Christopher Nolan Is Known To Mess With Time In His Movies, And I'm Curious How He Might In The Odyssey

I’m going to be honest with everyone by saying Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is what I’m looking forward to the most on the 2026 movie schedule. The long-in-the-works book-to-screen adaptation, with its massive story and even bigger cast of A-listers, looks, sounds, and feels like an epic undertaking that I’ll be seeing on the biggest screen possible this summer.

While there’s a lot I’m looking forward to seeing from the Academy Award-winning filmmaker’s take on Homer’s epic poem, I can’t stop thinking about how Nolan is going to mess with time from a narrative standpoint. I mean, on top of working with a certain set of frequent collaborators and pushing the IMAX format to its limit, toying with time has become one of the director’s hallmarks. It’s safe to say I’m growing increasingly more curious about all of this…

Nolan Has A Habit Of Tinkering With Timelines In His Movies

For years, Christopher Nolan has found new and unique ways to throw audiences for a loop by messing with the constructs of time, or at least our perception of time. In Memento, he gave us a protagonist with serious memory issues, Insomnia was set in a locale where the sun never set, The Prestige had all manners of tricks, and that’s just the beginning.

I’ve long had a fascination with Nolan’s obsession with time. His whole “dream inside a dream” mechanic of Inception was great, his journey through time and space in Interstellar is still top-notch, and his decision to split Dunkirk into three timelines was out of this world. Even Tenent and Oppenheimer toyed with and went outside the boundaries of our normal perception of time to varying degrees of success.

I’m Interested In Seeing How Nolan Handles Odysseus and Telemachus’ Respective Journeys

Though a large portion of Christopher Nolan’s works have been based on comics, novels, or previous films, The Odyssey feels like it’s on an entirely different level in terms of scope and scale. Based on Homer’s ancient poem chronicling Odysseus’ decade-long journey to return to his Kingdom of Ithaca following the conclusion of the Trojan War (which started 10 years earlier), the 24-book poem covers a lot of ground.

Not only is there Odysseus’ (played by Matt Damon) story that will have to be told over the course of a couple of hours, but there’s also that of the king’s son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), who was a mere child when his father first sailed off to war. Will Nolan focus on these two sides in a linear fashion, or will he find a way to bounce between the two to tell an engaging father-son story? If it’s the latter, how will he weave his way through the passage of time? I mean, after the stuff he pulled off with Dunkirk’s three-prong timeline, this could be a wild and fantastical experience like no other.

That said, I’m over here thinking about what kind of tricks Nolan could use to bridge the two timelines before they eventually and inevitably intersect for The Odyssey’s incredibly triumphant and violent conclusion. With Zendaya set to play the Greek goddess Athena, a figure who spoke with both father and son throughout their respective journeys, could the character become somewhat of a mechanic for moving the plot? We shall see.

I cannot wait until Christopher Nolan takes audiences (myself included) to ancient Greece to embark upon one of the most epic journeys ever told. Until then, I guess I’ll keep watching the Odyssey trailer and think about how Nolan will mess with time…