Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is the future of filmgoing – if we want it to be

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On Monday, Marvel Studios unveiled the long-awaited trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, Disney’s everything-at-the-wall attempt to rescue its flailing big-screen superhero enterprise.

The ad, which gathers together a disparate group of the franchise’s B-level characters underneath a garish aesthetic that screams green-screen slop, would have been received poorly were it released at any time over the past few months. But it was an especially boneheaded decision to unveil it the day after moviegoers around the world were basking in the opening-weekend afterglow of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and reawakening to the grand possibilities of truly inventive and ambitious cinematic spectacle.

If Doomsday represents a desperate bid to hold onto the past decade and a half of the Hollywood blockbuster – a brand-safe era of increasingly mushy and bland filmmaking, dependent on existing, familiar intellectual property over anything else – then The Odyssey is our best chance at a bigger, brighter, more adventurous future.

The momentum is certainly there. Certainly, Nolan’s film is breaking box-office records – nearly US$300-million globally after barely a week in theatres – and earning the best reviews of the director’s long-applauded career. But what’s more important is that the sheer act of going to see the Matt Damon-led epic has become an act of cultural significance all its own. This is a by-appointment moment for theatrical moviegoing, with audiences becoming their own quasi-versions of Odysseus by travelling hours, sometimes days, to watch the film in the best possible format available.

The Odyssey review: Christopher Nolan delivers an awe-inspiring spectacle

Nolan shot his adaptation of Homer’s poem completely with Imax 70mm cameras – this is the very first feature-length film ever shot entirely in that complex, expensive but aesthetically rewarding format. The scope and texture of the images projected on a true Imax 70mm screen are designed to immerse and transfix, to prove to the viewer that real blood, sweat and tears went into the production. And you cannot watch the film, from its rollicking high-seas sequences to its body-horror moment of doom with Circe to the full scope of Agamemnon’s brutal and anarchic attack on Troy, without falling completely, luxuriously into the textured, rich world Nolan has conjured.

But because there are just 41 screens in the entire world equipped to project a film in Imax 70mm, audiences – some of them Nolan acolytes but many simply adventurous everyday movie-lovers who are recognizing their opportunity to participate in a cultural event – have been rearranging their lives around the chance to visit one of them. And in the process, many are remembering a powerful truth that has been washed away by the pandemic, by the advent of streaming and by the many empty sequels and prequels and spinoffs served up by the Hollywood machine over the past few years. Namely: Filmgoing can be a transformative experience. If we want it to be.

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There is a reason theatres across the United States have scheduled round-the-clock screenings of The Odyssey – and not just in the coveted Imax 70mm format (which in New York and L.A. are sold out through Aug. 19, and until mid-September in London). Crowds are fighting off sleep to catch 3 a.m. showings, and blowing off work and other responsibilities to squeeze in a 7 a.m. viewing. And that is only if they are among the lucky ones to have secured their tickets upward of a year ago. (For whatever reason, Cineplex has not scheduled middle-of-the-night and early-a.m. screenings at their handful of Imax 70mm theatres in Canada, including locations in Vaughan, Ont., and Calgary. We would, though, have one more option were the Ontario Place Cinesphere not currently shuttered as part of that area’s controversial redevelopment.)

Of course, not every movie can be a Nolan movie. The director has only a handful of contemporaries whose names alone can make a production an event unto itself – James Cameron is one, Denis Villeneuve another, Ryan Coogler, too. Perhaps Quentin Tarantino, if he ever decides to produce his 10th and allegedly final film. But there is an undeniable lesson in The Odyssey about the power that a carefully crafted, skilfully executed feature film, as rich in visuals as it is performances, can offer in terms of a collective cultural experience. The movie theatre is still a place where one can lose themselves entirely, if the art on offer meets its audience where they most want to be.

The Odyssey viewing guide: 70mm or IMAX? Christopher Nolan breaks down his favourite big-screen formats and spots to sit

Forget the artificial arguments about The Odyssey’s “woke” politics, casting decisions and historical accuracy – bad-faith nonsense that has been fed into the online swamp as red-meat provocation by parties who have no interest or appreciation in filmmaking, culture or anything beyond generating faux outrage. As for Elon Musk’s new promise that Grok will produce a “historically accurate” AI-generated adaptation of The Odyssey by year’s end? Good luck to anyone who watches that without their eyes bleeding out, should the thing indeed get made.

The real, hard truth is that Nolan has made a film that not only represents an evolution in his craft and sensibilities and passions – what is a Nolan movie like Interstellar, Inception and Oppenheimer if not a movie about one man trying to escape a nightmare they’ve created and return to their family? – but a work of art that speaks to audiences’ universal desires to be swept away, to be thrilled, to be provoked, to recognize a part of themselves and their world on the screen. Ideally, the biggest of screens possible. Even at 3 a.m.

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It would be foolish and naive to expect Hollywood to suddenly abandon easy-to-market franchise filmmaking, to immediately kibosh every superhero flick or live-action cartoon remake that’s in development. Nor can we expect the industry to create an entirely new generation of Christopher Nolans out of thin air. And of course, comic-book movies are how Nolan was able to get from point A to point B(atman) to here.

But to not at least recognize and savour and genuinely reflect on the magic that is currently being made in theatres around the world – whether it’s Imax or a regular old multiplex screen – would be throwing away the opportunity of a lifetime. We can make the movies, and moviegoing, great again. The Odyssey can be the first step on that long journey home.