[
While we knew when 70mm IMAX tickets were selling out a year ago that Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey would be a hit, we now have some confirmation that the film itself lives up to the standard we’ve come to expect from the director of Oppenheimer.
Early reactions dropped today, and while these are always to be taken with a grain of salt, the superlatives are flying from the keyboards of fanboys and film critics alike.
L.A. Times film editor Joshua Rothkopf calls the film “staggering. Earthy, ghostly, weighty, touched by humor and grandeur alike. It’s pure cinema.” And, for those in the cheap seats — as if there were any in IMAX theaters — he adds, that the film is “a return home to the robustly entertaining action movies that cinema was invented to tell.”
Time Out film critic Phil de Semlyen raves, “Believe the hype(rbole): The Odyssey is that film.” He also calls it “dense but accessible.”
Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw writes, “Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion and a loss of innocence.”
Indiewire’s Anne Thompson assessed the film’s awards chances, including those for Best Picture: “Matt Damon could win Best Actor and a bevy of supporting thesps and noms will follow. The BP to beat.”
That site’s chief film critic, David Erlich, was not as sanguine, calling it “less despairing” than Oppenheimer, but “too clunky to be S-tier Nolan, but the last act rewards the journey.”
The Odyssey opens on July 17. Initial projections had its domestic debut at between $80M-$100M. That could change if these early reactions hold up.
Scroll through the posts below to see them.
https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/CT-07772CC_MSG.jpg?w=1024
https://deadline.com/2026/07/the-odyssey-movie-first-reactions-critics-fanboys-1236975274/
Tomt
Almontather Rassoul
