| Universal Pictures | Release Date: July 17, 2026 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
50
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
The Observer (UK)Jul 15, 2026
This is an epic, mythic spectacle that honours its ancient Greek source material, with its monsters and magic, while also addressing more topical themes of exile, war trauma and survivor’s guilt. In a way, the film is a Trojan horse; an extravagant, good-looking adventure that serves as a delivery mechanism for messages about the treatment of strangers, the uneasy weight of legacy and the impossibility of returning from combat as the same person who left.
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Jul 15, 2026
Nolan’s love of movies and commitment to them — to what they can do, what they can be, what they should be — runs like an electric current through his filmography, lighting it, and oftentimes you, up. That passion is in every frame of his monumental adaptation of The Odyssey, one of the most Nolan of Nolan spectacles in its thematic concerns, formal playfulness, kinetic thrills and unabashed showmanship.
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Jul 15, 2026
For all its modern filmmaking techniques, “The Odyssey” is a throwback to the mid-20th century, when Cinemascope was new and epics were event pictures. It falls a bit short of greatness — it doesn’t speak to our times like “Oppenheimer” or dazzle like “The Dark Knight” — but it’s a magnificent achievement nonetheless.
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Jul 15, 2026
In standard 70mm, the voyage is breathtaking; in IMAX, you’re tasting the salt water. Even among all the truck flips, atomic explosions and rotating corridors of his back catalogue, this film is the apogee of Nolan’s ‘do it in camera’ ethos, and the sense that this was a shoot with no comfort zone pervades every frame.
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The TelegraphJul 15, 2026
Nolan and his collaborators have constructed a strange, fearsome and trailblazing machine of a movie – by some distance, the best of the year so far. Its creator is known for playing tricks with time, and this may be his grandest yet: turning one of the oldest stories in literature into a vote of confidence in blockbuster cinema’s future.
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Jul 15, 2026
The PlaylistJul 15, 2026
For all its monsters, gods, armies, and thunder, “The Odyssey” finds its grandest image in a man confronting the dark mirror of what he has wrought. Nolan’s massive achievement understands that home is a place, a family, a memory, and a judgment. Odysseus may still recognize Ithaca when he reaches its shores. The more frightening question is whether Ithaca will recognize him.
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The GuardianJul 15, 2026
RogerEbert.comJul 15, 2026
Screen RantJul 15, 2026
Though some sequences seem to fly by, The Odyssey isn't one of those three-hour movies you'd swear was half its length. It takes its time, and you feel it. But rather than signaling any issues with pacing – editor Jennifer Lame, an Oscar-winner for Oppenheimer, has once again done exquisite work – this is one of the film's greatest strengths. Cutting out the middleman of Homer's oral narrator, Nolan has brought us very close to these characters, immersing us as much as possible in their experience. In doing so, he has managed to capture the story's full scope. Odysseus' journey conveys the weight of its arduous years. The film's conclusion, told with a steady, patient hand, feels like a payoff 20 years in the making.
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Jul 15, 2026
The movie manages to be a challenging, personal work, too, contending with the same anxieties about family and the crumbling edifices of modern society that power so much of Nolan’s filmography. He somehow finds idiosyncratic angles on well-trodden material, underlining Odysseus’s (played by Matt Damon) ache of yearning and loss without sacrificing the poem’s core sense of adventure. The result is a genuine pleasure to behold.
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Jul 15, 2026
The movie’s sense of spectacle is part of its appeal, and Nolan serves it up even better than expected. The scale of the production is breathtaking, but it’s also a morality play writ large, a game of politics and succession, a warning about temptation and greed, a plea for kindness in a harsh world. The way Nolan brings everything together is a meeting of old and new Hollywood, a nod to the spectacles of yesteryear that thrilled audiences for generations combined with new techniques and tools to remind us all that there are more ways to keep pushing the medium—even with the classics.
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IndieWireJul 15, 2026
While the future may be predetermined, this world is still the sum of what we choose to make of it. To surrender our role in that is to forfeit our humanity, and the opposite will always be true as well. The gods speak obtusely, even in Nolan’s script, but this magnificent epic leaves us with the ability to heed their meaning.
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Jul 15, 2026
The director's highly anticipated follow-up to Oscar-winning Oppenheimer is a true blank check moment, an opportunity for Nolan to obsess over period details, work with a remarkable cast, and continue exploring the concept of war as not an opportunity for glory, but as a corrosive element that tears both societies and people apart.
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ColliderJul 15, 2026
Nolan prides himself on being a storyteller, and here he pays tribute to the medium that made him a prolific figure in pop culture. He wouldn't be here without a story to tell, so it's only fitting that he has told a story that has endured throughout the eons as only he can. The fact that he executed it at this level is certainly a feat that others will tell their own stories about.
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LooperJul 15, 2026
If you can, find the biggest screen to watch "The Odyssey" on and settle in for an epic journey; I was fortunate enough to experience the epic in 70mm IMAX as God and Nolan intended, and I was richly rewarded. Even with this massive visual scale, though, Nolan's message is concise and builds on what he communicated in "Oppenheimer" — only man can bring about man's ruin, and when powerful men don't consider the consequences of their actions, entire civilizations could ultimately fall. "The Odyssey" is a visual feast and undeniably outstanding achievement in filmmaking that cements Nolan as one of cinema's all-time greats, naysayers be damned.
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Jul 15, 2026
Maybe the film, as is sometimes the case with Nolan, lacks an emotional core. But the sensory overload is so enormous that it proves hard to care. Shot fluidly on 70mm Imax cameras by Hoyte van Hoytema, and scored with symphonic wit by Ludwig Göransson, this take on the epic return of the sometime Ulysses should wear away even the most passionate resistance.
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Jul 15, 2026
Though occasionally less than ideally written and acted, “The Odyssey,” as a feast of image and sound, is an exceptional cinematic experience. Especially evocative are the loamy cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and the musical score, built around period instruments, which marks yet another transcendent achievement by Ludwig Göransson (who won one of his three Oscars for “Oppenheimer”). Odysseus is obsessed with honor, and Mr. Nolan has likewise done everything in his considerable power to pay worthy cinematic tribute to one of our foundational texts.
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Jul 15, 2026
In its chronicling of Odysseus’s arduous journey home following the Trojan War, the film deservedly flaunts its craftsmanship and scope – although this big-screen spectacle is not always as nimble emotionally or thematically. But, like Matt Damon’s haunted hero, viewers will have undertaken an overwhelming experience.
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SlashfilmJul 15, 2026
Nolan also creates dreamy sequences that convey a true sense of awe and wonder — the moment when Odysseus and his men sail past the island of the sirens is a real highlight, with Nolan deliberately avoiding letting us hear the sirens' call but having Damon as Odysseus recount what he heard in a chilling fashion. All of this is enhanced by Ludwig Göransson's pulse-quickening score, full of heavy percussion and, most surprising of all, moody synthesizers.
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AwardsWatchJul 15, 2026
As original and thematically thrilling as it might be to see Nolan come to this conclusion for his protagonist, his omission of the mythological approach to the overall film is a massive letdown for anyone who is a fan of the original source text or even just a fan of Wilson’s rendition.
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Jul 15, 2026
Nolan’s “Odyssey” engraves marvelous images onto the ancient oral poem. One of the most haunting shots is Odysseus sprinting out of Hades chased by an army of the dead who regret following him into battle. In turn, Nolan has sacrificed Odysseus himself to serve his own needs, scrapping the character’s prickly personality to Trojan-horse a message about how empires collapse.
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