Tom Cruise Praises Nolan's 'The Odyssey' After Imax 70mm Screening as Film Holds 96% Score

Q: How does Nolan's 'The Odyssey' reinterpret the classic myth by largely removing the gods?

Nolan’s film appears to recast *The Odyssey* as a largely human drama, reducing overt divine intervention and translating much of the gods’ power into nature, psychology and belief. Reporting around the film indicates that, unlike Homer’s poem, Nolan largely avoids scenes of gods debating fate or repeatedly stepping in to direct events. Athena, played by Zendaya, is the main exception, but even she is said to function more as a restrained guide than as a constantly intervening deity. That shifts the emphasis away from Olympus and onto Odysseus himself. In practice, the film seems to treat storms, thunder, tides and other natural forces as what ancient characters would read as signs of the gods, rather than showing the gods in explicit, supernatural terms. Nolan has described wanting audiences to experience the world as Bronze Age people might have: seeing divinity in the environment around them. That makes Poseidon’s “wrath,” for example, feel like an overwhelming force of nature rather than simply a god appearing on screen. The result is a more modern, grounded interpretation of the myth. Odysseus’s suffering is framed less as the product of divine manipulation and more as the consequence of war, guilt, trauma and difficult choices. Critics and background reporting suggest this also deepens the family story with Penelope and Telemachus, making the epic less about gods controlling men and more about how men endure fate, loss and the long struggle to return home.

3 articles · Updated · Hollywood Reporter · Jul 16

Tom Cruise posted a glowing reaction after an early screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, calling it “an amazing night in a movie theater” and saying he “can’t wait to see it again.”
The praise followed an Imax 70mm showing of Nolan’s Greek epic, which opens Friday and marks the first feature shot entirely with Imax 70mm film cameras.
The Odyssey stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, with Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o among the ensemble cast.
A 96% Rotten Tomatoes critics score adds momentum for the release, while Cruise’s endorsement fits his long-running push for theatrical moviegoing and public support for other filmmakers’ releases.