“The Odyssey” director Christopher Nolan runs a tight warship. And it’s expected to earn his film as much as $100 million this opening weekend, as fans made their own epic journeys — even flying across the country — to see it in IMAX.
Bringing Homer’s 8th-century epic poem to the big screen meant actors — including Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, John Leguizamo and Robert Pattinson — practically lived like it was 750 BCE.
No phones or water bottles (too noisy) are reportedly allowed on set, per Nolan’s house rules. He’s even admitted to banning UGGs. The 55-year-old British-American director himself refuses to have a chair, only carries a flip phone and doesn’t have email.
“With the banning of cell phones, part of it is he wants people to be focused on the craft. He wants to make movies in as much of the old-fashioned way as possible, where people are focused on the film,” Jason Eberl, co-editor of “The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan,” told Page Six.
“Not having phones on set lends itself to a very, very focused set. There’s a different vibration on a Chris Nolan set. Everyone is present, everyone is ready, alert and doing their bit to keep the train on the tracks,” Nyong’o, who plays the dual roles Helen of Troy and her twin sister Clytemnestra, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“I try to minimize distractions,” Nolan told Stephen Colbert. “Even though we’re all engaged in this absurd process where this wall is real, but there’s lights and a guy with a microphone, you’re asking the actor to focus in on the reality … Anything we can do to keep that reality, that bubble, intact.”
That was especially vital with “The Odyssey,” as production was interrupted every three minutes to change the 70mm film needed to make Hollywood’s first-ever completely IMAX movie (most only use the special cameras for action scenes).
“Not everybody gets great dressing rooms and not everyone gets first class transportation. He cuts corners on the things that will not impact the movie — and then he puts money into things that will make the movie better. Making the movie better is his only focus,” one Hollywood insider told Page Six, calling Nolan “the most important filmmaker in the world” right now.
And all those rules work: “The Odyssey” came in early, using just 91 of its scheduled 100 days, and, Nolan has said, under budget, despite filming across multiple countries — Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland, Malta, Morocco — and on elaborate sets including a real Viking longship on the Mediterranean. (That sometimes meant a seasick cast, who were filmed vomiting over the side.)
“Every decision, from the way a scene is shot to the smallest character detail, has a purpose behind it,” actor Raimy Lang, 18, who plays teenage Antinous, told Page Six.
One of Nolan’s most awe-inspiring scenes shows the story’s Trojan Horse half-submerged in the icy sea with actor Jon Bernthal actually submerged inside it for hours.
Without digital effects, Nolan’s team erected a 60-foot puppet version of the man-eating Cyclops Polyphemus, shooting the scene in the darkness in a cave with real firelight creating a shadowy effect.
On the other end of the spectrum, a scene showing the descent of Odysseus — played by a bearded Matt Damon — into the underworld was shot during Iceland’s “white nights” period of 24/7 daylight.
“It was the hardest movie I’ve ever done, by far. Not even close [to anything else],} Damon, who appears to nearly drown in one scene in the film, told “60 Minutes.”
“The first meeting I had with [Nolan], at the end of the meeting, he said this movie is going to be hard,” Damon, said of his third film with the director, following 2014’s “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer,” which won seven Oscars at the 96th Academy Awards in 2024.
“He looked at me and said, ‘No, this movie is going to be really hard.’”
The Post’s movie critic, Johnny Oleksinski, wrote: “One of Odysseus’ best scenes, though, isn’t massive at all. It’s in the hillside cottage of the witch Circe, whose favorite pastime is turning warriors into pigs. The superb Samantha Morton gives a barnburner speech about why her victims deserve to be swine.”
And while the story was written, of course, by Homer, Nolan’s scripts give actors much to work with — earning Oscar wins for Heath Ledger, Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. Nolan writes his own screenplays, sometimes alone (“Inception,” “Tenet”), sometimes with his brother Jonathan (“Interstellar,” “The Dark Knight”) and sometimes adapting others’ stories (“Memento,” “Oppenheimer”).
But it wasn’t always easy to get his work sold: His 2000 psychological thriller, “Memento,” took a year to find a distributor.
From there, his work continued to blow up — sometimes literally, through his commitment to making scenes in real life as much as possible. He collapsed a building for “The Dark Knight.” With “Tenet,” he bought a 747 plane and built a hanger building to crash it into.
In 2024, “Openhemimer” won seven Oscars including Nolan’s first two, for best director and best picture.
All told, Nolan’s blockbusters have won 18 Academy Awards and raked in more than $6 billion.
“I feel a real responsibility to try and get as much on screen for the audience as possible. To give the audience the fullest flavor. The fullest set. The fullest set of images and events that we can give them for a given story,” he told “60 Minutes.”
“He has this ability to create huge cinematic experiences while still keeping the focus on the human side of the story,” Lang, the young actor from “The Odyssey,” told Page Six. “You can see the amount of thought that goes into every choice, and it’s inspiring to watch someone who has reached that level still be so passionate and involved in every detail.”
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