Alexandria, VA – Summer in the City has been sizzling hot, wet, and wild! With another eight weeks to go many of us will be turning to the movie theaters for relief and sanctuary. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a colossus of cinematic clout, filmed entirely in IMAX, proves this monumental endeavor, reinterpreting a story older than the Bible, went beyond being well worth the two hours and fifty minutes of super cool screen time.
IMAX sales boosted The Odyssey’s numbers, with PLFs (premium large formats) comprising over half the domestic figures. IMAX sales alone, if you could even get a ticket opening weekend as they sold out over a year ago, accounted for $51.8 million of the $264.1 million worldwide.
The epic retelling of Homer’s iconic narrative (composed between the 8th-7th century BC) follows the misadventures of Odysseus (Ulysses in the Latin variation). Nolan’s cinematic opus masterpiece heralds Odysseus’s unrelentingly forsaken coming home to Ithaca, subsequent to his victory over the Trojans after ten long years.
The director himself undertook the Herculean task of adapting the Homeric Greek poem for the ginormous screen – the first feature movie to be filmed entirely in IMAX. An aficionado of Greek literature will catch a few anachronistic details in the screenplay. Telemachus calls his father, Odysseus, “Dad.” As Nolan explains, in reference to the dialogue, “I wanted to make it as accessible as possible.”
At Z MovieZ screened The Odyssey immediately following Spain defeating Argentina last month, a World Cup Final match that rendered Ithaca versus Troy something more akin to a contentious game of Dungeons and Dragons. Matt Damon’s Odysseus deftly underplayed the legendary hero, an effective quash of hubris that would proudly please Zeus and all the gods.
Nolan’s Odysseus had more than a few improbable John Wickesque killer counts. Forty against one without a gun is harder still to believe. After Odysseus outwits the Cyclops and Circe, however, the viewer has already suspended their disbelief. The gruesome Cyclops was created using an actor and a 60-foot-tall puppet, augmented digitally. By and large, though, most of the screen time was printed on film. No green screen, and the shortest credits I have seen since Jaws.
Nolan is bound to see multiple nominations come award season in spite of likely stiff competition from Dune: Part Three. Ditto for Matt Damon and perhaps Anne Hathaway. John Leguizamo as the sightless and blindly loyal Eumaeus upstages all in the cast, despite most of his scenes involving an adorable dog. Give that man an Oscar!
Husband and wife Tom Holland as Telemachus and Zendaya playing the Goddess Athena round out a formidable star list that includes Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, Jon Bernthal, James Remar, Robert Pattinson, and a cast of thousands. Pattinson’s character Antinous, portrayed with ruthless yet gutless guile, is irredeemably loathsome, making it all the more unreservedly Team Odysseus versus Team Edward, uh… Antinous!
Those well-versed in the tall tale of heroic Odysseus may have found the film less suspenseful than someone who hadn’t read The Odyssey in school, or who anxiously and ambitiously anticipated this summer’s biggest blockbuster film drop by reading the story for the first time. Many times you’ll hear someone disappointedly review a film adapted from a great work of fiction, or even a bestseller, lamenting “the book was better.” Not this time. Not this film.
Without a doubt both Homer and Nolan – and Odysseus himself – would agree: There’s no place like home. And there’s no film like The Odyssey. Until December when Dune: Part Three drops in IMAX (also sold out a year in advance!).
The Odyssey is rated R for graphic violence and contains cruelty-to-puppy-dog angst. Try to screen it on the biggest screen possible.
