The following contains spoilers for The Odyssey (2026). Even though this story’s been around for quite some time (and retold for about as long), Nolan’s interpretation is worth watching without spoilers for anyone who fancies themselves a lover of adventure, the classics, or stories of the human spirit.
I read in Nick Greene’s How to Watch Soccer Like A Genius that dogs were domesticated some 30,000 years ago. The oldest story of a dog’s loyalty I remember hearing is that of Argus, who waited almost two decades for his owner Odysseys to come home. Argus was the only one to recognize his owner disguised as a beggar. Upon seeing Odysseus after almost 20 years, Argus died on the spot. This story, when I first read it in a book somewhere, was enough to fill my eyes with tears. Nolan’s interpretation fleshes out the narrative, with flashbacks to when Argus was a little puppy, then a healthy hunting dog, and finally, as an old dog abused by Penelope’s suitors. Argus is used as a means to incite conflict between Telemachus and these suitors as well.
I bring up the story about Argus not just because I love writing about dogs but because the way Nolan expanded his story to illustrate loyalty is one that our dog-obsessed culture would really resonate with. It is one of many choices that gave his interpretation of this tale, a tale as old as time, such a gripping effect. Most of us know what happens to Odysseus. We know how he uses his critical thinking, and/or help from the gods, to escape characters like the cyclops Polyphemus and the sorceress Circe. A good interpretation relies on what we already know as foundation and creativity to make it entertaining and original.
There is much I could write about Nolan’s interpretation: how well the last fight scene was choreographed, the genius idea to extend the battlefield dimensions to two floors of Ithaca’s palace; the way I sweat and my heart beat to the rhythm of the drums that scored the moments of highest intensity. I knew what was going to happen (I brushed up on my myths before watching the movie) but not necessarily how it happened, how it would be depicted, how Nolan’s Odysseus would handle his trials differently from earlier versions of himself in myth and on screen.
In most versions of the myth, Odysseus did not remain faithful while Penelope always did. Nolan’s version preserves the lore around the two most well-known characters who had affairs with Odysseus—and does so in a way that guarantees his fidelity, something that modern audiences want in our hero.
Furthermore, the story of Odysseus’s bow, punctuated by an auditory motif in this movie, is present of many stories from around the world: from Lord Ram’s Sharnga to the Sword in the Stone to Mjölnir, Thor’s magic hammer. Though in this interpretation, it is suggested that it is Odysseus’s strength, not the weapon choosing a worthy wielder, that allows him to string the bow, we get a crackle of thunder when he completes the challenge, a sign of approval from the gods. In this movie, gods are curiously absent from this film—with one exception.
When I heard that Nolan cast Zendaya as Athena, I was immediately skeptical. Although she is now a married woman, Zendaya is young, with model-good looks and the lean frame to match. She is talented, yes, but I couldn’t see her as a receptacle of wisdom, especially when everyone else cast in the movie is older than her. How can she convey wisdom when she doesn’t have the age to back it up? Put another way, I wanted someone without Instagram face, someone with more heft, with frown lines.
And then, I watched the movie and the choice made sense. Athena in Nolan’s interpretation functions less as an answer to his prayers and more like a stand-in for his guilty conscience. She takes the form of a priestess who Odysseus’s army violently murdered during the sack of Troy: a civillian, working in Athena’s temple. Athena takes this form to symbolize Odysseus’s regret but also it illustrates something about the way ancient people supposedly worshipped the gods. Theys aw them in forms that they themselves were receptive to. Greek gods were responsible for not just the fate of the world, but our impulses and emotions—greed, envy, victory, and regret. These tensions are explored when Odysseus is defiant that he can change the course of fate, of the gods’ will, and Athena, in the form of this murdered young woman, tells him it is futile. It makes sense that Athena would take the form of a war-related regret or, put another way, Odysseus would view that post-traumatic regret in the form of the goddess Athena.
Odysseus, in Nolan’s interpretation, regrets the means in which he secured victory for the Greeks: the infamous Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse was his idea, a product of his intellect; some would say it was a gift from Athena, the goddess of battle strategy, herself. Nolan’s Odysseus watches in horror as innocent people in Troy die during the siege. He is responsible for his victory, but the massacre of women, children, and other civillians.
As Odysseus recounts his regret to Athena, and later to his wife Penelope, I can’t help but think of another man whose intelligence helped win a war but cost him his soul: J. Robert Oppenheimer. It is interesting that Nolan chose this take on the Odyssey while the original poem only briefly mentions it. I haven’t done any research so far on what he, or other people who worked on the project, have to say about this decision, or any intentional parallels with Oppenheimer. This idea of a tool created to win at all costs, borne from the brainchild of one man also contrasts with myths like the Sword in the Stone. Those tools are marks of strength, honor, or divine blessing. They allow for victory in combat, not a massacre. They were also tests, in a way, not something that was created by the human mind. When we consider the Trojan Horse, or the Atomic Bomb, we have, in its inception, the domain of Athena: battle strategy and intelligence. Both Odysseus and Oppenheimer were famously clever men. When it comes to their consequences, however, we get the realm of Ares: fire, wrath, war—and eventually Hades.
This is an interesting path for someone like Nolan to take—to tell stories of men who use their power and privilege ostensibly to help but whose short sightedness, a symptom of their humanity, led to horrors that plagued them for the rest of their lives. Some believe that both Odysseus and Oppenheimer died as heroes. Others believed that while innocents died at their hands, they lived long enough to become villians.