The odyssey review landed on Monday night in London with a simple split verdict: Christopher Nolan’s three-hour The Odyssey drew immediate best picture talk. Robert Pattinson also emerged as the name critics kept returning to, and that matters because the film carries a reported $250m cost and a $500m break-even target.
London premiere reactions
Peter Bradshaw called it “Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion and a loss of innocence witnessed by the dead.” Anne Thompson went further, saying it was the best picture contender to beat, that Matt Damon could win best actor, and that her high expectations were met. She also described it as “stunningly mounted.”
Erik Davis added the kind of first reaction studios want to hear after a premiere. He called it “an absolute triumph and a crowning cinematic achievement from one of the great film-makers of our time,” and said, “It feels like everything Nolan has been working toward with Imax has culminated here.”
Robert Pattinson steals focus
One of the clearest takeaways from the first reactions was the attention paid to Pattinson’s villainous Antinous for. Davis said, “Anne Hathaway is incredible, Matt Damon is excellent, and Tom Holland continues to prove he can do just about anything. But Robert Pattinson absolutely stole the show for me.” He added that Pattinson is “so conniving, manipulative and endlessly entertaining to watch,” and that the role leads to “one of my favorite performances of his.”
That kind of reaction gives the film a useful awards-season hook beyond Nolan himself. A strong supporting turn can sharpen a campaign, especially when the film is already being framed as a contender on scale, performance and craft rather than just spectacle.
Scale and the money test
Matt Neglia called the film “a colossal achievement of scale, even by Nolan’s standards,” while David Ehrlich offered the complication that keeps this from reading like pure hype. He described the film as “surprisingly natural” and “less despairing” than Oppenheimer, but also said it was “too clunky to be S-tier Nolan, but the last act rewards the journey.”
The business case is easier to state than to solve: a $250m budget against a reported $500m break-even point leaves little room for a soft launch. The film was shot entirely on large-format Imax film cameras, yet it will also play in non-Imax cinemas, which broadens access but also makes turnout across formats part of the commercial test. Nolan’s 2023 Oscars run with Oppenheimer, which took almost $1bn at the box office, is the obvious benchmark hanging over this release.
Tom Holland’s second viewing note may be the most practical marker for the days ahead: he said on X that he had now watched it twice and called it “by some way the best cinematic adaptation of a Greek myth I have ever seen.” The reviews embargo lifts before Wednesday next week, and the worldwide release follows next Friday, when the real audience test begins.
