Homer's Odyssey gets renewed attention ahead of Nolan film release

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has pushed Homer's ancient poem back into the spotlight, putting Odysseus's 10-year journey home from the Trojan War in front of a wider audience. Kelly Olson, graduate chair of classical studies at the University of Western Ontario, has been helping explain why the epic still travels well between classrooms and theaters.

The Odyssey is traditionally attributed to Homer and is commonly divided into 24 books. Its best-known episodes include Odysseus's encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus, along with passages involving sorceresses, cannibals and other mythic dangers that interrupt the king of Ithaca's long trip back from war. That mix of adventure, violence and endurance has made the poem one of the easiest ancient texts to adapt and one of the hardest to compress.

Universal Pictures' adaptation was released July 17, 2026, with Matt Damon in the cast and Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson also attached to the ensemble. IMDb lists the film at 2 hours 52 minutes and rates it R, details that underscore the scale of the production. A 172-minute movie cannot preserve the poem's 24-book architecture, so the adaptation has to compress Odysseus's journey into a single dramatic arc.

Western University's media relations office said experts were available to discuss The Odyssey, framing the topic from the epic poem in ancient Greece to the reception of adaptations in modern times. For newcomers, the original poem is the place to start: the 24-book structure shows how the story moves from Troy to Ithaca, and the encounter with Polyphemus explains why Homer’s version still anchors every later retelling.