Matt Damon has a free streaming window in the United States before he appears in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The 2016 film at the center of that window is The Great Wall, a fantasy epic that now gives viewers a low-cost way to revisit one of his earlier large-scale swings.
The setup is simple: Damon will be seen in The Odyssey in the titular role of Odysseus, while The Great Wall is available at no charge for viewers in the United States. That pairing puts two very different ends of his fantasy work on the same shelf, with one film moving toward a summer run and the other returning as a free catalog title.
The Great Wall and 2016
The Great Wall arrived in 2016 and was directed by Zhang Yimou. It was produced by Legendary Pictures, the company that had been putting millions into large-scale monster films such as Godzilla and Pacific Rim, and it paired Damon with Pedro Pascal and Willem Dafoe in an alternate-history story about the Great Wall of China and the Middle Kingdom.
That history matters because the film was built as a broad, expensive spectacle, not a small corrective to Damon’s later work. For viewers deciding whether to use the free window, the value is clear: this is the earlier experiment in the same high-concept lane that is about to send him into another event-sized release.
Rotten Tomatoes says 36%
The Great Wall was met with mixed reviews and holds a 36% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus says, "For a Yimou Zhang film featuring Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe battling ancient monsters, The Great Wall is neither as exciting nor as entertainingly bonkers as one might hope."
That reception is why the free availability feels more like a curiosity than a triumph. The movie was designed to travel as a major international fantasy title, but the score leaves it in the middle zone where a no-cost stream does more work than a paid rental ever could.
The Odyssey in IMAX
The Odyssey is the sharper business story. Damon described working on it as "possibly the last of its kind," and the film was shot entirely with IMAX cameras, using Christopher Nolan's favored practical effects and real locations. Universal is said to have spent around $300 million to produce it, which puts the upcoming release in the range where audience turnout can define the summer.
For now, the practical move is straightforward: viewers in the United States can watch The Great Wall for free, then compare it with the scale Nolan is bringing to The Odyssey. The more interesting comparison may be personal rather than technical — a 2016 fantasy misfire is available now, while Damon’s next turn is heading toward the kind of film that can reset how he is seen in this register.
