SO good.
Seen it twice now. Am seeing it a third time tonight in IMAX.
To be fair, its sweep and scale may deaden its emotional resonance a bit, but it feels magical nonetheless.
None of the controversial casting choices bother me one bit. How could they? The three choices branded "woke" (by people who apparently needed a reason to hate a 3,000-year-old poem) change nothing that matters, because the story's the story, and its two biggest themes are hospitality toward the stranger and the cost of honor. If those themes feel politically pointed in 2026, that says less about Nolan's choices than about how far we've drifted from civility ourselves.
I don't even mind Nolan having altered the story and characters in several dramatic ways; it is, after all, a contemporary retelling, and such pursuits rarely rankle me.
And man oh man, what a commentary on shame, integrity, generosity, war, consequence and all the rest.
But it's in the film's final minutes that Nolan reveals what everything we've experienced has been for: The Trojan Horse (sung about in the early stretches as legend—"the great trick," "the cleverness that won the war") is guttingly reframed as something closer to original sin. Throughout the tale, Zeus's Law is invoked as the ancient world's load-bearing wall, and it is nothing more or less than the Samaritan's spirit: be kind to the stranger at your door, show the golden rule to the immigrant, the shipwrecked, the "people of the sea," because the stranger may be a god in disguise. Odysseus's genius was to weaponize exactly that covenant. He disguises death as a gift and leaves it on a doorstep. In doing so, he didn't just win a war; he fears he broke the thing that makes civilization possible.
The mightiest stroke, though, is this: Odysseus holds himself to account for it.
The suitors devouring his house are a portrait of shamelessness (men who will go as low as it takes and feel nothing). Odysseus is their exact opposite: a man who did one dishonorable thing, brilliantly, victoriously, yet cannot put it down. If anyone ever earned the right to stay home, it's the man who struggled 20 years to get home. But even at the end, he holds himself to the standard and takes it on the chin—exiling himself for violating Zeus's Law, paying honor's price when no one is left above ground demanding payment. Integrity at any cost juxtaposed against shamelessness at any depth. That's the whole movie and rattles one's bones.
Odysseus's dialogue with Penelope at the end is powerful, to say the least. Here's my memory of it:
"The song will be sung for centuries," Odysseus says.
"Why will they sing?" Penelope asks.
"To honor those who used to read and write."
Now, I confessed up top that the film's sweep may deaden its emotional resonance a bit. I stand by that, but believe the restraint is the point: the film's quality and quiet discipline are object lessons at scale about Odysseus the man. Nolan could have made a Marvel movie (the budget was there, the spectacle was there), but instead he made a character study in restraint, relationships, wisdom and all the rest and trusts we'll meet him on the high road.
It seems audiences ARE.
Dawn and I have seen it twice now, and both shows (a 2pm Thursday, a 6pm Friday) were packed. I love that. Packed houses are great for theaters and great for audiences, because they remind us that storytelling still matters, be it film or whichever medium you fancy.
In short: You'll love it. It's beautiful, damning, hopeful and haunting.
What more could you want?
