Posted on 07/07/2026 2:38:56 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s three-hour version of Homer’s epic poem, world premiered in London on Monday night, and critics who saw the film there and at early screenings in the US have been sharing their takes on one of the year’s most hotly anticipated films.
“Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion and a loss of innocence witnessed by the dead,” wrote the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, ahead of the reviews embargo lifting next Wednesday and next Friday’s worldwide release.
IndieWire editor-at-large Anne Thompson called the film the best picture contender to beat, and added that Matt Damon “could win best actor”. “My high expectations were met,” she added, calling the film “stunningly mounted”.
Multiple pundits described the film as “flawless” and “breathtaking”, with others singling out Robert Pattinson’s villainous Antinous for particular praise.
Erik Davis called the film “an absolute triumph and a crowning cinematic achievement from one of the great film-makers of our time. It feels like everything Nolan has been working toward with Imax has culminated here.” The film was shot entirely using large-format Imax film cameras, although it will also be screened in non-Imax cinemas.
“The production design is incredible,” continued Davis, “the action is breathtaking, and the scale is unlike anything he’s done before. What really surprised me is how much he embraces horror. Some of the film’s biggest moments are genuinely unsettling, adding a whole new dimension to his film-making while never losing sight of the humanity at the story’s core.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
“ Wikipedia estimates the film cost at $250 million.
I will guess that does NOT include marketing”
It includes marketing
Why do you think they're hiding the dislikes in YouTube.
From a couple of days ago...
The Odyssey Dislikes Near 450K As Universal Turns Off Replies
🌋
“I smell payola.”
You don’t know Nolan. No he does not operate in payola
Geeze the movie is not out yet
I predict it will be very well received and very well attended
Then why comment on it? What they said makes sense to anyone who knows the story
“ It’s getting torched.
Why do you think they’re hiding the dislikes in YouTube.
From a couple of days ago...
The Odyssey Dislikes Near 450K As Universal Turns Off Replies
🌋”
It is not out yet.
Huh?
Did this person read the same Odyssey I did?
Or did they just re-write the whole story?
If they want to do that fine, but do not call it "The Odyssey".
$250 mil is the production budget they’re admitting to.
That number does NOT include marketing.
And guess what, stanne, since they were dumb enough to shoot in the UK for the tax credit, the real number will eventually come out. Youre required to provide the estimated total budget of your movie.
The film doesn’t officially release for another 10 days. Keep in mind that any “first” screenings like this are mostly social media “influencers” that the studio trusts to give them glowing, slobbering, slavish reviews. “Supergirl” did have the same thing, with the “ecstatic” participants each walking away with a gift bag of swag and a pat on the head.
This one just may be too big to fail, but with the woke-casting, woke-screenplay, and indie-vibe of the dialog in the previews, I have no doubts they’ve left a ton of money on the table.
Return is about 40% of tickets sold.
This allows you to roughly calculate if a movie is making a profit or not.
“A Triumph” was how the shills described The Flash, The Marvels, and The Eternals. All spectacular bombs. Nolan is overrated. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were great. Interstellar sucked. A majority of his movies are pseudo intellectual crap.
I like the 2.5 rule. A movie makes money when it hits twice the production cost, because theaters get half to take. And another 50% of the cost for marketing, although the at seems too high in this particular case. Seems about right as I’ve been trying to figure in recent years how much Hollywood has lost on their woke disasters
Let’s see, the track record so far...
Snow White, Disclosure Day, The Bride, Mango and Grok, Hoppers...
All called before opening.
It's distracting. Part of the enjoyment of movies is the "suspension of disbelief." When they do something that cannot make any sense, it makes it harder to enjoy the movie.
Race or gender swapping characters is just annoying. Putting in homosexual characters, especially when it is completely irrelevant to the plot for people to know someone is "homosexual" is also annoying.
It's preaching. Nobody wants to be preached at when they go out for entertainment.
We’re going to go a bit later this month on the principles that (1) I want to see what the fuss is about, and (2) to have right to kvetch, I really should see it first, as opposed to reacting to internet graffiti.
I also wanted to see it on a real IMAX screen that projects 15/70 mm IMAX film. Nolan made a big point of filming The Odyssey that way. Unfortunately, there are very few theaters that still project true IMAX film; most IMAX (”LieMAX”) theaters have switched to digital laser projection, so LieMAX is approximately 4k on a really big screen.
I remember seeing true IMAX films at the Air and Space Museum in DC, and they were stunning. Unfortunately, that switched to digital ten years ago, and the Udvar Hazy theater at the Air and Space annex at Dulles is also digital.
That’s the best I can do around here, but Nolan made a much more ambitious film. I would like to see it as it was meant to be seen. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that chance.
I would like to see that even if the movie itself is disappointing. Grok is telling me that 15/70 mm film projection can get up to 16k resolution. I don’t know what the old Air and Space Museum films got, but I remember them as the best films I ever saw purely from a cinematic point of view. I ain’t a techie, but even I can tell the difference.
Heck, I can tell the difference when I swing by the Magnolia store in the back of my local Best Buy. That exhibits up to 6k and 8k tv screens. Those are stunning, even compared to 4k. They are quick to point out that they have those screens mainly to demonstrate the technology and that they are running special demo tapes on a proprietary hookup that can handle 8k. No one produces 8k content for commercial distribution. No streamers will stream more than 4k, and that may require an upgrade to one’s plan. The Magnolia people tell me that they sell a few to companies doing professional film editing, so the pros use it if they’re doing high end work, but it will be a long time before it reaches the mass market, if it ever does. But Nolan has made a major movie, intended to be a blockbuster spectacular, to the highest standard possible. And very, very few people will ever see it to best advantage. The best tv’s now will upscale 4k to 6k. But what they will be doing in five or ten years, who knows. the technology is there if the market will support it.
Anyhow, I’ll be seeing The Odyssey on the best screen available in this area. Fingers crossed on whether it’s a decent movie. The usual nuke Hollywood set has been trashing the film because of its stuntcasting of Helen and Clytemnestra, and I can grumble along with that. Ellen/Elliot Page plays Sinon — not Achilles, as the internet graffiti artists were howling — and Sinon is not even in Homer’s Odyssey. He does appear in other classical treatments of the Trojan War, most notably in The Aeneid. He is the “deserter” left behind by the Greeks to trick the Trojans into dragging the Trojan Horse into the city.
I’ll hold off on criticizing the movie until I’ve watched it. I have to wait a bit because the Udvar Hazy showings sold out most of the good seats very rapidly, and I had to wait to get a halfway decent seat. I do not think I want to be in the front row with a six story high screen.
“ It’s been seen by some influencers on X who’ve totally trashed it.”
No. That’s not correct. They’ve seen only the trailer
Nolan has zero reason to block anything. It has not yet been released.
In any case it comes out next week. Many theaters are sold out. Those people will review it and he’ll either tank, come out even or he’ll make 1.5 billion
Oppenheimer made $950 million
This should be near that at least but he’ll make the $250 mil. At least
“ Because it is distributed by Universal Pictures, the marketing campaign is expected to add another $100 million to $160 million on top of that”
Ok. He has figured that into what he’ll need.
Let me know when they make those movies.
“ All called before opening.”
By whom and for what reasons. Not the same as for this. This is actually being very highly anticipated
I would not think about the color in this movie.
Actor / actress competency.
Staying true to the Odyssey.
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