matthew thrift

A mammoth adventure epic that shot for 91 days across six months in six countries and cost a reported $250 million to make, The Odyssey is a cinematic beast worthy of its own mythology. Adapting and doing justice to one of the foundational texts of Western literature is a big gig. But if one director can take on a full-blooded adaptation of Homer’s epic 8th-century BC poem, it’s Christopher Nolan.

Fascinated by time and memory, Christopher Nolan’s cinema feels like a natural home for Homer’s epic The Odyssey. Following the legendary hero Odysseus on his decade-long struggle to return to his family after the fall of Troy, Nolan’s latest joins a long tradition of films inspired by the tales of Greek mythology – one of cinema’s deepest creative wells.

In August 1986, Hong Kong was running out of Ray Bans. Director John Woo and producer Tsui Hark had just unveiled their brooding action epic A Better Tomorrow, a tale of treachery and brotherhood among cops and crooks that would quickly become the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong cinema history, and rapturous fans were impatient to emulate the signature style of its leading man, Chow Yun-Fat.