Many details about the The Odyssey are surfacing after its monster debut at the box office. This list will continue to be updated.
Matt Damon says Ben Affleck was the first person to find out he had been cast as Odysseus in ‘The Odyssey’
“I immediately called my wife … who was [busy]. Then I called Ben and he freaked out … I was on the phone with him for about half an hour … they were at the office in LA. I hung up with him and my wife texted me: ‘Why didn’t you tell me first?’ Cause Ben had run into her office to tell her.”
Forced perspective and practical filmmaking was used to make the Laestrygonians appear larger than life.
The stunt performers playing the Laestrygonians were all over 7 feet tall, while the stunt doubles for Odysseus’ army were 5 feet. Damon himself said his stunt double was a woman named Devyn Dalton with the ‘greatest arms’ he’s ever seen. Nolan has also mentioned they shot it with 7 IMAX cameras.
The Laestrygonian sequence was one of Nolan’s favorite parts to shoot
“It’s really a thing of trying to get across the brutality. They’re warriors, and their weapons and armor is of a level of sophistication that Odysseus has never seen.”
“The point of the Laestrygonians in the story, as in the original poem, is to show in some ways the questionable nature of Odysseus’ leadership. To give his men reason to doubt him,” the director explains. “And so what they come up against leaves them all shaken.”
Christopher Nolan has been thinking about filming the Siege of Troy for 20 years
Nolan says he was originally in discussions to direct Troy in the early 2000s, but the project ultimately went to Wolfgang Petersen. Instead, Nolan moved on to Batman Begins, a film he has said fundamentally changed the trajectory of his career. Looking back, he admitted he wasn’t sure at the time that he was capable of directing a story on the scale of the Trojan War. Speaking recently, Nolan reflected that he didn’t yet have the confidence or experience to tackle such an epic, even though the story had fascinated him for years.
More than two decades later, Nolan in multiple interviews says a major moment that finally convinced him to make The Odyssey was re-reading the book and getting to the part where Odysseus reunites with his aging dog. In the book, unable to reveal his identity because he’s still in disguise, Odysseus watches as Argos, who had lived past the age of 20 waiting for his master’s return, recognizes him one last time before dying.
“I didn’t grow up with a dog… then I finally got one and it changes your life. I got to the part with Argos and it just killed me. It was honestly a major reason I knew I had to make the film.”
Christopher Nolan has a ‘No Uggs‘ rule on set, according to Anne Hathaway
“It’s a joke I had with Emily Blunt and Anne before her … Sometimes actors will show up in big fluffy, comfy slippers … the funny thing is you can be on set … with a giant camera, and crew everywhere, but something like that can actually weirdly take you out of the reality … It’s like if someone was eating a bag of chips or something, there are certain things that just remind you that you’re in the real world, as opposed to the world we’re creating for the actors … we want the actors to stay in the moment. For me, Ugg boots are a signifier of modernity, absurd as it is. Uggs are great!”
Matt Damon says Christopher Nolan had no idea how to shoot the interior shots of the Trojan Horse scenes in ‘The Odyssey’ before they filmed it
“I said, ‘How are you gonna do it?'” He just goes, ‘I don’t know… we’re all just gonna jam into the horse, see what happens”
“That’s what is so fun about working with him, as big as the movie is … he still shoots kind of like an independent film … he discovers the sequences as they go. It’s a really high level of directing”
Travis Scott didn’t know what he was doing on the set of The Odyssey
“[Christopher Nolan] is like, ‘I’m working on this movie… I want you to be in it’ … I’m like, ‘Woah, woah, wait… you know I make music?'” “I show up and I thought it would just be [me] and some extras … I didn’t know I’d be with all these amazing [actors] … and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing”
Tom Holland thought Christopher Nolan hated his acting while filming his first scene for ‘The Odyssey’ because he didn’t know IMAX cameras could only run for 3 minutes at a time
“I remember he would continue cutting … In my head I’m thinking, ‘Does he not like what we’re doing?’ … I thought I was totally shitting the bed”
Samantha Morton received a round of applause from the crew for her performance as Circe in The Odyssey
Producer Emma Thomas said the last time she remembered that happening on a Christopher Nolan movie was Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight.
“This was a massive film and she is someone who comes in and changes the dynamic. In some weird way, the film lived or died over that character. She was the fulcrum
“I’ve always admired Samantha’s work, she brings so much depth of thinking about her role, there are no limitations on her performance.”
— Christopher Nolan
They filmed on a real viking ship for months
Christopher Nolan used a real, fully operational 115-foot Viking longship to film The Odyssey.
The Draken was built in Norway using traditional shipbuilding techniques and previously crossed the North Atlantic in 2016.
The approximately 100-ton vessel features an oak hull, a 79-foot mast, a 2,800-square-foot silk sail and 50 oars. Matt Damon and the cast learned how to sail and row, and genuinely helped sail the ship, while the boat’s real 26-man-crew appeared in the film as extras.
Nolan spent months filming aboard the Draken across the Mediterranean and the waters off Scotland and Iceland, approaching the voyage ‘like it was a documentary.’
The new IMAX cameras allowed more close-up shots
Image credit industriamovies
To shoot The Odyssey entirely on IMAX film, including its intimate close-ups, the production used a newly designed blimp that significantly reduced the cameras’ noise. Because the massive setup could block actors from seeing each other, the crew also developed a mirror system that allowed them to maintain eye contact during close-up dialogue scenes.
Christopher Nolan and Robert Pattinson have movie nights together
“Rob and I, we’re old friends at this point. And we actually became neighbors … so we have the odd movie night together and stuff. Rob and Suki are wonderful people.” — Christopher Nolan
The Odyssey even inspired the upcoming Black Myth: Zhong Kui game
GameScience co-founder Yang Qi says he was deeply inspired by the film and all the old school techniques used on it amid the digital era. They’re avoiding AI while making the new Black Myth game and also sticking to traditional development techniques.
The opening text in the film was inspired by Star Wars (1977)
“One of my earliest movie experiences, a very profound one, was seeing George Lucas’s first Star Wars. He began that film with a title that said, ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’ That immediately told me how to watch the film. It put me in the right frame of mind to receive the imagery.”
“I felt with [The Odyssey] I was chasing that kind of experience where you want to create a world that the audience loses themselves in and takes on its own terms. So I was looking for a [phrase] that would help the audience understand the terms of the story…The word ‘apparent’ in particular was very much about acknowledging the idea that if we tell the story realistically, to some extent we have to explain why there is magic.” — Christopher Nolan
For more film updates, check out our site.
