out now in theatres.
Directed by Christopher Nolan, the adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic follows Odysseus, portrayed by Matt Damon. The legendary Greek king of Ithaca embarks on his long and perilous ten-year journey home, following the Trojan War, encountering mythical beings along the way.
The star-studded cast includes Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, whose abduction triggered the Trojan War.
Tom Holland plays Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, and Anne Hathaway brings Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, alive.
Robert Pattinson performs as Antinous, a suitor of Penelope, and Zendaya as Athena, goddess of wisdom. Rapper Travis Scott features as the bard and singer who composed and performed verse in the service of a patron.
His inclusion is explained as an allusion to how the epic was retold through oral poetry.
In an interview, Christopher noted that the new film felt like a work in progress, after watching an elementary school play of the epic when he was just five years old.
“I remember the Trojan horse; I remember them tying Odysseus to the mast. It’s in our bones,” he said.
“I just scribbled down, ‘What are the things I remember from it?’ I didn’t want to do a revisionist version; I wanted to be true to my expectations of it,” he added.
In order to bring the story to a broad audience, the Oscar-winning creative behind Oppenheimer (2024) cited one of his inspirations to be the 2017 modern translation by Emily Wilson, whose version is the first complete published translation of the poem by a woman into English.
“It means there are going to be both more general readers and potentially more students who will be excited about Ancient Greek literature. I hope some of them will sign up for Ancient Greek, where the enrolments are always borderline in trouble,” Emily, a classical studies professor at Pennsylvania University, said.
The Odyssey was filmed last year across locations in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, Western Sahara, and Malta, as well as at Universal Studios in Los Angeles.
