Matt Damon Breaks Down How Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Stacks Up Against Homer’s Epic

Matt Damon says Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey hews closely to Homer, teasing a sweeping adaptation that turns Odysseus’ most famous trials into big-screen set pieces.

Christopher Nolan made a Trojan horse. Like, an actual one. Matt Damon is out there easing the big question about Nolan's The Odyssey ahead of the promo push, and if you were wondering how faithful this thing is to Homer, Damon basically says: very.

So how close is Nolan sticking to Homer?

Damon told Empire the movie tracks Odysseus' long trek home after the Trojan War and does not shy away from the greatest hits. In his words: if the script says run from a Cyclops, you run from a Cyclops. He also says Nolan keeps the mythic setpieces right up front rather than coyly suggesting them.

• Trojan War aftermath and Odysseus' journey back to Ithaca is the spine
• The Trojan horse is in play (and not just as a line of dialogue)
• The Sirens sequence is there, with Odysseus tied to the mast
• The Cyclops encounter shows up as a full-on chase-for-your-life moment

'If you are going to have an existential crisis as you pass the Sirens and you are lashed to a mast, it is there.'

The horse is not a metaphor

Damon says the production built a full-size Trojan horse and parked it on a beach. He remembers walking up to it and thinking, 'I saw the horse on the beach and I was just like, F--. It was just so cool.' They started shooting those scenes right away, and when Damon asked Nolan how exactly they were going to pull it off, Nolan gave a very Nolan answer: 'I do not know. We will just get in there and figure it out.'

No hedging on the myth stuff

On the Sirens beat, Damon describes Odysseus lashed to the mast exactly as you remember from high school, and he stresses that the script is plainspoken about each trial. As he puts it, 'Chris does not hide the ball.' Damon also mentions there are global locations, open-water shoots, and thousands of extras, with big practical builds across the board — the horse included.

Damon is all-in on this one

He calls the shoot 'the best' experience of his career, which is saying something, and this is now his third go-round with Nolan after Interstellar and Oppenheimer. Between the scale, the practical insanity, and the classic text, it sounds like Nolan is going very big and very literal with the legend — in the good way.