The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan reveals why he never takes the safe road

L to R: Director Christopher Nolan with Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC on set of The Odyssey, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. Universal Pictures

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NEW YORK CITY — More than 20 years ago, Christopher Nolan was hired to direct Brad Pitt’s swords-and-sandals epic Troy. Loosely adapted from Homer’s Iliad, the film depicted the decade-long Trojan War and featured legendary figures from Greek mythology like Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon and more.

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“That didn’t work out,” Nolan, 55, says in an interview in a downtown Manhattan hotel, “but I went off to Batman instead, so it all worked out fine.”

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Despite the project falling through, the award-winning filmmaker had long thought he wouldn’t mind taking a stab at another one of Homer’s Greek epics — The Odyssey.

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After directing Oppenheimer, his 2023 biopic on Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, Nolan found himself returning to the idea of adapting Homer’s monumental poem for the big screen.

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With The Odyssey, Nolan gets a chance to fulfil his dream of tackling one of literature’s greatest fables.

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Matt Damon plays the heroic Odysseus who after fighting in the Trojan War, embarks on a perilous journey back to his wife Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway, and son Telemachus (Tom Holland).

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Below, Nolan speaks about how The Odyssey challenged him in new ways, casting Damon and the importance of taking risks.

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I don’t know how your process works. Do you have a bunch of ideas and one takes over? How did The Odyssey surface?

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I have things that I noodle and work on over the years. But I really do one thing at a time. When I’m making a film, I’m just thinking about that and not what’s next. Then you finish the film and it goes out to the world and I’ll look at the things I’d been thinking about over the years. In the case of The Odyssey, I had been briefly attached to direct Troy, the great David Benioff script, 20-something years ago … But I had a couple important images that stuck with me, particularly how I wanted to treat the Trojan Horse. The idea of it being half-buried in the sand, about to be destroyed by the waves. I also had this image of a soldier decapitating a statue with a sword. These things really stuck with me in a way that made me feel I wanted to address this world in some way. But I’m always looking for something new you can bring or some gap in the movie culture, and nobody had really taken on Greek mythology in movies.

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Could you have made this movie 10 years ago?

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No I couldn’t … I’ve done films with intense logistics — where you’re travelling to different countries. I’ve done films with intense stunt work … I’ve done films with a lot of marine work … The Odyssey brings a lot of different things together. You’re bringing battle scenes and boats and visual effects all together … So, the mantra on the film for all heads of department was, ‘Give (moviegoers) a reason to believe.’ The audience wants to go on this journey with you. So, you have to put in the work to give people a reason to believe in these incredible things. That was an extraordinary creative challenge for everyone involved. How are we going to have (goddess of magic) Circe turn a bunch of soldiers into pigs? How do we approach the fantastical elements? How do we put (one-eyed giant) Cyclops in a movie? How do we bring people into the cave with Cyclops and make that feel like something they can believe in? My feeling was that if you can give (the audience) that experience, that would be something special. Something people haven’t had before.