Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey saw its review embargo lift Wednesday, resulting in one of the strongest Rotten Tomatoes scores of his career, well above what Kalshi traders had forecast. As of Wednesday afternoon, the film holds a 98% Tomatometer score based on more than 140 reviews.
Earlier in the week Kalshi traders predicted the film would ultimately end up with a Rotten Tomatoes “fresh” rating of 92%. But that forecast has now climbed to 96.1%.
For informational purposes only. Not trading advice. See full disclaimer below. Kalshi is not affiliated with The Odyssey or Universal Pictures.
The good reviews
Early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.
Robbie Collin, the chief film critic for The Telegraph, gave The Odyssey five out of five stars and called it “the film of the year.”
He praised every aspect of the epic adventure film from the cast’s performance to the visual look and style of the film.
“Nolan and his collaborators have constructed a strange, fearsome, and trailblazing machine of a movie – by some distance, the best of the year so far,” Collin wrote.
Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News also gave the movie its highest rating with four out of four stars. He praised Nolan as the only filmmaker working in Hollywood who could recreate an epic poem as sprawling and deep as Homer’s Odyssey calling him “a master showman” and “a cinematic force” to produce a film “that leaves you in awe and appreciation.”
“Nolan’s striking visual vision – it’s the first feature film to be shot with 70mm IMAX cameras – is a staggering siren-like beauty to behold,” Myers wrote. “It’s a cinematic marvel in every way, from Hoyte van Hoytema’s transcendent cinematography to Sinners composer Ludwig Göransson’s aesthetically appropriate score that sweeps and swells like the mighty ocean that Odysseus voyages on.”
Richard Brody of the New Yorker praised Nolan’s Odyssey as “a purely human drama,” though he noted the film’s minimizing of divine intervention costs it something essential to Homer. Still, Brody wrote that Nolan “advances his vision, however crowd-pleasing and anachronistic, with vigorous confidence and unimpeachable clarity.”
“As a director, Nolan seems to have paid much more attention to the plot, the dialogue, the performances, the landscapes, the settings, the décor, and the costumes than to the images in which he presents them,” Brody wrote.
Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the movie four out of four stars as well. He wrote that it’s not just as a tale made bigger for the IMAX screen. He praised Nolan’s keen eye for detail whose work seems to transcend the edges of the movie screen.
“Technically, as you’d expect from this director, the movie is mightily impressive for its scale, the graceful way it moves from one time period to another, and for the tactility of its imagery,” Seitz wrote. “You can almost smell the sea, the congealing blood, the flowers. That metal horse clearly weighs a lot – and it looks as if the Trojans (and the actors portraying them) have to strain to transport it.”
The bad reviews
The good reviews far outweigh the negative ones, but so far, there are a few critics who weren’t as kind to Nolan’s adaptation of the epic poem.
Alan Ng of Film Threat complained that the movie felt like it tried to squeeze “an eight-hour movie” into a three-hour experience.
“There are very few stops and virtually no breaks in the story,” Ng wrote. “Moments of quiet felt like they were edited out for time. Every transition was a quick cut, and stories felt like an adventurer’s highlight reels.”
The takeaway:
Kalshi markets now predict:
The Odyssey’s Rotten Tomatoes score: 96.1%
Follow Danny Gallagher on Instagram: @writerdannygallagher
Follow Kalshi on X: @Kalshi | Image Source: Universal Pictures
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