{"id":282505,"date":"2025-11-13T20:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T20:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/282505\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T20:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T20:49:10","slug":"the-odyssey-is-exactly-what-you-want-of-a-summer-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/282505\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odyssey Is ‘Exactly What You Want Of A Summer Movie’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Damon is no stranger to big-screen spectacle. With the Jason Bourne<\/a> movies, he helped reinvent the spy movie so thoroughly, it left James Bond running to keep up; he made complex heists look like easy money in the Ocean\u2019s<\/a> trilogy; he single-handedly escaped Mars (with his own \u2018fertiliser\u2019) in The Martian<\/a>. The guy was literally Private Ryan, of Saving<\/a> fame. So, when he says that Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey is a total cinematic blockbuster \u2013 meticulous craft in service of eye-popping popcorn-ready thrills \u2013 you believe him. And that\u2019s precisely what he says. As he tells Empire, in our world-exclusive The Odyssey issue<\/a>, Nolan\u2019s latest is \u201cexactly what you want of a summer movie.\u201d Given everything the legendary director has at his disposal? \u201cIt should be the most massively entertaining film. It should feel mythic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nolan\u2019s Oppenheimer<\/a> follow-up casts Damon as Odysseus, in a grand-scale retelling of Homer\u2019s epic poem \u2013 charting his decade-long journey home after the Trojan war. \u201cI can say, without hyperbole, that it was the best experience of my career,\u201d the actor enthuses. It was a massive production, spanning vast swathes of the globe, open oceans, thousands of extras, and gigantic props. Including an actual Trojan horse. \u201cI saw the horse on the beach and I was just like, \u2018Fuck,\u2019\u201d Damon says. \u201cIt was just so cool.\u201d Through it all, on his third Christopher Nolan movie (after Interstellar<\/a> and Oppenheimer), he helped lead the way on a process that was part thorough planning, part going wherever the movie took them. \u201cWe were shooting that [Trojan horse] stuff next week, so I go, \u2018How are you going to do it?\u2019 And [Nolan] goes, \u2018I don\u2019t know. We\u2019ll just get in there and figure it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, in the screenplay \u2013 penned by Nolan himself \u2013 it was abundantly clear what feats would belie Odysseus, and therefore Damon himself. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to have an existential crisis as you pass the Sirens and you\u2019re lashed to a mast, it\u2019s there,\u201d he says. \u201cIf it says you\u2019re running for your life from a Cyclops, you\u2019re going to run for your life. Chris doesn\u2019t hide the ball.\u201d That ball is rapidly approaching; prepare for Christopher Nolan\u2019s biggest ever swing.<\/p>\n

\"Empire<\/p>\n

Read Empire\u2019s full, super-sized The Odyssey cover story \u2013 venturing to Christopher Nolan\u2019s LA offices for a world-exclusive interview about his jaw-droppingly ambitious new epic, and getting the first word from Matt Damon on Odysseus\u2019 wild journey \u2013 in the January 2026 issue of Empire<\/a>, on sale Thursday 20 November. Pre-order a copy online here<\/a>. The Odyssey comes to UK cinemas from 17 July 2026.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned to empireonline.com for more The Odyssey exclusives, coming soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Damon is no stranger to big-screen spectacle. With the Jason Bourne movies, he helped reinvent the spy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-282505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}