Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, has grossed $721 million, and is being called a masterpiece. I walked out of the theater wondering if we watched the same movie.
Look, I respect the ambition. A $250 million, three hour epic shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film, based on the greatest adventure story ever written, with one of the strongest casts money can buy. It should be incredible.
It is fine. It is loud, it is long, and it is the most overhyped movie of 2026. Here is my unpopular review, and yes, I know the comments will be brutal.
1. Matt Damon cannot act his way out of this one
I am sorry, but it had to be said. Matt Damon as Odysseus is the most miscast Greek hero since the last time someone put a regular guy in a myth.
Damon has exactly one mode: the competent everyman who is slightly out of his depth. He played it in The Martian, he played it in Jason Bourne, and now he is playing it as a Bronze Age king who fought the Trojan War.
The script hands him these big, mythic lines, and he cannot deliver a single one of them. Every speech about honor and homecoming lands with the weight of a fortune cookie.
And yes, at some point Odysseus actually says “fuck.” The most cunning man in Greek mythology, reduced to swearing like a guy who just lost his parking spot. Homer wept.
2. The actors they should have called instead
Ryan Gosling would have eaten this role alive. He can do charming, he can do dangerous, and he has that thing Odysseus needs most: you never know what he is thinking.
Pedro Pascal is the obvious choice, and frankly it is weird he was not cast. He is the current king of playing grizzled, cunning survivors with a heart. He is literally Odysseus in The Last of Us and The Mandalorian, minus the boat.
Even Ben Affleck, who people love to mock, has more range for this. Remember him in The Town?
That is a man who can play someone lying to everyone around him. That is Odysseus.
Damon gives you a good man trying his best. Odysseus is not a good man. He is a survivor, and that is a very different thing.
3. Where are the gods and monsters?
This is the part that actually hurts. The Odyssey has Cyclops, witches, sirens, a sea god who hates you, and a goddess who loves you. It is the most monster packed myth in history.
The movie has one Cyclops, played by Bill Irwin through animatronics and puppetry, and it is genuinely well done. Then the gods basically disappear.
Nolan decided to depict the gods through “natural phenomena once considered supernatural.” In other words, Poseidon becomes a storm, Athena becomes a feeling, and Zeus becomes a lightning bolt.
That is a cop out. I came for gods fighting over a mortal’s fate, and I got weather. The mythology is the entire point of the story, and this movie keeps apologizing for it.
4. The visuals are dull and the color is missing
For a movie shot on IMAX 70mm film, the palette is shockingly grey. Beige sand, grey stone, muted costumes, and skies that look like they were ordered from a warehouse.
Nolan loves his tactile realism, but Greece is not grey. The Odyssey should be a movie of impossible blues, blazing sunsets, and the jewel tones of the ancient Mediterranean.
Instead we get what looks like the world’s most expensive beige filter. The firelight scenes at Troy are nice, but one good fire does not make a colorful movie.
5. The castle that is actually a dungeon
Ithaca, the palace of Odysseus, looks less like the home of a wealthy king and more like a damp basement with columns. It is dark, cramped, and utterly devoid of majesty.
A king’s palace should feel like a place people would fight to return to for 20 years. This one feels like a place you would file a complaint about.
Every interior scene has the same problem: Nolan shoots it like a bunker. The underworld scene is appropriately dark, but so is the throne room, and that is a choice I do not understand.
6. The best thing in the movie is Robert Pattinson
I need to give credit where it is due, and that credit goes to Robert Pattinson. He is the single best thing in this entire three hour epic, and it is not close.
Pattinson understood the assignment. He brings the weird, magnetic energy that Odysseus should have had, the kind of performance that makes you lean forward every time he is on screen.
Tom Holland brings real energy, Anne Hathaway is excellent, and Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron make the most of their roles. But Pattinson is on another level entirely.
The tragedy of this movie is that the best Odysseus performance is in the cast, and he is not playing Odysseus.
The Cyclops sequence is a technical marvel, the kind of practical effects work that justifies the IMAX screens. And Ludwig Goransson’s score is genuinely epic.
The problem is that the movie’s best parts are the ones where it remembers it is a myth, and it spends most of its runtime trying to forget.
7. The box office is not proof of quality
Yes, it has grossed $721 million worldwide. Yes, it has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score. Yes, critics called it a masterpiece.
It is also a $250 million Nolan movie with IMAX presales a year in advance. The audience showed up because of the brand, not because the movie earned it.
History is full of expensive, acclaimed movies that were overrated on release. I have a feeling this one ages worse than its reputation suggests.
The verdict
The Odyssey is a technically impressive, emotionally hollow adaptation of the greatest adventure ever written. It is the safest possible take on a myth that is supposed to be anything but safe.
Matt Damon is not Odysseus. The gods are weather. The colors are beige.
And the palace of Ithaca looks like a storage unit.
I wanted the Odyssey of Homer, full of monsters, gods, blood, and impossible beauty. I got Nolan’s Odyssey, which is like ordering a feast and receiving a very well presented bowl of oatmeal.
Ryan Gosling, Pedro Pascal, or even Ben Affleck would have given us a real Odysseus. Instead we got the guy from the Bourne movies, slightly sunburned, swearing, and very confused.
Overhyped. That is the word. And I will die on this hill.
