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Christopher Nolan’s First Footage from The Odyssey Trailer Leaks Online
I know, I know, you thought you were going to come here and read something about the upcoming Superman or Fantastic Four movies. Maybe a deep dive into why this collection of Superman and his Super Pals is called “The Justice Gang?” or if Franklin Richards is really powerful enough to be the potential catalyst to bring a force as powerful as Galactus into the MCU? Which Earth are either of these set on?
Not on this July Fourth.
Spoilerites, we’re going to be getting even more meta.
We’re throwing it all the way back to the birth and popularization of epic poetry – Homeric myth.
The Odyssey.
Much like the Dune 3 casting news from a couple weeks ago, it seems as though every A-lister in the Hollywood Entertainment Industry has signed on to be a part of Christopher Nolan’s (Oppenheimer, The Dark Knight), upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey.
Except, of course, James Bond’s Ralph Fiennes who has already played the epic hero in Uberto Pasolini’s 2024 The Return. This tremendously stripped down retelling of Odyssey’s homecoming to Ithaca is tremendously powerful and currently available to stream on Peacock. Before I go on for too long I’ll leave you with this: I cannot recommend checking out The Return enough. Just when you think you’re familiar with the archetype The Odyssey invented and perfected, Pasolini will knock you right off your feet!
IMO, this raises the bar even higher from Nolan who is obviously riding high on the success of his period piece-cum-biopic, Oppenheimer’s, runaway award season at his back.
And yet with all of the power of all of the Hollywood Film Gods a little bit of Circe’s magic seems to be plaguing The Odyssey’s latest foray onto the big screen. Earlier this week the first footage from the film leaked online on social media (initially both TikTok and Twitter before inevitably finding its way onto Reddit), earlier this week.
TL;DR I’m not going to link or provide you direct access to the footage, but it’s not difficult to find if your curiosity gets the better of you.
The last time something of this magnitude happened might have been when Charlie Cox’s appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home and before that the infamous Sony Leaks. I’m certain there are more that have happened and, perhaps I’m naïve, but every time this happens I find myself surprised. Even here at Major Spoilers we pride ourselves on keeping information safe and where it needs to be when it needs to be. How is it that leviathan studios can’t seem to manage the same thing?
Is it a coincidence Tom Holland is in 2/3 of these? JK BUT IT IS FUNNY!
Keep in mind, this footage was originally slated to appear before Jurassic World Rebirth which debuted in cinemas yesterday. So, the leak was only a couple of days and almost certainly happened as a result of the sending out of files and footage from studios to distributors.
There’s a too-many-hydra-heads metaphor to be made here, I’m sure.
So, what was in the footage of The Odyssey? Variety broke it down as follows:
The teaser, which is 70 seconds long, briefly shows Matt Damon’s lead character Odysseus, his son Telemachus (played by Tom Holland) and a mystery character played by Jon Bernthal. It begins with some narration by what sounds like Robert Pattinson, who also plays an unknown character.
“Darkness. Zeus’ laws smashed to pieces. A kingdom without a king since my master died,” he says over shots of a dark blue ocean and waves crashing along the sandy shore. “He knew it was an unwinnable war, and then somehow…somehow he won it.”
There are two shots of what appears to be the famous Trojan Horse — Odysseus’ master plan to sneak Greek soldiers into Troy, massacre the soldiers and sack the city to win the war. The wooden horse’s shadow is stretched across the beach, then the horse itself is seen at a distance half-submerged in water as waves roll in. In Homer’s original epic, Odysseus’s journey home takes ten years after his ship is blown off course and he encounters monsters like the Cyclops, is held captive by the nymph Calypso, and has run-ins with various Greek gods.
The teaser then cuts to a tense conversation between Telemachus and Bernthal’s character, where the latter is explaining that he doesn’t know Odysseus’ whereabouts.
“I know nothing of Odysseus, not since Troy,” Bernthal says as a dark storm rolls in over the water.
“I have to find out what happened to my father. When did you last see him?” Holland replies. He and Bernthal are next to each other with other characters sitting beside them in the background, lit up by dim orange flames.
“Interested in rumor, huh? Gossip. Who has a story about Odysseus, huh?” Bernthal begins shouting to the others near them. “You? You have a story?” There’s a shot of Greek soldiers clad in armor and carrying torches marching through a city street at night.
The white words “One Year From Now” appear on the black screen, teasing the film’s far-off release date.
“Some say he’s rich or some say he’s poor,” he continues as a faraway shot shows a Greek soldier stepping through a cavernous entrance and unsheathing his sword. “A Journey Begins” is shown on screen.
“Some say he perished. Some say he’s imprisoned. What say you?” Bernthal asks over a shot of men walking toward a city at night as a ragged flag waves.
“Imprisoned?” Telemachus asks.
“What kind of prison? Good, old man like that,” Bernthal says. There are a couple more shots of dark waves, and then it’s revealed that Odysseus is stranded in the middle of the ocean on some scraps of wood. “The Odyssey” and “17. 07. 26” flash on screen, ending the teaser.
The context of who Bernthal is playing is further muddied since Odysseus is the only character to survive the harrowing events of The Odyssey. All of his crew dies. This would mean Bernthal would have to be a veteran either from The Trojan side of the conflict (someone like Aeneas, the Trojan soldier who is the lead of Virgil’s The Aeneid), or a Greek veteran from Troy who is not a native of Ithaca.
Casting adult actor Tom Holland to play Telemachus also suggests Nolan is telling The Telemachy as perhaps a concurrent narrative? The Telemachy is sometimes in reference to the first four books of The Odyssey and has been adapted by authors since then to flush out the character of Telemachus more. Authors such as: Mishka Zakharin, A. P. David and Marjorie S. Boulden, and the incredibly popular Circe by: Madeline Miller involves Telemachus in a prominent role.
I’ll also tease that Odysseus has a younger son named Telegonus whom he fathers with Circe and is also much involved in the aforementioned Circe by: Madeline Miller. I think if we’re seeing adult Telemachus we’d be foolish not to assume Telegonus’ head will pop up as well. Most of the ancient work involving Telegonus didn’t survive, so there would be a lot more room for Nolan’s interpretation. The story of Telegonus meeting his father is also told in The Telegony, an early Greek epic that did not survive. Summaries can be found and specify that it was written by Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene as a sequel to The Odyssey. The story was also told in Odysseus Acanthoplex b:y Sophocles, which also did not survive.
Typically, leaks provide context. What I find compelling about this leak from Nolan’s The Odyssey is it only seems to have further muddied the water.
