Boozehound Films

One of my favourite things to do is go to the cinema.

There is something about sitting in a dark auditorium, surrounded by strangers, watching a story unfold on a screen far larger than life that never loses its magic. No matter how good home cinema technology becomes, I don’t think it will ever completely replace that experience.

I try to go at least once a week. In fact, I have one of those unlimited cinema memberships, so if there’s something playing that catches my eye, there’s a good chance I’ll be there.

That meant there was never much doubt that I’d be seeing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey during its opening week.

Having finally seen it, I can honestly say I was thoroughly impressed.

A Masterclass in Scale

Whatever you think of Christopher Nolan’s films, it’s difficult to argue that anyone working in Hollywood today stages spectacle quite like he does.

The Odyssey is another remarkable example of large-scale filmmaking that never loses sight of its characters. The action is enormous, the world feels vast, and yet every sequence remains surprisingly clear. You always understand where you are, why the moment matters, and what is at stake.

That sounds simple, but it isn’t.

Creating spectacle isn’t just about spending more money or making explosions bigger. It’s about understanding how to guide an audience through increasingly complex scenes without overwhelming them.

It’s a skill that Nolan has spent decades refining.

Watching The Odyssey also reminded me of something I think modern Hollywood has lost.

There was a time when directors were allowed to develop gradually.

Nolan didn’t jump straight from independent filmmaking to directing some of the biggest productions ever made. He built his career one step at a time. Films like Insomnia and The Prestige allowed him to experiment and refine his craft before Batman Begins introduced him to blockbuster filmmaking. Even then, the scale of The Dark Knight trilogy grew naturally with each instalment.

That kind of progression feels increasingly rare today.

Many directors now find themselves moving almost overnight from small independent films to enormous studio franchises with budgets running into hundreds of millions of pounds. Somewhere along the way, the mid-budget Hollywood film largely disappeared, taking with it an important training ground for ambitious filmmakers.

Thankfully, there are signs that this might be changing.

The success of films like Sinners and Weapons over the past year suggests audiences still have an appetite for films that sit comfortably between independent productions and franchise blockbusters. Hopefully that’s the beginning of a genuine renaissance rather than a temporary trend, because I think the industry desperately needs those opportunities again.

A Cast at the Top of Their Game

One of the stranger aspects of The Odyssey‘s release has been some of the online criticism surrounding its casting.

Personally, I don’t really understand it.

Nolan has assembled a cast made up of some of the finest actors currently working, and I thought the performances reflected that.

Robert Pattinson was, unsurprisingly, exceptional.

He’s one of those actors who consistently chooses fascinating projects and rarely gives the same performance twice. Whether he’s working in independent cinema or major studio productions, he brings an unpredictability that makes every character feel distinctive.

If someone asked me to make a list of actors I’d most like to collaborate with one day, Robert Pattinson would almost certainly be right at the top.

He’s fearless in his choices, and I think that’s one of the qualities I admire most in performers.

Samantha Morton also deserves enormous credit. She’s an actor who has quietly built one of the most consistently impressive careers in British cinema, and once again she delivers a performance full of emotional depth and subtlety.

It’s a reminder that great spectacle only works when audiences care about the people at the centre of it.

Books and Films Aren’t the Same Medium

One of the more interesting discussions surrounding the film has come from Emily Wilson, whose acclaimed translation of The Odyssey served as one of Nolan’s inspirations.

Her review raises some thoughtful points, particularly regarding the relationship between Homer’s text and Nolan’s adaptation.

However, reading it also reinforced something I think is often forgotten whenever books are adapted for the screen.

Literature and cinema are different art forms.

What works brilliantly on the page won’t necessarily work on screen, and vice versa. Film has its own language, its own grammar, and its own methods of storytelling. Adapting a novel, or in this case an epic poem, isn’t simply a matter of reproducing every scene faithfully. It’s about translating the emotional and thematic experience into an entirely different medium.

As someone who has spent years both teaching storytelling and making films, I found myself disagreeing with several of Wilson’s criticisms because they seemed to evaluate the adaptation primarily through the lens of literary scholarship rather than cinematic storytelling.

That isn’t to say her perspective lacks value. Far from it. Her understanding of Homer is extraordinary, and few people know the text better.

But expertise in one discipline doesn’t automatically translate into expertise in another.

Academia teaches you very quickly that every subject has its own body of knowledge. As academics, we’re often encouraged to contribute to public conversations, but we also have a responsibility to recognise where our expertise begins and ends. It’s perfectly possible to be a leading authority in one field while approaching another from the perspective of an interested observer.

Film criticism is no different.

The Power of Cinema

Perhaps the most encouraging consequence of Nolan’s adaptation has happened away from the cinema itself.

Since the film’s release, new translations of The Odyssey have climbed back up the bestseller lists, with readers discovering, or rediscovering, Homer’s epic for themselves.

To me, that’s one of the greatest strengths of cinema.

Films don’t replace books.

They encourage people to find them.

Great adaptations have always acted as gateways to literature, history, mythology and art. They introduce audiences to stories they may never have encountered otherwise, inspiring them to explore the original works for themselves.

That’s something worth celebrating.

Cinema is sometimes dismissed as a purely commercial medium, particularly when compared with literature or theatre. But history repeatedly shows that films have an extraordinary ability to introduce millions of people to ideas, cultures and stories they might never otherwise engage with.

If The Odyssey encourages a new generation to pick up Homer, then it has already achieved something remarkable beyond its box office success.

For me, that’s one of the reasons filmmaking matters.

It’s easy to think of films as entertainment alone, but the best films do much more than entertain. They inspire curiosity. They spark conversations. They encourage audiences to explore the stories that inspired them.

Whether you’re watching an intimate independent drama or an epic adaptation of one of the oldest stories ever written, that’s the real magic of cinema.

And after spending a couple of hours immersed in Christopher Nolan’s vision of The Odyssey, I left the cinema feeling exactly why I fell in love with films in the first place.