About halfway through The Odyssey, I was struck with a question that I did not expect to ask in the year 2026: Is Christopher Nolanjust now hitting his peak as a filmmaker?
In a filmography as consistently dynamic and broadly successful as Nolan’s, it’s a difficult question to answer. But based on the upward trajectory from Tenet to Oppenheimer to The Odyssey, it’s hard to ignore the possibility that the preeminent blockbuster filmmaker of the 21st century might actually be getting better at his job.
Matt Damon and Zendaya in ‘The Odyssey’Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Studios
If you haven’t heard by now, The Odyssey stars approximately half of all English language movie stars on the planet, including Matt Damon as Odysseus, the central hero trying to find his way back home to Ithaca after the Trojan War; Anne Hathaway as Penelope, his frustrated but steadfast wife; Tom Holland as Telemachus, their earnest young son; and Robert Pattinson as Antinous, a sniveling suitor vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage in Odysseus’ absence.
Besides Damon, every single actor in The Odyssey‘s cast is in far less of the movie than you might anticipate. Many of its most recognizable faces — Zendaya, Elliot Page, Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal, Travis Scott, and Charlize Theron, to name a few — are only in a handful of scenes each, and their moments of dialogue are few and far between.
Tom Holland in ‘The Odyssey’Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
The sparse use of each A-lister doesn’t feel like an accident or a miscalculation, though — it’s a reflection of the reality that The Odyssey’s biggest star isn’t any of its actors, but instead Nolan himself. Though performers like John Leguizamo and Samantha Morton find opportunities to shine, Nolan has such a thorough command of the film’s tone, rhythm, and energy that everyone in the cast blends into the grand tapestry of the narrative rather than fully occupying the spotlight.
As with many of Nolan’s best films, The Odyssey draws on an extremely familiar piece of source material, which means that the surprises and delights of the movie come not from the novelty of the story being told but from the choices he makes while telling it. And though his take on Homer’s epic poem employs some of the nonlinear narrative tricks that we’ve come to expect from the mind behind Memento and Dunkirk, Nolan’s greatest strength on display in The Odyssey is his ability to craft individual pieces of breathtaking spectacle one scene at a time.
Regardless of where you might place The Odyssey in your ranking of Nolan’s work, it feels basically undeniable that the film has four or five of the greatest sequences that the filmmaker has ever committed to celluloid. Within each of these sequences is a remarkable tonal balance: the director’s commitment to practical effects and grounded production design makes the film’s mythical world feel tactile and accessible, yet the disorienting scale of the image (especially on IMAX film) and Ludwig Göransson’s pulsing, ethereal score combine to make for an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere.
Matt Damon in ‘The Odyssey’Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
As a result, The Odyssey‘s strongest sequences provide the all-too-rare sensation of truly not being able to believe your eyes as they’re sucked into the screen. The film’s most fantastical elements all feel distressingly real, to the point where you might briefly wonder if the crew found an actual cyclops or a real-life witch transforming soldiers into swine, and they just happened to point a camera at these impossible creatures at the exact right moment.
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And then, just as you start to wonder if the movie is nothing but a series of excellent disconnected scenes (which still would have made for a great piece of entertainment, especially given the episodic nature of Homer’s poem), The Odyssey reaches its climax, and Nolan delivers a thesis statement that retroactively connects all of the set pieces with a single thematic throughline that enriches everything that preceded it. The director’s blunt, troubling reflection on Odysseus’ choices elevates the film from mere bravura showmanship to a rich, thorny text about morality, regret, and war. Suddenly, the film becomes as much a continuation of Oppenheimer‘s cerebral dread as it is a piece of impeccable Inception-esque popcorn spectacle.
It may be too soon to say if The Odyssey is the best Christopher Nolan movie. But even if it’s not everyone’s immediate first vote, it feels indisputable that the epic should be in the conversation as his most Christopher Nolan-y movie.
The Odyssey hits theaters on July 17.
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