Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Battle Footage Is Here, and It Looks Like the Most Ambitious War Epic in Years

Few directors command anticipation the way Christopher Nolan does, and with his follow-up to the Oscar-winning ‘Oppenheimer’ now firmly in sight, the excitement surrounding his next project has been building to a fever pitch. ‘The Odyssey’ is billed as a mythic action epic adapting Homer’s ancient Greek poem, following the legendary Greek king of Ithaca on his long and perilous voyage home after the Trojan War.

The ensemble cast is stacked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood today, including Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Charlize Theron, among many others.

Nolan began writing ‘The Odyssey’ in March 2024 and secured the project with Universal Pictures by October, with the film officially announced in December of that year. Production took place between February and August 2025, with filming spanning Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, Western Sahara, and Malta, as well as a studio soundstage in Los Angeles.

The sheer scale of that undertaking is something Nolan himself acknowledged, joking at CinemaCon in Las Vegas that the shoot had been “an absolute nightmare to film — but in all the right ways.”

Now, footage highlighting the film’s battle sequences has surfaced, and it is turning heads. Rotten Tomatoes shared a first look at the action and combat scenes from ‘The Odyssey’, offering audiences their most visceral glimpse yet at the conflict that sets the entire story in motion.

Among the footage shown at CinemaCon was the iconic Trojan Horse sequence, played out without dialogue and scored only to the sounds of soldiers and Ludwig Göransson’s percussive composition. The sequence depicts thousands of men hauling the wooden horse from the beach while Greek soldiers remain hidden inside, with one particularly tense moment showing a Trojan sword piercing through the structure and forcing the hidden warriors to stifle their reactions entirely.

Nolan shot ‘The Odyssey’ entirely on IMAX cameras, and the battle scenes, which have drawn considerable praise, are expected to be especially awe-inspiring when viewed on the large-screen format. Nolan described the project as his “longest-held ambition,” noting that ‘Oppenheimer’ alone had the premium IMAX format contributing around 20 percent of its overall box office gross. The decision to commit the entire film to IMAX 70mm makes ‘The Odyssey’ a landmark in cinema history, as it marks the first narrative feature ever shot completely in that format.

Tom Holland, who plays Odysseus’s son Telemachus, called the film “an absolute masterpiece” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, adding that watching it left him asking “How did you do that?” in a way he had not experienced from a film in a very long time. Demand for specialty 70mm IMAX screenings has already been extraordinary, with over 25,000 tickets sold across 22 locations and most opening day showings completely sold out well over a year in advance.

Nolan appeared at CinemaCon and reflected on his motivation for tackling the project, framing ‘The Odyssey’ as “the story” rather than just a story, one that has captivated readers across 3,000 years of human history.

With a reported budget of $250 million, the film is the most expensive of Nolan’s career, and while his track record at the box office is formidable, the scope and ambition of this adaptation represent a genuine gamble on a piece of source material that may not be immediately familiar to general audiences. ‘The Odyssey’ arrives in theaters on July 17, 2026.

What do you think of the first look at the battle scenes from ‘The Odyssey’? Share your reactions in the comments below.