Official Discussion - The Odyssey (2026) [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

Poll

If you've seen the film, please rate it at this poll

If you haven't seen the film but would like to see the result of the poll click here

Rankings

Click here to see the rankings of 2025 films

Click here to see the rankings for every poll done

---

The Odyssey (2026)

Summary

After the Trojan War, Odysseus faces a dangerous voyage back to Ithaca, meeting creatures like the Cyclops Polyphemus, Sirens, and Calypso along the way.

Director Christopher Nolan

Writer Christopher Nolan

Cast

• Matt Damon as Odysseus
• Tom Holland as Telemachus
• Anne Hathaway
• Zendaya
• Lupita Nyong'o
• Robert Pattinson
• Charlize Theron
• Benny Safdie
• Jon Bernthal
• John Leguizamo
• Elliot Page
• Himesh Patel
• Samantha Morton

Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

Metacritic: 88

VOD / Release Theatrical release

Trailer Official Trailer

[u/BloatedGlobe]

I wonder how well the general audience knows the sea people, and how they often get blamed for Late Bronze Age Collapse. I know history nerds know them, but the movie ties the Achaeans violation of Zeus' law to the fall of civilization.

[u/So_Quiet → u/BloatedGlobe]

This is helpful. The sea people were a total blind spot for me and I was wondering what their significance was supposed to be.

[u/ZizzianYouthMinister → u/So_Quiet]

Oh I thought that was supposed to be tales of Odysseus's crew pillaging along their way home

[u/OnDeafEars904 → u/ZizzianYouthMinister]

In real history, the Sea Peoples are one of those genuinely fascinating historical mysteries. Raiders who show up in Egyptian records under Ramesses III, implicated across scholarship in the destruction of Hittite, Mycenaean, and Levantine sites, and whose actual identity and origin is still debated.

Basically a group pillaged all across the land and nobody knows now who did it. May as well be Odysseus and Agemenmon's crews.

[u/HockeyKelly5 → u/OnDeafEars904]

I find it so interesting that with modern technology we can figure out all this other stuff about ancient history but something as simple as that is still mostly unknown to us. I’ll never understand why so many people call history boring lol

[u/Chancroid24 → u/So_Quiet]

The Dorians.

[u/Wuktrio → u/BloatedGlobe]

They sure know now, since the dialogue of this film hit us over the head with it about 50 times. Odysseus even calls it "the Bronze Age" at the end, which completely took me out.

[u/EskNerd → u/Wuktrio]

Homer was a near contemporary of Hesiod, who I believe coined the phrase "Bronze Age", so it didn't feel completely out of place to me. In Hesiod's writings, the Trojan War and Odysseus' travels took place in an interlude between the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

[u/Wuktrio → u/EskNerd]

I mean it still doesn't really make sense, because Hesiod lived somewhere between 750 and 650 BC and he was the first to use that term. The Iliad and the Odyssey are both set at the end of the Bronze Age, so about 500 years earlier. It's as if in a film about Christopher Columbus he calls his time the "Early Modern Period".