{"id":583625,"date":"2026-07-13T16:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T16:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/583625\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T16:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T16:26:13","slug":"christopher-nolan-rejects-matt-damons-defeatist-take-on-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/583625\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Nolan Rejects Matt Damon’s ‘Defeatist’ Take On The Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChristopher Nolan<\/a> reportedly \u201cgrimaces\u201d when told Matt Damon<\/a>\u2018s viral quote about making The Odyssey<\/a> and what it meant for cinema\u2019s future. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oscar-winning director was being interviewed about his mythological epic, which is open this week, when The Telegraph<\/a> asked about a recent comment by his film\u2019s leading man.<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon had said he had a nostalgic feeling while making the epic feature \u201cbecause it felt like the movies when I started working \u2014 and I know that that\u2019s going away.\u201d The actor added, \u201cI knew that this was the last chance I was going to have to do something like this\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t think people are going to be given the resources to shoot movies that way for much longer.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBut Nolan \u2014 who is also currently serving as the president of the Directors Guild of America \u2014 had a different take. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think I know what [Damon] was driving at, because it does seem like a long time since somebody made a film like this in this type of way, where you travel the world, get together a cast of thousands and so on,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a defeatist aspect of viewing it that way that I don\u2019t agree with. I think cinema is vital and essential and continues to transform itself \u2014 we\u2019ve got all these great new young voices in movies, making the medium their own and moving it forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNolan referenced Obsession<\/a> writer-director Curry Barker and Backrooms<\/a> director Kane Parsons as examples of original Gen Z filmmakers making a splash at the box office. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is why I never bought into the arguments that young audiences\u2019 attention spans are too fried to enjoy a three-hour Greek epic,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cThose films are so mysterious and ruminative. I mean, parts of\u00a0Backrooms\u00a0are like David Lynch at his most obscure. And yet young people can\u2019t get enough of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNolan is certainly correct about young audiences enthusiastically showing up at theaters to support fresh voices and original ideas. Still, Obsession and Backrooms were low-budget sensations. Damon\u2019s contention that studios are increasingly reluctant to fund massive productions that rely heavily on practical effects and on-location filming to tell a non-franchise story certainly seems correct as well \u2014 unless you\u2019re a major proven-draw filmmaker like Nolan coming off the surprise $1 billion box office for an original idea like Oppenheimer. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNolan added that he was particularly pleased by Barker and Parsons\u2019 embrace of practical effects, which also reflects why he isn\u2019t worried about AI taking over Hollywood jobs. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a more rapid wholesale dismissal of a supposedly foundational jump in technology in my lifetime,\u201d Nolan said of AI. \u201cSo much energy has been expended on bringing in AI, but if you look at that generation\u2019s reaction, they\u2019re utterly rejecting it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tNolan noted his four children\u2019s attitudes towards AI as evidence that younger generations tend to reject the technology when it comes to visual storytelling. \u201cTheir judgment of AI slop has been immediate and harsh,\u201d he noted. \u201cThey see it for what it is very quickly \u2013 and it\u2019s much easier for them to identify it, because it grew out of an online world they know really well. And while that doesn\u2019t mean that every aspect of the technology is useless or meaningless, in film-making it\u2019s hitting at exactly the wrong time. After years of driving towards heavily virtual environments, we\u2019re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNolan also recently addressed<\/a> the right-wing culture-war backlash against the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe epic<\/a>\u00a0stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, whose long journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War reunites him with his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and son, Telemachus (Tom Holland). The cast also includes Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong\u2019o, Jon Bernthal, Travis Scott, Charlize Theron, among others. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Odyssey\u00a0arrives in theaters July 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christopher Nolan reportedly \u201cgrimaces\u201d when told Matt Damon\u2018s viral quote about making The Odyssey and what it meant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[186311,434,30852,18,117,19,17,8000,34433,30853],"class_list":["post-583625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-backrooms","tag-celebrities","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-matt-damon","tag-obsession","tag-the-odyssey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116913608079261466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}