The Odyssey’s Christopher Nolan made cast watch three classic films before shooting began

Key Points:

• Director Christopher Nolan prepared for filming The Odyssey by screening inspirational films such as Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ to capture textures and atmospheres rather than specific details.
• Nolan praised Ran for its use of natural elements like landscape and wind, which influenced the visual style of The Odyssey, and viewed The Last Temptation of Christ as a fresh historical perspective relevant to the project.
• The success of Nolan’s 2023 film Oppenheimer provided him the opportunity and resources to realize The Odyssey on a large scale, allowing for ambitious production demands.
• The Odyssey, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland, follows Odysseus’s journey home after the Trojan War and is notable for being the first feature film shot entirely on IMAX film cameras.
• To achieve this, Nolan collaborated with IMAX and film pioneer David Keighley to develop lighter, quieter IMAX cameras capable of handling dialogue scenes, overcoming previous technical limitations experienced in films like The Dark Knight.