Everything Wrong With The Odyssey (2026)

More like Based on the Epic NO-em by Homer

There have been so many claims and counter-claims about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a movie that has already become the first film ever to debut with a negative box-office take, as angry cinemagoers storm theatres to demand the management pay them for seeing it. But with all the commentary swirling around it, how can you trust you know the truth about this movie, apart from watching it for yourself which obviously you can’t do?

Well, I took one for the team. I watched The Odyssey and I can confirm that it is terrible in almost every way. Specifically it suffers from the following flaws, which I have compiled in list form:

• Although supposedly based on the video game Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, virtually none of the game’s characters are featured in the film.

• Helen of Troy is played by Oscar-winning African-American actress Lupito Nyong’o, but canonically, Helen was not an Oscar-winning actress, so this is a major departure from the source material.

• Anne Hathaway plays the mother of Tom Holland’s character, even though in real life Hathaway (14) is thirty-nine years YOUNGER than Holland (53).

• The Cyclops puppet’s strings are visible throughout his scene. In addition, on several occasions he can be heard saying “Ow! My two eyes!”

• The character of Eurycleia is played by Dame Angela Lansbury, who has been dead for nearly four years.

• The so-called “Trojan Horse” is clearly far bigger than any horse in recorded history.

• The character of Telemachus repeatedly refers to his parents as “Mom” and “Dad”, despite the fact that there is no word in ancient Greek for “Telemachus”.

• Odysseus’s men sail to Ithaca, which is in New York, a state still unknown to the ancient Greeks. Also, the Trojan War is depicted as taking place in Troy, a city in Michigan.

• The scene in which Circe turns Odysseus’s men into pigs is blatantly plagiarised from the scene in Willow (1988) in which Queen Bavmorda turns all the army into pigs.

• Multiple characters make repeated references to “the gods”, who don’t actually exist.

• The cyclops is blinded by having a burnt stick shoved in his eye by Greek soldiers while lying in a cave, which statistically is one of the least likely ways for a person to lose their sight, thus risking sending a misleading message about eye safety to the public.

• Matt Damon has weird nipples.

• The movie pushes woke transgender ideology by having the Greek soldiers light a fire in the Cyclops’s cave using a pile of Harry Potter books.

• Homer’s central theme, of the need to crack down on illegal immigration by any means possible, is almost entirely absent from the film.

• The city of Troy in the film is clearly made from papier-mache.

• Lazy choreography in the musical numbers.

• Three times other actors accidentally call Telemachus “Spider-Man”.

• In the underworld of Hades, Odysseus talks to the dead, which is impossible as dead people cannot talk.

• Odysseus’s men are attacked by an army of knights who are much larger than any real human being - clearly an uncorrected error in the CGI.

• The film is set in ancient Greece, but many clues - street signs, licence plates, etc - give away that it was actually filmed in Vancouver.

• It is anachronistic to give Odysseus the catchphrase “Me so horny!”

• Odysseus’s dog “Argos” is played by a ferret on stilts.

• Odysseus’s wife “Penelope” is also played by a ferret on stilts.

• There is a gratuitous scene just before the climactic battle when Odysseus says to Antinous, “So everyone in this palace is queer?” and Antinous replies, “Yes, and we’re very proud of that.”

• Numerous shots where a Tesla Cybertruck drives past in the background.

• Scylla and Charybdis’s complicated open marriage is completely ignored.

• The Sirens’ song is robbed of its power by Nolan’s decision to use Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Get Down”.

• The use of IMAX backfires badly as in most shots the sound of the camera is clearly audible and every character ends every line by shouting “In IMAX!”