Paul Schrader Reveals His Honest Take on ‘The Odyssey’ – And Warns Whoever Tries to Chase Its Success

Legendary filmmakers rarely mince words when discussing their peers’ work, and Paul Schrader has never been one to hold back an honest opinion. The 80-year-old director, best known for writing “Taxi Driver” and directing films like “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter,” has built a reputation for cutting straight through industry noise with blunt, considered takes.

Schrader made headlines this week while promoting his own latest project, “The Basics of Philosophy,” which debuts at the Venice Film Festival Out of Competition on September 4. During that same conversation, the topic shifted to Christopher Nolan’s record-breaking epic “The Odyssey,” and Schrader offered a surprisingly candid assessment of both the film and the industry noise surrounding it.

Asked directly whether he liked “The Odyssey,” Schrader didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I did. There’s been a lot of sniping about it, but I think a lot of that is just clickbait. The film has had so much press. The New York Times seems to have a daily running article about it,” Schrader said, according to Deadline.

Schrader’s comments arrive at a moment when “The Odyssey” has become one of the most talked-about films of the year, both for its critical reception and its unprecedented box office performance. Nolan’s roughly $250 million adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus alongside an ensemble that includes Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson, has spent months defying expectations for a nearly three-hour, R-rated period epic.

That success hasn’t come without pushback from certain corners of film criticism and social media, something Schrader specifically pointed to as largely manufactured controversy rather than genuine artistic dissent. His framing suggests he sees much of the online criticism as feeding off the film’s constant media presence rather than reflecting the actual quality of Nolan’s work.

Schrader went further, acknowledging just how rare it is for a film of this scale and ambition to become a genuine commercial success. “But it’s a rarity that such a big-budget film becomes so successful,” Schrader said, according to Deadline, framing the film’s achievement as an outlier rather than a repeatable formula.

Perhaps the most pointed part of Schrader’s comments came when he addressed the temptation other filmmakers or studios might feel to replicate “The Odyssey’s” success. “I wouldn’t want to walk into a studio and say, ‘Give me $200 million; I’m going to make the next Odyssey,’ because I don’t think anybody in the studio system thinks of The Odyssey as anything other than an exception. Some fool will make the film’s sequel and lose a fortune. We’ll see who that is,” Schrader said, according to Deadline.

That warning speaks to a broader industry reality Schrader has clearly observed over his decades-long career: studios often chase the surface-level formula of a hit without recognizing the specific combination of talent, timing, and vision that actually made it work. His comments imply genuine skepticism that “The Odyssey’s” success can be intentionally engineered or repeated by anyone attempting a similar project.

Schrader’s willingness to weigh in on Nolan’s film fits squarely within his established reputation as one of cinema’s more outspoken elder statesmen, someone who has never shied away from offering pointed commentary on the industry around him. His new film, “The Basics of Philosophy,” stars Jack Huston, Sofia Boutella, Daniel Zovatto, Bill Pullman, and briefly Richard Gere, continuing the “man in a room” storytelling tradition that has defined much of his career since “Taxi Driver.”

With “The Odyssey” continuing to dominate box office headlines and Schrader’s comments adding another layer to the ongoing conversation around the film, it’s clear the movie’s cultural impact shows no signs of fading anytime soon.

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