The star-studded adaptation of the ancient Greek poem opens July 17.

Christopher Nolan disagrees with Matt Damon’s ‘defeatist’ take on The Odyssey

The star-studded adaptation of the ancient Greek poem opens July 17.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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July 14, 2026 1:07 a.m. ET

Matt Damon as Odysseus in ‘The Odyssey’. Credit:

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

- *The Odyssey* director Christopher Nolan doesn’t agree with leading man Matt Damon’s perspective on the future of such films.

- “I think cinema is vital and essential and continues to transform itself,” Nolan said in a recent interview, but he said he knew what Damon was “driving at.”

- Damon has praised Nolan for the way he handles what’s “by far the hardest job on set.”

Director Christopher Nolan has differing views on his highly anticipated film *The Odyssey* than leading man Matt Damon.

Damon has mentioned multiple times that making the movie — with a cast fit for such an epic tale, shoots on location, and scenes filmed for the big screen — felt “nostalgic” even as they filmed, because such projects aren’t being made anymore.

“I think I know what [Damon] was driving at, because it does seem like a long time since somebody made a film like this in this type of way, where you travel the world, get together a cast of thousands and so on,” Nolan told *The Telegraph** *in a recent interview. “But there’s a defeatist aspect of viewing it that way that I don’t agree with. I think cinema is vital and essential and continues to transform itself — we’ve got all these great new young voices in movies, making the medium their own and moving it forward.”

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The Oscar-winning director of *Oppenheimer *pointed to enthusiasm for recent hits *Obsession* and *Backrooms* as evidence that film continues to thrive creatively.

“This is why I never bought into the arguments that young audiences’ attention spans are too fried to enjoy a three-hour Greek epic,” Nolan said. “Those films are so mysterious and ruminative. I mean, parts of *Backrooms* are like David Lynch at his most obscure. And yet young people can’t get enough of them.”

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The creative pointed out that he’s happy to see they *can* get enough of AI.

“I’ve never seen a more rapid wholesale dismissal of a supposedly foundational jump in technology in my lifetime,” Nolan, the father of four young adults, told AFP per *The Guardian*. “So much energy has been expended on bringing in AI, but if you look at that generation’s reaction, they’re utterly rejecting it.”

Christopher Nolan (left) directs stars Matt Damon and Zendaya in ‘The Odyssey’.

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

The filmmaker’s leading man spoke highly of him on *Today** *earlier this month.

Damon noted that Nolan had correctly told him that making the epic would be “really hard.” He explained that Nolan was a help on the film, which stars a large ensemble cast, including Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, Samantha Morton, and Charlize Theron.

“Directing is by far the hardest job on set,” Damon said. “When you’re out there kind of in the middle of a storm and you’re soaked and you’re cold and you’re like, ‘Man, I’m in discomfort right now,’ it is helpful to turn and see the person with the harder job ... looking like a drowned rat, just as cold, just as wet, and never complaining.”

*The Odyssey* arrives in theaters Friday.

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Source: “EW Movie”