Since I saw the movie, I have found it difficult not to see Trojan horses everywhere. We live now in a state of perpetual distrustfulness

Prior to the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, I’m not sure many of us would have conceived of the Trojan Horse as a kind of proto-atomic bomb, the sort of norm-obliterating device from which civilisation cannot turn back. If anything, the horse has long existed in our collective imaginations as at best a credulity-stretching plot device – why did those overly trusting Trojans not think to look that particular horse in its wooden mouth? – and at worst a cutely comedic non-threat. The greatest civilisation of its age was taken down by a timber what?

But the true masterstroke of Nolan’s film is its parallels to the last one he dropped on us, Oppenheimer. Like that film, The Odyssey is about a haunted genius who, when presented with a problem, solves it with such speed and significance that he must necessarily cast aside implication. But rather than splitting the atom, Odysseus (Matt Damon), dismembers something considerably more significant – the social fabric.

Swedish nonprofit alleges cost to repair replica was $6,000 but Universal – which made $264m on film’s opening weekend – has not stumped up

The Swedish owners of a Viking longship replica that features in the Hollywood blockbuster The Odyssey say they feel “forgotten” after film-makers allegedly returned the vessel damaged and failed to foot the bill for repairs.

In nearly three decades at sea, the warship Glad av Gillberga – based on a wreck from around 1040 found in Denmark’s Roskilde fjord – has successfully sailed the North Sea, the Baltic and even voyaged to Canada.

Ludwig Göransson’s meticulous score uses instruments of the era to create an earthy, raw and bleak soundscape, but it merely supports the portrayal of an uncomplicated hero

A few weeks ago I came across a video of Professor Armand D’Angour, associate professor of classics at Oxford university. He explained how, through groundbreaking research involving fragments of melody and rhythms found on papyrus and stone and the reconstruction of ancient instruments, it is now possible to hear for the first time in 2,000 years what ancient Greek music would have sounded like.

Given Ludwig Göransson’s beautiful theme for the aulos (an ancient double-barrelled flute) in Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster, The Odyssey, and his reputation for dedicated research into his subject matter, it seems very likely that he too has heard these calls from the ancient past.

The billionaire says the AI-generated film will stay true to Homer’s original, after repeatedly criticising Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster over its casting choices

Elon Musk has said his AI platform Grok Imagine will make a “historically accurate” adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, after the success of Christopher Nolan’s blockbusting treatment which the SpaceX founder has regularly criticised over its casting.

In a post on X, Musk said: “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.” Musk also linked to a post containing a three-minute clip of footage that the user said had been generated from Grok Imagine, showing a scene between Odysseus and the nymph Calypso.

Inside all the blink-and-you-miss-it moments, subtle easter eggs and poignant takeaways from Christopher Nolan’s ancient epic

• This article contains spoilers for The Odyssey

The Odyssey looks set to be the blockbuster hit of the summer, with global opening weekend grosses of $264m, critical rave reviews including five stars from the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, and reports of fans traversing continents to experience Christopher Nolan’s epic tale of gods and monsters in one of the few dozen screens worldwide with the capability to screen Imax in 70mm. It also has the potential to rule the box office for the coming weeks, with few other true blockbusters to be released this summer, with the exception of Spider-Man: Brand New Day (hence the cast’s humiliation ritual of a press tour). Read on for a spoiler-packed breakdown of the epic battles, narrative twists and out-of-nowhere cameos that bring richness to Nolan’s idiosyncratic vision of ancient life.

From missing scenes and characters to a brand new ending, the director has taken some artistic liberties with Homer’s epic poem

• Peter Bradshaw’s five-star review and a less enthused classicist’s take
• Will women also enjoy Nolan’s Odyssey?
• Christopher Nolan interviewed
• Why shooting on occupied land feels like a betrayal

Turning a 12,000-line poem that takes a day to read aloud into a three-hour film was always going to require some pruning. So it has proved with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which dispenses with a number of scenes and characters from Homer’s ancient Greek epic. The director has also changed the emphasis in some of the story’s most famous episodes and made a few of his own additions. Here we run down the most significant alterations.

Epic film marks Christopher Nolan’s best opening since 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises when adjusted for inflation

The Odyssey has stormed the global box office, taking US$264m (£196m, A$378m) in its opening weekend, according to studio Universal Pictures.

Starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Zendaya, the blockbuster is an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, which follows Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, as he makes his perilous 10-year journey home after fighting in the Trojan war.

In this week’s newsletter: Is Nolan our last superstar director? Every one of his films is an event, clearing the release schedules and selling out cinemas

This July, competitors are running scared – like Ithacans fleeing the cyclops Polyphemus – from The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s humongous staging of Homer’s epic poem. The only significant alternatives you’ll find at the cinema in the week of its release are a handful of Aardman rereleases and an astoundingly poorly reviewed adaptation of Animal Farm. The tumbleweeds roll on into next week too, where the star attraction is a cheapo horror film capitalising on Pinocchio’s public-domain status. Only by the 31 July does a blockbuster tentatively poke its head above the parapet – we commend you for your bravery, Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

No other film-maker is able to make studios retreat from the battlefield like Nolan, such is his clout. Sure, other directors might be able to attract sizeable numbers of moviegoers by dint of their name on the poster – Paul Thomas Anderson, Tarantino, Scorsese – but none of them are operating on the same “event cinema” scale, selling out cinemas for months on end. Modern-day Spielberg, with a fair wind behind him, might come close, but that depends completely on the project: flashy sci-fi movie that harks back to his golden era of ET and Close Encounters – perhaps; semi-autobiographical paean to the wonders of moviemaking – not so much. Nolan doesn’t tend to experience that variability: everything he stamps his name on will reliably hit.

Christopher Nolan’s star-studded take on Homer’s Odyssey has received rave reviews from critics and is one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year. The three-hour Imax blockbuster has an estimated budget of $250m and a star-studded cast including Matt Damon, Zendaya and Tom Holland. But will it live up to expectations? Annie Kelly speaks to film editor Catherine Shoard

Film fanatics arrive from US, Switzerland and Ireland for midnight premiere of director’s critically acclaimed epic

Odysseus made his name by embarking on a perilous journey from Troy to Ithaca, plus a few unplanned diversions courtesy of the gods. But this is nothing on Christian Campbell, who last night travelled more than 4,000 miles to see the Greek king’s epic fable on the big screen.

The 22-year-old film graduate, who aspires to be an editor, made the journey from Atlanta to London to watch Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey.

Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation has been met with almost universal acclaim – from mostly male film critics. Might women find the journey less comfortable?

Long ago, almost as long ago as Homer composed The Odyssey, I was a film critic on the Sunday Telegraph. People sometimes ask me how sexist the scene was then, back in the bronze age mid-noughties, when male critics outnumbered female by about eight to one. Well, there wasn’t any sexism. It was actually totally fine and everyone was really nice.

They were nice in Soho, anyway. Farther afield, less so. Particularly certain readers, when it came to certain films, made by certain directors. Quentin Tarantino, obviously. Ken Loach, weirdly. And Christopher Nolan. Question their genius and prepare for epic correction by a legion of self-appointed bouncers.

How do you follow Oppenheimer? By spending $250m bringing Homer’s epic poem to the big screen in Imax. Today’s most powerful director talks big swings, trauma-bonding and the healing powers of chocolate labrador Charlie

‘I’m in that moment of sheer terror,” says Christopher Nolan, sitting in a suite at the Corinthia hotel in London, in a slightly rumpled suit, next to a pot of tea. Outside, crowds jostle, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the stars within – Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o. It is the day before the world premiere of Nolan’s latest film, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, and the last day of waiting before audiences decide whether the biggest gamble of Nolan’s career has paid off. The film, which reportedly cost $250m (£185m), doesn’t just need an audience to show up. It needs the entire moviegoing world to do so.

“It never gets any easier, because I make films for audiences and the audience tells me what it likes,” he says. “They finish the film. I don’t have anything to hide behind. I can’t just be like: ‘Oh, people don’t get it.’ Those aren’t the films I make. What does the audience make of it? Do they turn up? Do they like it if they do turn up?

Christopher Nolan’s epic was given five stars by the Guardian, Independent and Telegraph, while the New York Times called it a ‘monumental adaptation’

Christopher Nolan’s $250m Imax blockbuster version of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey looks set to be among the director’s best-received of his career, and could be a frontrunner for next year’s best picture Oscar.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw was among the vast majority of critics who awarded it five stars, calling it a film “with thrilling ambition, boldness, seriousness, generosity and flair. There are some broad-brush moments in the dialogue, yes, but even these are applied with a muscular flourish.”

The decision to shoot in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, where the Indigenous people can’t tell their stories without fear of imprisonment, helps erase our own brutal journey

• Peter Bradshaw’s five star review
• A classicist’s verdict

The simple act of holding a camera in my homeland of Western Sahara can be a crime. When Sahrawi film-makers and journalists attempt to document everyday life under Moroccan occupation, they can often end up in prison cells. For the Moroccan regime, a camera in the hands of a Sahrawi threatens its official narrative that Western Sahara is part of Morocco.

In contrast, when celebrated international names in the film industry wish to capture an ideal picture for an epic journey, and decide that our land is exotic enough to shoot the desired scenes, they are welcomed, escorted and granted access by the same authorities that usually deny us that right.

Doing full justice to the Homeric legend, Christopher Nolan amasses an epic cast to convey the true cost of war with film-making of thrilling ambition

• A classicist’s verdict

• Nolan interviewed

• Will women also love The Odyssey?

Christopher Nolan reinvents the Homeric legend as a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion, an epic ordeal of anguish witnessed by the dead and presided over by capricious deities who participate on almost equal terms with the humans. It speaks to the generational pain of PTSD; plenty of soldiers come home in person after any war promptly enough, but arriving back to their prewar state emotionally or spiritually can take years or decades and may never happen at all. The invisible odyssey of anguish is punctuated by flashback episodes, hallucinations, confrontations with the arbitrary gods of dysfunction. And all the time the spouses and children cannot move on with their lives.

This is a film with thrilling ambition, boldness, seriousness, generosity and flair. There are some broad-brush moments in the dialogue, yes, but even these are applied with a muscular flourish. It has gasp-inducing, Imax-sized landscapes of loneliness shot by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema – who, incidentally, avoids the sea’s traditional cliched colour – and full-tilt battle sequences and fight scenes accompanied by the throbbing and thrumming of drums.

Matt Damon’s sensitive and repentant Odysseus might come as a surprise to Homer, likewise some significant omissions concerning the poem’s female characters

• Peter Bradshaw’s five star review

• Nolan’s film shot on occupied land. That feels like a betrayal

It would be easy to think that the Odyssey, Homer’s epic poem composed over 2,500 years ago, is all about Odysseus. It’s called the Odyssey, after all. It opens with the invocation to the Muse, “Tell me about a complicated man” – pulling no punches about the poem’s theme. This is, on the surface of things, an epic about a man coming home, a return voyage that spans fluorescent fantasy worlds and yawns across 10 years in the wake of the fall of Troy; a one-hero clash with monsters and princesses, giants and whirlpools, the fight to reclaim his place as king of Ithaca, and as the hero of an epic of his own.

But the point about an epic is that it also contains multitudes. There is much that is epic about Christopher Nolan’s latest film. For those familiar with Nolan’s work, that hardly comes as a surprise. It’s a long watch, coming in at just under three hours. It reckons with the breadth of the Odyssean legend, from the sack of Troy all the way to Odysseus’s return, and seamlessly juggles the epic’s multiple timelines and flashbacks. And while the jaw-dropping cinematic effects of a feature film shot with Imax cameras might seem entirely modern, the way Nolan captures the smashing of a ship’s prow into the waves or the crunch of bones in the Cyclops’ jaws have their roots in the dynamic visuality of Homer’s poetry – what ancient commentators called enargeia, the epic’s ability to bring the world to life before your eyes.

Cinephiles are crossing oceans to see the film at its highest possible resolution – and only 41 cinemas in the world are equipped to do it

In Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Odysseus embarks on an epic journey spanning oceans, monsters and gods to return home to his family. In a remarkable parallel, Christopher Nolan’s fans are embarking on epic journeys of their own to see his adaptation of The Odyssey in one of the few surviving Imax 1570 cinemas around the world, the Oscar-winning film-maker’s preferred format.

Nolan has long been a champion of Imax 1570 film, the highest-resolution film format in existence, named for the width of the film stock (70mm) and the 15 perforations on each frame. The Odyssey is the first feature film ever shot entirely on 1570 cameras, which are notoriously heavy, loud and require frequent reloading; the film stock had to be changed every three minutes during the Odyssey shoot, with Nolan working with Imax to develop a soundproofing “blimp” to house the 180kg camera to make it quiet enough for him to record dialogue on 1570 for the first time.

Odyssey director addresses industry fears over artificial intelligence and says rightwing criticism of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy is ‘irrelevant’

The Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan believes the kind of movies he makes – big-budget action films shot mostly on location – would survive the spread of artificial intelligence, a technology he says many people “disdain”.

The Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight director is promoting his latest blockbuster, an adaptation of the Greek epic The Odyssey, which will be released in cinemas this week.

Christopher Nolan’s take on the Odyssey is set to break box-office records. What made the director so determined to adapt the ancient Greek epic? And why does a poem from 600BC hold a vice-like grip on pop culture? Warning: contains 2,600-year-old spoilers

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey movie has all the hopes of a summer blockbuster pinned to it, and all the promise – as the trailers have showed – of magnificent effects, shocks and thrills. You will be taken inside the cave of the terrifying one-eyed giant, the Cyclops Polyphemus, who likes to dine on human flesh. You will visit the dim and misty shores of the land of the dead, where no warm-blooded human should ever tread. You will flee the pounding tread of cannibals. You will be tossed on stormy seas sent surging by vengeful gods.

And all of this spectacular adventure, for sure, is part of the Odyssey, one of the first great works of world literature, which was written down soon after the Greeks acquired the technology to do so, probably in the 600s or 500sBC. The ancient Greeks attributed the poem to a man called Homer, often described as a blind bard from the island of Chios.

The universal themes addressed by one of humanity’s greatest storytellers more than merit Hollywood box-office treatment

The Magasphere’s endless appetite for culture wars is wearily familiar. But who could have foreseen that Greek literature would become the new casus belli? Ahead of its much-anticipated general release next week, Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey has triggered Elon Musk and other supposed defenders of western civilisation. Directorial decisions such as the casting of the Kenyan-Mexican actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, Mr Musk ranted incoherently, amounted to “pissing on Homer’s grave”.

The absurd insistence on the white skin of a mythological figure reveals nothing we didn’t already know about the owner of X. The rest of us can move on and look forward to a lavish cinematic take on a story that has inspired artists for almost 3,000 years. Homer’s account of Odysseus’s 10-year struggle to return home from the Trojan wars has been reworked by Virgil in the Aeneid, relocated to Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and given a feminist treatment by Margaret Atwood in her Penelopiad. Now for the 21st-century Hollywood treatment.