Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Prologue: Wooden Horses, Trojan Soldiers, and Cyclops [Review]

As previously mentioned, “The Odyssey” prologue is now playing in theaters, attached to 70mm IMAX screenings of “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.”

There is a pirated in-theater version out there, and I obviously won’t be sharing it. Regardless, seeing this six-minute tease on the big screen is how Christopher Nolan intended you to watch it, and based on the footage, it looks pretty incredible.

First thing, don’t let the period setting fool you—this absolutely looks and feels like a Christopher Nolan movie: the precise, immersive style, blending practical effects with detail-filled compositions. The large-format cinematography is there, and so is the creative lighting (those shadows!).

It starts with Matt Damon, Jon Bernthal, and Greek soldiers hiding inside a giant wooden horse, tricking the Trojans into bringing it through their city gates. A guard stabs the horse, wounding one of Damon’s companions, but the ruse continues.

Despite calls to burn it, the horse stands through the night. Under cover of darkness, the Greeks, led by Damon’s Odysseus, emerge and quickly take out the nearby guards, catching the city off guard. At the city gate, the Greeks struggle with the massive locks while fending off Trojan soldiers. Once opened, their army floods in, overwhelming the defenders in a brutal assault.

We, for a brief second, get a glimpse of the animatronic Cyclops — which looks like something out of early-ers Guillermo del Toro. The prologue ends with Bernthal’s character recounting the siege to Tom Holland’s character, concluding, “I think you know the rest.”

What stuck with me, apart from the usual Nolan-isms I mentioned above, is Ludwig Göransson’s score ramping up, getting more and more intense, with brooding chants amplifying as the battle goes on. It’s unlike any composition he’s done before.

That said, I’m still not entirely sure how Nolan is going to pull off “The Odyssey.” Seeing six minutes of it is one thing, but sustaining that level of scale, tension, and practical effects across a full feature feels like an enormous undertaking—even for him. The question remains exactly how Nolan will balance intimate character moments with the sprawling, almost episodic feeling, narrative of the source material.

The full prologue will be attached to “Avatar: Fire and Ash” 70mm IMAX screenings starting December 19. Non-IMAX screenings will be getting a truncated version of it. Universal releases “The Odyssey” July 17.