Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ First Reactions Praise a “Monumental” Epic, “Masterpiece” — But More Critics Need to See It

The social media embargo has lifted on Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” and I’ll update the reactions as they come along.

The only critic of the bunch, so far, is IndieWire’s David Ehrlich, and he seems mixed-to-positive on it, calling it “too clunky to be S-tier Nolan,” but he does like the final act.

EDIT: More critics, including Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, Phil De Semlyen of Time Out, William Bibbiani of TheWrap, and Joshua Rothkopf of the Los Angeles Times, have also shared significantly more positive assessments.

Meanwhile, Anne Thompson, one of the most respected Oscar pundits, is predicting big things for “The Odyssey.” She loved it, calling it the current Best Picture front-runner and predicting that Matt Damon could win his first acting Oscar for his lead performance as Odysseus. Glowing praise.

The rest of the reactions are not really from critics, but they are all gushing, using words like “crowning achievement,” “staggering,” “triumphant,” “magnum opus,” “monumental,” “sublime,” and “masterpiece” to get their points across.

One thing I noticed: there’s been a lot of praise for Himesh Patel, John Leguizamo, and especially Samantha Morton, who plays Circe and only has one scene in the film. There hasn’t been much mention of the other female performers, including Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong’o.

Still, this is a good start for Nolan’s epic, which will now be building off these reactions and carrying that momentum into next week, when the second and biggest batch of reactions/reviews is set to appear online.

Hey, it’s very possible “The Odyssey,” will get great reviews — probably very likely — but 95% of the reactions here are not from critics — rather, they are from the same batch of people who called “Disclosure Day” Spielberg’s “best film in over 20 years.” Most press will get to see “The Odyssey” next Monday. The review embargo lifts on July 15.

That said, I just can’t see a film of this scope, with this many stars, and with such an admired filmmaker at the helm, not receiving a bunch of Oscar nominations. The writing has always been on the wall when it comes to the fate of Nolan’s grandiose epic.

For those curious, Travis Scott, who plays The Bard, has a new original song that plays during credits. James Blake is lead on the vocals

I’ll keep updating as more reactions come in…