You Should Be Happy The Odyssey Trailers Are Kinda Boring
The oldest spoilers are still best kept a secret.
As 2025 rolled into 2026, the entire world got a glimpse at Christopher Nolan’s next epic, The Odyssey. Semantically speaking, The Odyssey is the first epic of all time, a super-long poem attributed to the Greek writer Homer, but only turned into a book in the 1400s, though it was likely passed down through the oral tradition for centuries and centuries before that. The story is set in roughly 1184 BC, after the hero, Odysseus (Matt Damon), fought in the Trojan Wars. As many are probably aware, the story of The Odyssey is the journey of Odysseus and his soldiers back to their home of Ithaca, the long way around.
And, if you’re looking for a general reaction from the public — and not very-online film buff world — the general sense of the trailer is that it’s a little...meh. Several Redditors said they thought the trailer was “boring,” which was echoed all over X, as well. And while some folks are taking issue with the sort of drab, serious tone of the trailer (which, appropriately or not, feels very much like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies), the truth is, The Odyssey trailers need to be boring because otherwise, we’ll get all the best stuff too quickly.
Arguably, the challenge with any cinematic adaptation of a story this old is clear: How do you make the legendary confrontation with the Cyclops look amazing and new? How do you reveal the many-headed sea monster Scylla, without, well, spoiling it? As The Odyssey enters the cultural conversation, much will be made about the newer Emily Wilson translation that Nolan used to craft the film, and the political and cultural significance of the interpretations of the deeds of Odysseus. (I myself prefer the My Little Pony graphic novel adaptation of The Odyssey focused on Pinkie Pie, though it's too late to recommend that version to Mr. Nolan.)
However, in theory, the act of seeing The Odyssey on the big screen isn’t a college lecture on how we feel about the origin of Western heroic narratives, nor will the film’s success or failure be measured on just how historically accurate the costumes are. (Can you make mythological gods and heroes that didn’t exist at all “accurate”? Ever?) Instead, the only true measure for the success of The Odyssey will be if a regular person, who is only vaguely aware of the story and the history, is captured by the sheer spectacle. If we wanted another Nolan-directed character study, we could just watch Oppenheimer again.
Conversely, The Odyssey has witches, and sirens, and sea monsters, and regular monsters, and dudes getting turned into pigs. You want to put that stuff in the trailer? Really? Of course not. Nolan and whoever is behind the marketing of the film are being very smart. These early trailers are safe and simple, showing us the characters of Odysseus, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and his son, Telemachus (Tom Holland). And that’s because, yes, on some level, the story is about this fractured family unit, and we need to care about them, otherwise the bigger adventure doesn’t work.
Christopher Nolan, ready to give us a big epic.
At some point, a newer trailer for the 2026 Odyssey will depict more of the famous and fantastical action. But, those who want to enjoy the film for what it truly could be — a new take on the oldest Western action-adventure story — may want to hold off seeing to many advanced images for the film. Many will have preconceived ideas of how the various events ought to look in the film, but our experience of the film will certainly be better if our minds, as we go into that theater, are blank.
