The Odyssey will allow a new type of Christopher Nolan movie to be unearthed, but I am not entirely sure people are ready for that. Christopher Nolan’s highly ranked movies have enabled the filmmaker to carve out his own niche in Hollywood. In many ways, Nolan resembles an indie filmmaker, only with soaring budgets that drive audiences to theaters.

The Odyssey‘s record-breaking ticket sales, achieved an entire year before the movie has even been released, are proof of this. So too is the hype around The Odyssey‘s trailer, which was also shown for the first time in July 2025, ahead of the movie’s worldwide release a year later. This is all evidence of Nolan’s success with audiences.

That said, The Odyssey will be a very different Nolan movie, especially in comparison to his last effort, the biographical Oppenheimer. These differences will unlock a completely new type of movie for Nolan to play with, though I fear audiences are not entirely ready for this drastic change based on previous experiences with this.

Christopher Nolan Has Always Kept It Real

Throughout Nolan’s entire filmography, the director has more than often tried to keep his various stories grounded in reality. Oppenheimer was a big indication of this, given its biographical nature. However, even in Nolan’s more fantastical films like Inception and Interstellar, they tend to be grounded in realism.

Nolan’s take on science-fiction adventures tends to lean more into the science than the fiction. This complements his values as a filmmaker, too, with Nolan often opting to capture big set-pieces in camera with practical effects and stunts, as opposed to an overreliance on CGI. Inception’s dream hallway fight is evidence enough of this.

Even when Nolan dipped his feet into the world of superheroes with his Dark Knight trilogy, Batman became a more grounded character. Bruce Wayne would utilize his company’s connections to arms dealers to buy what were essentially tanks as his Batmobile, as well as armored suits for his Batman costume. Even when Nolan is bending reality, literally and figuratively, he keeps things grounded.

The Odyssey Will Force Nolan To Embrace Fantasy

With The Odyssey, though, Nolan cannot escape the need to embrace fantasy and magic. Unlike The Prestige, the magic on display in The Odyssey is no illusion. Of course, The Odyssey is based on the poem of the same name by the Ancient Greek poet, Homer. This time, Nolan is entering a world of gods and monsters in Ancient Greece.

The Odyssey will thus include elements that cannot be grounded in the reality of our world or explained away using science. Some of The Odyssey‘s most exciting scenes will include Cyclops, Sirens, the God of the Underworld known as Hades, the Underworld itself, and several more mythological creatures and tales that the story’s main character, Odysseus, will encounter.

With all of this in mind, there is no way to logistically create The Odyssey while grounding it in any sense of reality or real-world logic. Beyond that, The Odyssey will likely feature the biggest reliance on CGI in Nolan’s entire filmography thus far, due to the story’s adaptation of Ancient Greek monsters and locations.

Are Christopher Nolan’s Fans Ready For The Odyssey?

All of this raises the question, then, of whether Cristopher Nolan fans are ready for The Odyssey. Nolan’s movies – despite being overly beloved – are most criticized when they strain credulity. Tenet is perhaps the filmmaker’s most divisive effort, mostly driven by the inability of mᴀss audiences to truly understand the film’s mind-boggling concepts.

Tenet is more meant to be felt and experienced, as opposed to understood, yet this proved too much for audiences to invest in. Even some of Nolan’s more revered movies, like Interstellar, include elements that caused audiences to check out. The third act of Interstellar leans much harder into ficтιтious elements than the previously science-based space travel.

Then you have the ending of The Dark Knight Rises. Despite being a much more grounded take on Batman and his villains, like Bane, the inclusion of a nuclear explosion that Bruce Wayne miraculously survives caused some to think the film did not adequately set up this conclusion. These moments all prove that Nolan’s more unrealistic aspects tend to be his most divisive.

With The Odyssey being Nolan’s next movie, the question of whether fans are ready for it is more prevalent than ever. If audiences have been more unwilling to grasp Nolan’s more unrealistic aspects thus far, the possibility that they will not grasp an entirely fantastical story from the filmmaker is high. That said, there are some ways this could be avoided.

For one, anyone going in to watch The Odyssey should know from the off that it will be versed in more magic than science. The film is based on an Ancient Greek poem, after all, meaning magical elements should be expected. In some of the other Nolan movies mentioned, these more far-fetched concepts may have been divisive due to being unexpected.

In an entire movie that leans into fantasy, though, The Odyssey‘s more unrealistic moments will feel less unexpected. Nonetheless, the trend is clear: the more unrealistic aspects of Nolan’s films tend to be less widely loved. The Odyssey will be a mᴀssive test of this, proving whether audiences are truly ready to accept an entirely new type of Christopher Nolan movie.