The Cast of ‘The Odyssey’ Gives a 1-Minute Recap You Must Watch Before the Movie

‘The Odyssey’ has taken over late-night television this week, with NBC handing an entire stretch of ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ to Christopher Nolan’s Homer adaptation ahead of its theatrical release. The network built a dedicated four-night takeover around the film, bringing a rotating lineup of stars to Studio 6B in the days leading up to the movie hitting theaters.

The rollout kicked off with Tom Holland on Monday, followed by Matt Damon on Tuesday, Zendaya on Wednesday, and Lupita Nyong’o closing things out on Thursday, the night before the film’s release. Along the way, Fallon and his guests leaned into a series of Odyssey-themed bits, including a game of Cyclops Beer Pong between Holland and the host himself.

The centerpiece of the week, though, arrived when Fallon and his team decided to see if they could accomplish something Homer never managed, telling the entire story of ‘The Odyssey’ in a fraction of the time. The result was a pre-taped musical number featuring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, and Lupita Nyong’o racing through the epic poem’s biggest moments in exactly one minute.

Fallon introduced the segment by telling viewers the show had teamed up with the cast to recap the whole story in exactly one minute, and what followed, as LateNighter reported, was a fast moving, rap style number that opened with a roll call of characters before diving straight into the plot. Lines included references to the Trojan Horse trick, with the cast rapping about hiding inside the horse to win the war, along with wordplay tied to the hero’s journey home to Ithaca and his encounter with the Cyclops.

The segment even worked in a nod to the poem’s original structure, with a line joking that the cast could be Homer given how quickly they were getting through the story in six feet, a reference to the epic’s hexameter verse. The whole bit balanced comedy with genuine affection for the source material, giving fans a condensed but surprisingly thorough primer on Odysseus’ decade long journey before the film’s nearly three hour runtime hit theaters.

The stunt fits into a growing tradition of Fallon-built cast songs tied to major movie and television releases, following similar numbers built around ‘Wicked’, ‘Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning’, ‘The Super Mario Bros Movie,’ and ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ in years past. Each of those segments has followed a similar formula, taking a sprawling story and compressing it into a catchy, high-energy performance designed to spread quickly online.

The week-long takeover also included additional Odyssey adjacent bookings beyond the core cast, with rapper and producer Travis Scott, who plays the bard Demodocus in the film, along with John Leguizamo and Nolan himself, all scheduled for follow-up appearances on the show the following week.

Given the sheer size of Nolan’s cast and the scope of the source material, the Odyssey recap stands out even among that list, managing to touch on the war at Troy, the journey home, and several of the mythical creatures Odysseus encounters along the way, all without losing the rhythm of the song. The segment aired in the middle of the week’s takeover, just days before ‘The Odyssey’ opened in theaters on July 17, following preview screenings the night before.

‘The Odyssey’ stars Damon as Odysseus alongside Hathaway as Penelope, Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Pattinson as the suitor Antinous, Theron as Calypso and Bernthal as Menelaus.

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