Christopher Nolan’s smash hit epic has continued to excite and enrage everyone from rightwingers to academics, an old-fashioned throwback to a uniting big-screen event

• Peter Bradshaw reviews The Odyssey

• The Odyssey: jaw-dropping action, dark magic and dolphin cameos – discuss with spoilers

• Go woke, get rich: why rightwing hate campaigns don’t affect the box office

If a high-profile academic is reviewing a movie for the London Review of Books, that movie in question must be making some kind of mark on some kind of culture. And if people are actually reading a movie review in the London Review of Books, and writing thinkpieces in disagreement or favor of said movie or its review, that movie may actually be a cultural phenomenon.

Normally, volume of discourse about a movie should not be mistaken for a sign that people are actually seeing it. Sometimes online factions just have a bored fixation not shared by the rest of the world. But Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has some major receipts at the box office, too: the movie has already outgrossed Oppenheimer, Nolan’s last movie, itself a shockingly popular movie for adults. Though The Odyssey’s audience skewed male in its first weekend, by its second its gender split was closer to 50/50, suggesting reach beyond the stereotypically male-driven action-adventures. It’s also reaching out to older moviegoers, an endangered demographic in a summer where under-25s have driven the success of Obsession and Backrooms. Three-quarters of The Odyssey’s audience has been over 25, while memes inspired by the movie (most popular: Matt Damon’s anguished face portraying Odysseus listening to the sirens’ song and Robert Pattinson’s slimy suitor demanding that “someone get these BEGGARS out of here!”) have indicated that younger people are paying attention too.

The novelist suggested Wilson should have been ‘a wee bit more thoughtful and respectful’ towards a film-maker who may have helped boost her book sales

• Mary Beard on The Odyssey and how empires fall – Stateside with Kai and Carter

The off-screen drama surrounding Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster version of the Odyssey stepped up a gear overnight, as the novelist Joyce Carol Oates sought to defend the film-maker from an attack by classicist Emily Wilson.

Writing on X, Oates took issue with the style as well as the rhetoric of Wilson’s essay published earlier this week in the London Review of Books, in which the academic, who published a landmark translation of Homer’s epic poem in 2017, wrote that Nolan’s film lacked “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth” and had “nothing convincing to say”.

The Hallmark Channel’s ropey version of The Odyssey is going viral for its star-studded cast. Christopher Nolan’s film only looks better by comparison

Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey is far from the first committed to screen. As early as 1911, Italian director Guiseppe de Liguoro made a silent version entitled L’Odissea. Readers of a certain age may remember watching the futuristic animated series Ulysses 31 throughout the 1980s. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is based on The Odyssey. So too, if you squint as hard as you can and discount the Goofy Goober song, is the first SpongeBob SquarePants movie.

However, the pre-Nolan adaptation that has the biggest legacy is arguably Andrei Konchalovsky’s two-part version, made in 1997 for the Hallmark Channel. This is the adaptation that has been doing the rounds in recent days, clipped up on social media (the full version is highly discoverable on YouTube) and catching the eye of Joyce Carol Oates, who spent much of Thursday night tweeting very enthusiastically about it.

Wilson, whose work on Homer’s epic was praised by Nolan, said his film was grandiose and superficial with ‘nothing convincing to say’

• Peter Bradshaw reviews The Odyssey
• ‘At times I felt I’d bitten off more than I could chew’: Christopher Nolan interviewed
• What Nolan’s Odyssey changed, invented – and left out

Emily Wilson, the classicist whose 2017 translation of Homer’s Odyssey was cited by Christopher Nolan in early publicity for his hugely successful adaptation of the poem, has roundly criticised the film, saying “it has nothing convincing to say” and that it “lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth”.

In a scathing essay for the London Review of Books, Wilson writes: “I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters. But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality … the film’s vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped, to deliver what it half-promises in terms of big ideas – although it is very good at conveying big bangs and big giants.”

The Odyssey is the summer’s biggest film: an adaptation of an almost 3,000 year old poem that everyone is talking about. So what was our readers’ verdict?

As expected from Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey is an immense technical achievement: vast in scale, beautifully shot and carried by an absorbing soundscape, particularly impressive on the Imax screen. I did enjoy it, but it did not resonate with me emotionally as some of Nolan’s other films have. For a film reaching for something deep and mythic, I’m not sure it felt quite as profound as it wanted to be. I also wasn’t wholly convinced by the casting. There were so many big names that at times I found myself seeing the actors more than the characters. Matt Damon, especially in the island scenes, reminded me of his early Bourne performances when the character had lost his memory. Charlize Theron felt underused, Jon Bernthal seemed to bring his familiar swagger, and Tom Holland did not fully convince me in the more conflicted moments. Samantha Morton, however, was excellent, as she always is. Samiul Kamal-Uddin, 49, London, UK

A high-quality pirated version of the summer’s hit movie was leaked on Elon Musk’s X platform and viewed more than 3m times before being removed

A leaked copy of The Odyssey has been taken down from Elon Musk’s X platform but only after a post flagging it gained millions of views.

A high-quality pirated version of the film went viral at the weekend after an account linked to it saying “Someone uploaded ‘The Odyssey’ full movie on X. Can you believe it?”. The post flagging the film was viewed more than 3m times before the account hosting the apparently leaked film was suspended by X.

There’s no denying the power of the film on the big screen. But how far should modern moral sensibilities influence adaptations of classics?

Everyone knows how dumb it is to be this person: the one who mourns the film adaptation of a favourite text because it misses out this scene, or misreads that particularly beloved character, or has a slightly “inauthentic” take on some detail. Of course I’m talking about Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of the Odyssey, a poem I have loved since I was a teenager. I enjoyed the movie, in common with a huge number of other people. It seems remarkable, even dizzying, that the adaptation of a nearly 3,000-year-old poem took $264m (£196m) at the box office over its opening weekend, has sent translations of the Odyssey surging up the bestseller charts, and is sold out (for instance) at London’s BFI Imax screen deep into September. We are living in an Odyssey time, amid an Odyssey frenzy.

There is no point trying to be a purist about a beloved classic text. Whoever reads the Odyssey, including Nolan, inescapably does so through the prism of their prejudices, informed by the conditions of their own place and time. Since the Odyssey is the result of decades, maybe centuries, of non-literate oral poets working with memory and improvisation, there’s no precise “original” place or time to return to, anyway. But what I can’t help doing is observe the choices Nolan has made and think about their consequences – because there are always divides in the road, paths not taken by any adapter.

Christopher Nolan’s new adaption of The Odyssey is an absolute monster of a hit, grossing $264m in its opening weekend. But celebrated classicist Mary Beard tells host Carter Sherman that while Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem comes with plenty of action-packed battle scenes, the film is missing the original's "elusive sexiness" – and its approach to women left her disappointed. Carter and Beard also explore why rightwing politicians – and people like Elon Musk – are so obsessed with co-opting the ancient world. They ask: who gets to own the classics?

Commentary and criticism about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey from the Guardian:

• The Odyssey’s review

• Christopher Nolan interview

• Will women also love The Odyssey?

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?