For almost three thousand years theOdyssey she did exactly what her protagonist does: she travelled, she transformed, she took on different identities without losing her origins. It has been a poem passed down orally, a school text, a literary model, an adventure for children, an object of academic studies, theatre, opera, cinema, television series. Ulysses has become from time to time an explorer, a deceiver, an unfaithful husband, a war veteran, a modern man incapable of stopping.
In the summer of 2026, however, something different happened. THE’Odyssey it hasn’t just come back into fashion: it’s become a total cultural object.
Christopher Nolan’s film is naturally the detonator. But a phenomenon has arisen around the film that goes beyond the duration of the screening and even the confines of the cinema. There are spectators who have organized international trips just to reach one of the few theaters capable of screening it in the format desired by the director. There are the draped dresses, the goddess-like braids, the gladiator sandals and the references to Athena that appeared during the promotional tour. There are new guides to Homer’s characters, summaries of the twenty-four cantos, itineraries in the footsteps of Ulysses and the rediscovery of the Italian places used as sets.
THE’Odyssey it is simultaneously the film of the summer, a cinematic pilgrimage, a social aesthetic and a story that many spectators feel they know, even when they only remember fragments of it: the Cyclops, the mermaids, Circe, Penelope weaving and unweaving the web.
Nolan didn’t adapt a classic: he constructed an event
The project already had all the features necessary to attract attention. Nolan returned behind the camera after the worldwide success of Oppenheimerchoosing one of the founding stories of Western culture and entrusting it to a cast that brings together Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron. The film arrived in theaters on July 17 and is the first feature film shot entirely with IMAX cameras on 70 millimeter film.
But technology, in this case, is not just a productive tool. It is an integral part of the promotional story. Nolan has transformed the format into its contemporary equivalent of the bard song: it’s not enough to know the story, you have to witness it in the right place and in the right way.
At the BFI IMAX in London, more than 28 thousand tickets were sold in the first twenty-four hours, for a taking of around 750 thousand pounds, a result much higher than that obtained in the same period by Oppenheimer. Some screenings have been sold out for weeks and fans from the US, Switzerland and other countries have traveled to London specifically to see the film in IMAX 1570.
In the age of instant availability, Nolan has created scarcity. In that of home viewing, it imposed the size of the screen. At a time when almost any content can be stopped, sped up, or distractedly watched, he asked viewers to hit the road and give him nearly three hours of their attention.
It’s a perfect paradox: the most anticipated film of 2026 proposes the future of cinema through film, analog and an experience that can’t be fully reproduced on your home television.
Homer had already invented seriality
Part of the success depends on the fact that theOdyssey it is ancient, but never appears truly old. Beneath the poem’s solemnity there exists a structure that is surprisingly compatible with the contemporary way of consuming stories.
There are recognizable episodes, fantastic creatures, seductions, shipwrecks, gods who intervene in human affairs and characters who enter and exit the story. Each stage has its own visual and narrative identity. The Cyclops, Circe, Calypso, the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis could be the protagonists of as many episodes of a great television series.
Even the temporal construction is anything but linear. When the poem begins, the Trojan War has already ended and Odysseus has been away from home for many years. Part of his adventure is reconstructed through the story of the protagonist himself. Homer enters history when the journey has already begun, alternates present and memory, changes point of view and leaves Ulysses to build his own legend.
Above all, the protagonist is not a simple hero. He is intelligent, but also manipulative. He is brave and curious, but his curiosity continually endangers those who travel with him. He says he only wants Ithaca, yet he seems incapable of avoiding deviations. He lies to save himself and sometimes he lies because telling a different version of himself is part of his nature.
This is perhaps why it continues to seem contemporary to us. Ulysses does not have a stable identity: he changes it depending on the interlocutor, the place and the danger. He is king, warrior, castaway, stranger, beggar and, in front of the Cyclops, even “Nobody”. In a digital culture in which everyone builds multiple versions of themselves every day, the Homeric hero resembles less a statue and more a constantly updated profile.
Fashion has found its new goddess
The obsession didn’t stop at movie theaters. The promotional tour transformed the myth into an instantly recognizable aesthetic.
Zendaya, who plays Athena, wore white dresses, draping, sculptural silhouettes and accessories inspired by the goddess of wisdom and war. With his historic stylist Law Roach he built a visual narrative parallel to the film, culminating in a dress with large wings for the New York premiere. Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron participated in the same symbolic construction through regal hairstyles, metallic fabrics and shapes that recall statues and armor.
Gladiator sandals, halo braids, glowing skin, white and gold are back. International magazines have already defined 2026 as a “Greek goddess beauty summer”, linking the promotion ofOdyssey to a broader rediscovery of the Hellenic imagination.
Of course, fashion didn’t wait for Nolan to discover ancient Greece. The drapery, the tunic and the body freed from rigid structures have crossed the work of Madeleine Vionnet, Madame Grès, Fortuny, Versace, Dior, Valentino and many others. The film, however, provided a unified and easily shareable story to existing references.
You don’t simply wear a white dress: you become Athena, Circe or a modern Penelope. The wardrobe stops being decoration and becomes belonging to the phenomenon.
The Mediterranean transformed into a set
For the Italian public there is also a further element of familiarity. THE’Odyssey it doesn’t just belong to school memories: it has a landscape that we recognise.
Nolan shot an important part of the film between Favignana, the Aeolian Islands and the coast of Ostia. In Favignana the production used, among other locations, the Castle of Santa Caterina and the coasts carved into the rock. In the Aeolian Islands the filming involved Lipari, Vulcano, Basiluzzo and the rock formations associated with the mermaids and the “wandering cliffs”. The port of Ostia has also been transformed into a large film set.
These places have not remained simple backdrops. Tourist guides, travel magazines and local operators have begun to propose itineraries dedicated to the locations, inserting Favignana and the other production stages into a new geography of the so-called set-jetting: tourism fueled by films and television series.
The result is a particularly effective short circuit. The Italian islands have probably contributed, over the centuries, to the construction of the geographical imagery linked to the poem. Now cinema uses those same landscapes to recreate the myth and, in turn, transforms them into contemporary destinations.
Audiences aren’t just looking for the beach seen on screen. Look for the possibility of physically entering the story, crossing the same sea and observing the rocks imagining that the mermaids could still hide behind them.
The challenge with Spider-Man
The cultural dimension of the phenomenon does not naturally exclude the commercial one. On the contrary: the box office will be the place where the ability of a poem studied in school to compete with one of the most popular characters in contemporary entertainment will be measured.
According to an analysis by Sisal experts, based on Nolan’s previous results and the current cinematographic scenario, in Italy Odyssey could conclude its run by exceeding the 27 million euros achieved by Oppenheimer in 2023. What favors it are the universal fame of the source material, the link with the Italian locations, the appeal of the IMAX experience and the strength of a cast built almost entirely with protagonists capable of attracting different audiences.
The real test will come with the Italian release on July 29th of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. On the one hand, auteur cinema transformed into an epic spectacle; on the other, a saga that has accompanied spectators of different ages for almost twenty years and can count on a character that is immediately recognizable in every part of the world.
At the center of the challenge are, curiously, Tom Holland and Zendaya. The two newlyweds appear in both productions and in recent weeks have had to divide their time between the promotional tour of Spider-Man and that ofOdyssey. Holland goes from Telemachus to Peter Parker, while Zendaya goes from Athena back to being MJ.
Whatever film takes first place, they can’t really lose. They are simultaneously the face of the most ancient mythology and that of the modern superhero: a couple capable of connecting Homer and Marvel, the analogue film and the franchise, Nolan’s adult audience and the generations who grew up with Spider-Man.
Every era has the Ulysses it needs
The most important question remains: why now?
The simple answer is that Nolan possesses a rare ability to turn seemingly difficult subjects into major popular events. He had already done it with the physics of Interstellarthe temporal structure of Tenet and the biography of a theoretical physicist in Oppenheimer. With theOdyssey However, it has something even more powerful: a story already present in the collective memory.
Almost everyone knows at least one image of the poem, even without having read it in its entirety. The name Ulysses means journey. Penelope means waiting. Mermaids have become the symbol of every dangerous temptation. The Cyclops represents the force defeated by intelligence. Ithaca is much more than an island: it is the destination to which we attribute meaning even when we no longer know how to reach it.
But the obsession with 2026 also reveals a hunger for stories capable of lasting. In a cultural system that continually produces content destined to be replaced within a few hours, theOdyssey it offers the comfort of a history that has survived civilizations, languages, wars and technologies.
It is not a reassuring story. It’s about violence, loss, desire, lies, trauma and death. Ulysses returns to Ithaca, but he is no longer the man who left. Even the house to which he aspires has changed and must be reconquered. The return does not cancel the journey: it carries its consequences forever.
Maybe that’s exactly the point. We’re not suddenly obsessed with ancient Greece. We are obsessed with the idea that, after being lost, it is still possible to find direction again.
Nolan transformed this hope into gigantic images, waves, gods, monsters and IMAX film. But beneath the spectacle remains the same question that has accompanied the poem for almost three thousand years: after everything we have been through, is there still a place we can call home?
