'The Odyssey' is When Ego Turns Sour

Now that some time has settled... Let’s unpack The Odyssey. Did it meet the expectations of Letterboxd-Americans? Was it a big budget DEI soap box? Or was it just another the flavor of the week?

Guess what: it was all of the above.

In this day and age, I’m grateful that we get flavors of the week. Remember 2020 to 2022? How many good movies were there? How many stayed good? 2026 has been a water cooler year for cinema. Obsession, Backrooms, Citizen Vigilante, and now The Odyssey.

Despite cries that cinema is dead, it persists. The ‘criticism’ culture we live in relies on that narrative. Art is dead and there is nothing to look forward to—please hit like on the video and subscribe to my YouTube channel. It’s simply not true. The Odyssey, in fact, is a cinematic step back towards monoculture. One of the first we’ve had since “Barbenheimer” in 2023. But, you see, the internet’s collective goldfish memory treats anything beyond the past four or five months as if it never happened.

They shouted from the rooftops that The Odyssey would be a box office bomb. That Christopher Nolan was washed up. But a week out from its release in theaters and that is not the takeaway.

Debates about the movie’s quality do rage on, but the criticisms have refined themselves. It’s suddenly easy to spot who watched the film and who saw a bootlegged clip from 123movies. Most people have backed off of Christopher Nolan, when weeks ago the conversation was something like…

Christopher Nolan made a movie you’re skeptical of? That you didn’t like? Well, didn’t you know that Nolan was always a bad director?

This form of saving face happens all the time and it is becoming more common. It ignores that art exists within the context of time and that, as time goes on, that context changes. It changes so much that the way the art is perceived can improve or decay it. Could you watch Superbad in 2026 with the same set of eyes that my friends and I did in high school during 2007? The answer is no. Superbad was the funniest and most relatable comedy of all time in 2007. Now, you can’t help but pay attention to all of the seeds it planted in culture and how old and repetitive many of the jokes and creative elements feel.

Christopher Nolan in the early aughts was one of the premier noir, thriller filmmakers. Memento is universally heralded. I’ve always, personally, been a fan of Nolan’s remake of Insomnia. That film turns in great performances from Al Pacino and Robin Williams and remains underrated to this day. And you can’t help but admire what Christopher Nolan did with The Dark Knight trilogy.

In July 2008, I skipped summer classes twice to watch The Dark Knight in theaters with my then-high school sweetheart. I would see it again a third time on a proper, real deal, full-sized IMAX screen and that experience was as close to breathtaking as you can get in the cinema. I commend Nolan for taking such brave and expensive swings to make that movie.

However, Nolan never attempted to take big swings in other ways. He just latched on the IMAX cameras for dear life and said, “This is my style now. My aesthetic.”

It has led us to 2026’s The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s 13th film. Nolan helming The Odyssey sounded exciting when it was first announced. Then we started getting the casting announcements. Matt Damon. Zendaya. Tom Holland. Anne Hathaway. Lupita Nyong’o. Robert Pattinson. John Leguizamo. Jon Bernthal. Elliot Page.

Uh oh. Well… not as European as we’d hoped.

The names in red were my personal concerns going into the movie. Most were alleviated. But there is a greater problem with the cast than what those on the right-wing side of things would point out to be “DEI casting” — which, per the new rules of Academy Award eligibility, they would probably be correct. Historically speaking, Christopher Nolan movies have been about as white as Wes Anderson movies. Since Oppenheimer, The Academy Awards have instituted a new rule that your film will only be considered for major awards if your cast is 30% non-white. This is absurd and anti-artistic on its face, but what’s almost as bothersome is that Nolan cares enough about awards — even at this point in his career — to impact his creative choices. But I digress, this is not necessarily the big problem of the film’s casting.

Nolan’s reliance on casting A-listers, even in the most inconsequential roles, is distracting. Did we need Mia Goth as such a forgettable character? Or Benny Safdie, whose face is never exposed, playing Agamemnon? Jon Bernthal shows up as 1970s Robert De Niro once again to be one of the few Greek-looking people in the movie. Not to mention, they don’t deliver knockout performances. The Odyssey stars about 30 A-list actors but the median for acting is at about a C+ level.

One particular not-as-famous actor, however, took the cake for being the film’s weakest point. Himesh Patel is one of the worst and most undeserving actors ever given a crucial role in a film of this scale. Genuinely bad, monotone delivery is served up at every turn and snaps you out of the film every time Patel opens his mouth. “Uhh, we’re the GREEKS? From TROY? Ever heard of it?” Do you understand how much better The Odyssey would have been had Shia LaBeouf played Eurylochus instead? The wannabe strong-man who buckles under temptation the second he has authority would have been a magnificent fit for an actor with some actual grit. Does Tom Hardy not want these roles anymore?

Nolan is not known for bringing out the best in his actors. He is a showman. When an actor is signaling weakness in their performance, it seems that nobody in Nolan’s camp can identify it or care enough to change it. This first made itself apparent with some of the one-line day players in The Dark Knight. You have cops giving shoddy deliveries of what should be easy lines like, “That’s not good!” and “No more dead cops!” But so much was happening in that movie, and it was still relatively early in Nolan’s career, that there was little to mind. Eighteen years on, the same problems still arise and are now infecting Nolan’s main casts.

The Odyssey, like most modern Nolan films, is like visiting the county fair. It’s fun for a night, but the faces there annoy you and when it’s over, you’re not that eager to return. In fact, you’re kind of happy that it only comes around once a year.

I appreciate his presence in cinema and that he gives us somewhere to go once every 3-4 years, but Christopher Nolan is merely your starter ‘great filmmaker.’ The comparisons to Stanley Kubrick become laughable as the years go on. What’s worse, I believe that Christopher Nolan now buys his own hype. Nolan genuinely thinks he is the great white hope of filmmaking. The Odyssey exposes perfectly the faults of his ego.