The Official Trailer for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” Reveals a Thrilling IMAX-Sized Epic

One of the year’s most eagerly anticipated films is Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, one of the greatest epics ever written. Nolan was in New York last night to make an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he unveiled the film’s official trailer.

The new look opens with Charlize Theron’s Calypso, a demi-goddess who has seduced Matt Damon’s Odysseus and kept him on her island of Ogygia for years against his will. “Tell me what you remember,” Calypso instructs him. “A wife,” he says, and we cut to a shot of him embracing Anne Hathaway’s Penelope. “A son,” he continues, and we see Tom Holland’s Telemachus on a boat. “And then what?” she asks. Cue shots of the Trojan War, and then the grizzled, exhausted Ithacan all but begs Calypso, “help me go home.” 

This official trailer offers us our first glimpse at Robert Pattinson’s Antinous, one of the rowdy, rude suitors who arrive at Odysseus and Penelope’s home on Ithaca while the former is beset by vengeful fate—constructed by the gods, no less—and Penelope and Telemachus are alone. “This is a household waiting for a master,” Antinous says, “I want you to choose me.” Penelope has cleverly held off the suitors for years, awaiting the return of her husband, Ithaca’s king, but his long absence has all but convinced Antinous and the rest of the rowdy suitors that she’s theirs for the taking.

The trailer also includes a brief glimpse of the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus and a slew of other thrilling set pieces. Nolan and his cast and crew shot The Odyssey partially on the open seas and in locations across the world, all while using brand new IMAX film technology. Nolan and his longtime collaborator, cinematographer Hoyt van Hoytema, used new, lighter-weight cameras this time around. The Odyssey is the first film shot entirely with IMAX cameras.

“Why The Odyssey?” Nolan said at CinemaCon this past April in Las Vegas. “The Odyssey is a story that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years,” Nolan said. “It’s not a story. It’s the story.”

“This has been an absolute nightmare to film — but in all the right ways,” Nolan said in Las Vegas. The Odyssey was filmed across Greece, Morocco, Italy—including on “goat island,” a part of Sicily—Iceland, and Scotland. “We had an amazing time.” Nolan called Damon his “partner on this journey” and called his work “incredible.”

“He was there on the boats, up the mountains, in the caves, in the beating sunshine, sideways rain, wind,” Nolan said. “You’ll be pleased to know how difficult it was. It was meant to be; that’s the nature of this story.”

Damon, Theron, Hathaway, Holland, and Pattinson are joined by a terrific ensemble—always the case in a Nolan film—that includes Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, and Himesh Patel. Given the robust call sheet, Nolan joked there were too many stars to feasibly bring with him to CinemaCon.

“How do you go about bringing this to a modern audience? Obviously, we start with the cast,” Nolan said. “It’ll be quicker for me to tell you who isn’t in the movie. I would have brought them all here, but the massive weight of extraordinary talent would have collapsed the stage.”

Check out the official trailer below. The Odyssey sails into theaters on July 17.

Featured image: Matt Damon is Odysseus in THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.