Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Will Take a Creative Approach to Gods

Some reactionary types have long charged the movie business with being godless. But when it comes to Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey, they may be right… more or less.

In a Time profile about the director and his take on Homer’s epic, Nolan revealed that he decided against casting for Poseidon, Zeus, or other gods who intercede in the affairs of Odysseus, Telemachus, and Agamemnon. “I became more interested in the idea that to people in that period, evidence of gods was everywhere,” Nolan admitted, pointing to the power of modern cinema. “The wonderful thing about cinema, and IMAX in particular, is that you can take an audience to a place of immersion, feeling close to events like storms, turbulent seas, high winds. You want the audience to be on the boat with them fearing the ocean, fearing the wrath of Poseidon, the way the characters do. That to me is so much more powerful than any individual image you can have [of a god].”

The Odyssey and its predecessor the Iliad, some of which will be integrated into Nolan’s film, do not distinguish between the realms of the gods and the realms of humans. The Iliad, Homer’s depiction of the end of the Trojan War, begins with Apollo attacking Greece because of Agamemnon’s actions. In The Odyssey, Zeus sends Hermes to order the nymph Calypso to release Odysseus, a decision made in response to the urgings of Athena, who also appears to Telemachus with news of his father.

In short, the story does not happen without the intercession of the gods. Yet, Nolan’s decision to focalize them through human characters is consistent with his filmmaking elsewhere. The Dark Knight trilogy takes pains to explain how Bruce Wayne‘s defense industry contracts give Batman his wonderful toys. Interstellar, Inception, and Tenet all have high sci-fi concepts, but all of their elaborate rule-establishing and world-building are in service of human stories about absent fathers and future friends.

However, this isn’t to say that Nolan’s version of The Odyssey will lack supernatural elements. The Time profile confirms that Samantha Morton plays the witch Circe, who transforms men into swine, and rumors have swirled that Elliot Page will play a ghostly version of the hero Achilles. Bill Irwin portrays the cyclops Polyphemus, while Zendaya appears as Athena, goddess of Athens.

But for Nolan, it’s the human story of a man trying to return to his family that drives the story. Thus, Nolan has taken some interpretive liberties with Homer’s text, giving Odysseus (Matt Damon) more time with his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) and elevating the role of his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway). “Chris, if I’m not mistaken, you’ve written someone who is full of fury and you seem to be implying that she’s actually Odysseus’s equal,” Hathaway recalls telling the director. “I found her to be this volcano of a human that was always simmering. It was really fun when she finally exploded.”

Between volcanic wives, monsters made with practical effects, and Nolan’s thematic interest in a father returning to his family, The Odyssey is already fully packed. In this case, a little bit of godliness will go a long way.

The Odyssey arrives in theaters on July 17, 2026.