Christopher Nolan says his new film tells the story of stories: 'It was a nightmare to shoot'

Christopher Nolan received a standing ovation when he took the stage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas this week to introduce his new film The Odyssey. It's one of the most anticipated films of the year, if not the most anticipated, given its story and the names involved, Variety reports.

• The film “Odyssey” by Christopher Nolan will premiere in cinemas in Romania on July 17, simultaneously with the international release.

The 55-year-old British director began his speech at CinemaCon with a joke, saying he was just glad he didn't have to follow Steven Spielberg on stage during Universal Pictures' presentation at the annual US film industry convention.

Spielberg previewed his new film Disclosure Day later that day.

Nolan then got straight to the point, talking about his decision to adapt the Greek poet Homer's “Odyssey” for contemporary audiences. Matt Damon plays Ulysses (Odysseus), the king of Ithaca, and the story follows his long and dangerous return home after the Trojan War.

“Why 'The Odyssey'? 'The Odyssey' is a story that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years,” reflected Christopher Nolan. “It's not a story. It's the story,” he emphasized.

Nolan Has Assembled a World-Class Cast for His 'Odyssey'

Along with Matt Damon, the film also stars Anne Hathaway (as Penelope, the wife of Odysseus), Tom Holland (Telemah, son of Odysseus) and Charlize Theron (the nymph Calypso) in a world-class cast that also includes Robert Pattinson Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo and Himesh Patel.

Given this vast cast, Nolan joked that there are too many stars to bring them all to CinemaCon.

“How do you get something like that in front of a modern audience? Obviously, we start with the cast,” Nolan said. “It would be easier for me to tell you who is not in the movie. I would have brought them all here, but the sheer weight of this extraordinary talent would have caused the stage to collapse.”

Nolan described a difficult filming process that took them around the world, filming in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland and Scotland.

“It was a real nightmare to shoot, but in all the right ways,” Christopher Nolan said, adding that “it felt amazing.” He singled out his lead actor, referring to Damon as “my partner on this journey” and calling his performance “incredible.”

“He's been out there on boats, on mountains, in caves, in blazing sun, in torrential rain and wind,” Nolan said. “You'll be glad to know how difficult it was. It was meant to be; that's the nature of this story.”

The film “Odyssey” will mark a first in the history of cinema

Nolan's new feature, his first since winning an Oscar in 2024 for his “Oppenheimer,” will also be the first film ever made entirely with IMAX cameras, a feat the British director said fulfilled his “oldest ambition.”

“Oppenheimer” was a huge hit in the IMAX format, contributing an impressive total of 20% of the film's nearly $1 billion gross. Variety magazine recalls that in the US some moviegoers even went to a neighboring state to see “Oppenheimer” in 70mm IMAX format, filling large screening rooms for weeks.

“When I was a kid, all I wanted was to tell stories on a large scale using that technology, to bring the audience into that world,” Nolan said, referring to the IMAX format that not only provides a sharper, more detailed and more “immersive” image, but also gives the viewer the feeling of being “inside” the scene, not just looking at it.

“And I spent a lot of years trying to pull that off, starting with 'The Dark Knight' when I was in my early 30s. I shot the action sequences [în IMAX]but we never got around to making the whole movie that way. My team did an incredible job of being able to do this for the first time,” Christopher Nolan pointed out.

Nolan also included the story of the Trojan Horse in the film, a subplot in Homer's “Odyssey.”

Nolan gave ticket-payers at CinemaCon an extended look at “The Odyssey,” which opens with Damon as Odysseus shirtless on a beach with a bushy beard. He has been gone for a long time and confesses to Calypso that he “remembers nothing before Troy”.

“Did I have a wife? Children? Maybe a son?” he asks. “If I had a son, how old would he be now?”, he wonders.

Most of the clip shown focused on the story of the Trojan horse, which the Greeks used as cover to enter the city of Troy at the end of the war. As the huge wooden structure reaches the shore, thousands of people have to drag the Trojan horse out of the water and onto the sand before it can be carried into the city.

“In this tense and thrilling sequence, the Greeks are forced to remain silent while the Trojans plunge their swords into the statue to see if anything is hidden inside, one of the blades cutting right through the face of a hidden soldier,” reports Variety. The story of the Trojan Horse is dealt with extensively in the Roman poet Virgil's “Aeneid” and is a secondary subject in Homer's “Odyssey”.

The clip shown at CinemaCon also showed Odysseus urging his soldiers to keep rowing through a storm before firing his bow as he launches a full-scale attack in the dark of night.

The footage ended with a quick shot of Odysseus and his men confronting the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus; the brutal giant lifted a man in his hand before the screen went black.

He is just one of many mythical beings – cyclops, sirens and Circe, among others – that Odysseus will encounter in his quest to reunite with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus.