Christopher Nolan, perhaps the greatest director in the world, is back with another winner. The man behind Oppenheimer (2023) now gives us The Odyssey, a movie adaptation of Homer’s ancient epic.The film is already a massive success. Making $264 million in its first week alone and sitting at 95% and above on Rotten Tomatoes, it has the chance to become Nolan’s most successful ever. This is actually a bit surprising. The months leading up to The Odyssey’s release were rife with controversy over whether Nolan had gone “woke” due to certain casting decisions. However, audiences soon learned these charges were incredibly overstated. Some even believe the real problem is that The Odyssey wasn’t woke enough.
Rumors that there would be a transgender Achilles proved false. Achilles did not even appear in the movie. Instead, Elliot Page (a woman who thinks she’s a man) plays Sinon. Sinon was the Greek soldier who informed the Trojans of their alleged victory and that they should bring the Trojan Horse into their city. For this deed, Sinon is remembered throughout history as a symbol of deceit and fraud. Thus, as Michael Knowles points out, Nolan casting his only transgender in that role seems just a little bit symbolic in itself.Ultimately, the “woke” castings get around five minutes of screentime in a nearly three-hour movie. The other 168 minutes deserve to be discussed. The Odyssey’s greatest success is that it actually feels like the epic poem it’s based on. The story is familiar to us westerners, but Nolan’s genius manages to make us feel the strangeness of those ancient days once again. From the cyclops’s cave to Circe’s island, Odysseus’s journey home feels like you’re embarking on it for the first time, even if it isn’t. Matt Damon, left, Christopher Nolan, and Anne Hathaway attend the premiere of “The Odyssey” at AMC Lincoln Square on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, in New York. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
