Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey premiered in London on Monday night and the first reactions were fierce, fast and mostly admiring. In the first wave of a The Odyssey review conversation, critics called the three-hour epic a major achievement and a serious awards contender before the film’s reviews embargo lifts next Wednesday and its worldwide release follows next Friday.
The reason the reaction landed so hard is simple: Nolan has made a huge bet on scale, and the early verdict says it pays off. The film was shot entirely on large-format Imax film cameras, a technical choice that critics said gives the production its force, with some describing it as flawless, breathtaking and stunningly mounted. Anne Thompson said her high expectations were met, called it the best picture contender to beat and said Matt Damon could win best actor. Peter Bradshaw described it as a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion and a loss of innocence witnessed by the dead.
That praise matters because the film is not small enough to coast on reputation. With an estimated budget of $250m and a break-even point of at least $500m, The Odyssey needs more than prestige to justify itself commercially, especially with a worldwide tour adding to the funding burden. Nolan’s last film, Oppenheimer, swept the Oscars in 2023 and took almost $1bn at the box office, but this one is a different kind of test: a three-hour epic built for spectacle and priced like an event.
The enthusiasm was not unanimous, and that is where the story gets sharper. David Ehrlich called the film surprisingly natural and less despairing than Oppenheimer, but also said it is too clunky to be S-tier Nolan even while praising the last act. That split is telling. The film appears to be landing as a prestige crowd-pleaser with genuine highs rather than a perfectly sealed masterpiece, which is exactly the kind of distinction that matters when a studio is hoping audience turnout can match critical applause.
Erik Davis was among the most emphatic voices, calling the film an absolute triumph and a crowning cinematic achievement, and saying Nolan’s work with Imax has culminated here. He praised the production design, the action and the scale, said the film embraces horror in a way that adds a new dimension to Nolan’s filmmaking, and singled out Robert Pattinson as the standout. Pattinson, playing the villainous Antinous, was described by Davis as conniving, manipulative and endlessly entertaining to watch. Tom Holland also said he had now watched the film twice and called it the best cinematic adaptation of a Greek myth he has ever seen.
So the immediate answer is clear: The Odyssey arrived in London with the kind of reaction that can turn a big-budget release into an event. The larger question is whether that early acclaim can translate into the kind of box office needed to clear $500m, because next Wednesday’s embargo lift will widen the response, and next Friday will show whether the audience follows the critics into Nolan’s biggest wager yet.
