The Odyssey Review
Christopher Nolan is my favorite director of all time. He has four of my top six movies, eight of my top twenty. It’s absurd how much joy he’s given me over the years. I consider him, in the fullest sense of the word, a genius.
Unfortunately, his more recent work hasn’t resonated with me nearly as much. Watching The Odyssey, I felt held at arm’s length – never emotionally invested in the characters or their journey. And when that connection isn’t there, you really start to feel the runtime. Interstellar is also three hours long, but I don’t feel a single second of impatience or distraction watching it. That’s because I feel the stakes. My desire for those characters to succeed reaches a level I can barely put into words.
Nolan is a master of filming spectacle, and several scenes in The Odyssey on hurawatch are genuinely impressive from a pure filmmaking standpoint. But that only underscores how much the emotional investment matters. I cared more during the water planet scene in Interstellar than during any single scene in The Odyssey. I wasn’t just marveling at what I was seeing – I was enthralled because I needed them to survive. And that’s just the appetizer for where that film goes afterward.
At this point, I’m all but begging Nolan to go back to composer Hans Zimmer. He is the GOAT, and it’s not close. Zimmer created five of the greatest film scores of all time for Nolan’s movies. In The Odyssey, the score isn’t even a plus – it’s not bad, but it never stands out or elevates the film the way Zimmer’s work always has.
I do think The Odyssey is a good hurawatch movie. But if you asked me right now whether I’d go out of my way to watch it again, my honest answer is… probably not. For comparison, I’ve watched Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar a combined 55+ times.
I’m not entirely sure how to fix this, but maybe the answer is going back to working with stronger writing partners – like his brother, Jonathan Nolan.