Christopher Nolan’s filmography inspires plenty of debate, but one point has become almost conventional wisdom: the director has yet to deliver a truly bad movie. Sorting his work from “worst” to “best” usually means separating the excellent from the extraordinary, which made expectations for “The Odyssey” sky-high from the start. Even so, early reactions suggest Nolan’s take on Homer is not merely meeting the moment — it is surpassing it, as highlighted in Looper’s video above.
At the time of writing, “The Odyssey” holds a 98% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, signaling a wave of enthusiastic reviews. Looper’s own assessment adds to that momentum, calling the film “a visual feast and undeniably outstanding achievement in filmmaking that cements Nolan as one of cinema’s all-time greats, naysayers be damned.” Adapting Homer’s foundational epic was always a bold swing, the kind of cinematic risk that could have looked like Odysseus taunting the cyclops. Instead, Nolan appears to have turned that ambition into one of the year’s most acclaimed releases.
The praise has been emphatic, with several critics awarding the film perfect scores. Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gave “The Odyssey” 5 out of 5, writing, “Nolan and his collaborators have constructed a strange, fearsome and trailblazing machine of a movie — by some distance, the best of the year so far.” Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent was just as stunned, declaring, “This is a blockbuster of literally unprecedented scale. It is also Nolan’s best work to date. It deserves to be the film that defines him.” The takeaway is hard to miss: if early reviews are any indication, “The Odyssey” is shaping up as essential opening-weekend viewing.
The Odyssey is a true cinematic epic
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Studios
Mention the greatest epic films ever made and titles like “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Ben-Hur,” and Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy quickly come to mind. In today’s blockbuster environment, where digital backdrops and compressed effects schedules often dominate, that old-school sense of physical grandeur can feel nearly impossible to recapture. According to the first wave of reviews, however, Nolan has managed to bring that tactile, monumental scale back to the multiplex with “The Odyssey.”
The film’s imagery has drawn widespread admiration, but critics have also singled out Matt Damon’s performance as Odysseus. Moira MacDonald of The Seattle Times noted that “Damon’s performance finds some welcome transcendence at the end,” while Brian Truitt of USA Today went even further with awards-season enthusiasm: “Just give him the best actor Oscar now, for Zeus’ sake.” Damon may have physically transformed for “The Odyssey,” but it is the emotional weight of his Odysseus that appears to be lingering most powerfully with audiences and critics.
Not every review is without reservations, and more nuanced criticism will likely emerge once the film reaches a wider audience. Still, the early consensus points to something increasingly rare: a major studio spectacle that makes a persuasive case for seeing movies in theaters. Danny Leigh of The Financial Times captured that feeling, writing, “We live in an age starved of awe. It leaves quite a gap in the market for Christopher Nolan — long held to be the last giant in movies and uniquely able to spark that missing wonder.” For viewers still deciding whether to buy a ticket, Looper’s video above gathers even more critical reactions to Nolan’s “The Odyssey.”
