It’s a long-standing joke that every perfectionist eldest daughter went through a Greek myth phase and has a favorite God or Goddess (um, Pandora, even though she was technically a human created by gods to punish other humans). So of course, I went to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in IMAX (and trust me, it’s worth every cent to see it in large format).
It’s so much more than a sword and sandal film. It might be Nolan’s finest work.
Originally written around 750 BC in dactylic hexameter, Homer’s epic is a story of gods, monsters, enchantresses, prophecies, and impossible geography. But beneath its supernatural machinery is an intensely physical story. Odysseus is battered by the sea. He explores caves and sleeps on strange shores. He bleeds, hungers, ages, grieves, and survives. It’s this groundedness in the physical world that makes this movie so incredible.
We have entered an era of visual perfection in which almost anything can be rendered, altered, or fabricated. Faces are generated, voices are synthesized, entire landscapes are created without ever existing. And yet the closer an artificial image comes to reality, the more likely it is to trigger the so-called uncanny valley effect.
The uncanny valley is a concept first proposed in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, who observed that when an object appears nearly human but has subtle imperfections, our affinity for that object drops sharply, creating a “valley” of discomfort. Anyone remember the 2019 movie Cats with its unnerving cat-people and abysmal digital fur technology? Occasionally you can see the outlines of actors’ ears or hands where they were sloppily CGI-d out. The uncanny valley turned a great musical into one of the worst films of all time.
Nolan famously eschewed CGI in the filming of The Odyssey. Its world building is based on real people and real objects interacting with each other in real time. His effects, even when they are visibly imperfect, feel more convincing than digital perfection. A computer can produce an image without limits, sure. But the physical world has limits. A set can be built only so large. A prop can be only so heavy. A creature can only move according to the laws of gravity. Light behaves unpredictably, surfaces reflect and absorb, bodies occupy space. These so-called limitations actually allow imagination to become believable.
Perhaps this is why The Odyssey has stuck with me when I have forgotten countless Marvel movies. I have seen worlds destroyed, creatures resurrected, planets invented. For me, spectacle is no longer enough to produce wonder. Real wonder requires friction.
This is particularly suited to The Odyssey, a story that has survived for three thousand years precisely because its mythological wonders are inseparable from the human experience. The crew traveled all over the globe to find actual landscapes, castles, and caves in which to shoot. The ocean itself is a central, living force. Simple waves feel like a mirror of Poseidon’s wrath, the IMAX 70mm visuals emphasizing the ocean’s scale and unpredictability. The man-eating Laestrygonian soldiers were played by actors over 7 feet tall, while Odysseyus and his men were replaced by petite actresses for the scene to showcase the height difference. The Cyclops scene is filmed in a Greek cave using a giant puppet and animatronics. It’s the perfect blend of movie magic and truth. The Cyclops may be supernatural, but the fear of being trapped in an oppressive, dark cave is not.
The Odyssey’s world is grounded in bodies, weather, architecture, landscape, and light. Everything in it can be touched, damaged, or lost. That tension gives the story true power.
The uncanny valley is unsettling because it presents the appearance of life without the full presence of life. The best movies take something imaginary and give it presence, shadow, and texture. A journey is measured in bodies, distance, hunger, time, and loss. The plot is shaped by gravity, light, time, and accident.
In an age of increasingly perfect images, Nolan’s The Odyssey makes a persuasive case for imperfection. The uncanny valley happens when something looks alive but feels absent. The Odyssey works because Nolan makes something impossible feel present.
