The first extended clip of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has been released: six minutes, screened in IMAX in some US cinemas, before Sinners and One Battle After Another; these minutes already promise the most ambitious film ever made by the director.
The clip, which apparently also leaked online in very poor quality, shows the prologue: in particular, the scene of the Trojan Horse, with Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his soldiers silently emerging to surprise the enemies.
The Prologue of The Odyssey
According to various authoritative media outlets, including Variety, at the beginning of the prologue of The Odyssey, we find Menelaus, King of Sparta, played by Jon Bernthal, asking Telemachus (Tom Holland), son of Odysseus: "Have you heard the story of the horse? Have you heard it from the inside?"
From there, the sequence begins showing Odysseus, Menelaus, and many others crowding inside a gigantic wooden horse that has landed on the shores of Troy and been carried within the city walls by the Trojans themselves.
In the next scene, in a tense close-up, Odysseus decides to act; thanks to an external shot, we see him lowering a rope from the belly of the horse, descending, and silently attacking an unsuspecting sentry.
A silent assault follows, with the Trojan guards attacking the Greeks, while Odysseus tries to hold them off with arrows long enough to allow his men to complete the plan: activate the mechanisms that will open the city gates.
And when the gates open, a mass of fully armed Greek soldiers bursts into the city. Menelaus raises his arms in triumph, and someone hands him a helmet to wear. Odysseus shouts victoriously.
And then? The glimpse of The Odyssey continues with flashes showing soldiers, an enigmatic monster, and a head severed from a marble sculpture; Ludwig Göransson's soundtrack permeates the entire clip, progressively increasing the tension of the sequence.
Although it must be said, the Trojan Horse, while being one of Odysseus's best stratagems, represents only a very small episode in his twenty-year epic of war and wanderings.
Nolan recently revealed to Empire that for The Odyssey, he adopted an approach closer to Troy than to Clash of the Titans, effectively anchoring the fantastic elements of Greek myth to a more realistic representation:
“One of the things I had to figure out was how to approach mythological elements realistically. The big breakthrough in thinking about the gods was realising that everything that is explained by science today was once considered supernatural.
Lightning, thunder, earthquakes, volcanoes… People literally saw gods everywhere, not the evidence of their existence, but their actions. I don't want to say too much about this, except that yes, evidence of the supernatural is all around these people. It's an integral part of their lives. And I think it's a lot of fun to explore this aspect.”
The Odyssey, as already announced, will arrive in theatres on July 17, 2025, positioning itself as one of the cinematic events of the summer.
Source: Variety