Anyone of a certain age knows that line, delivered by Frank Oz through the character Yoda in the best episode of George Lucas’s Star Wars saga, The Empire Strikes Back.

Christopher Nolan is a Gen-xer like me and so I wonder if he wasn’t subconsciously evoking that as the underlying theme for his new cinematic masterpiece, The Odyssey, which I dutifully dad-joked with my daughter, makes it a film 3000 years in the making.

I came to the movie with precious little knowledge of Homer’s original epic, but great reverance for the bulk of Nolan’s work, especially Oppenheimer and Interstellar. As both entertainment and critical comment on contemporary Great Superpower mores (especially the ill-informed takes of Pete Hegseth, Putin and the lickspittle Pierre Poillievre) it hits homers (not home-runs – pun intended!)

Matt Damon is superb and measured, coming across almost Jedi-like (and sometimes, frankly, a little Jason Bourne-ish) in his interpretation of a leader of great skill and intelligence – and two decades of humbling and soul-crushing character development – that brings him to a place where only the greatest horrors imaginable could teach lessons so wide and profound. 

John Leguizamo, one of the great unsung actors of our time, owns every scene he appears in. Anne Hathaway is given room to display the depth and wisdom of Penelope, and she pulls it off handily. Tom Holland revives his Peter Parker persona to a degree, and all the supporting cast, from Charlize Theron to Himesh Patel to Zendaya to Elliot Page, contribute mightily to make The Odyssey as epic as a tale so old and lasting as this deserves to be.

But my favourite supporting role comes from the fabulous Samantha Morton, who really dug into the role of Circe rather convincingly (in the only scene where Damon’s acting chops were clearly outclassed, but luckily not for long enough to break our trust). “Here, go back into your disguises,” she says wryly to end an instantly classic and unforgettable scene in the history of cinema.

But in keeping with the age, Zeus is the name that evokes in everyone the last word on “the way of the world,” and it’s wonderful of Nolan to attribute Zeus as the source of: “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” as well as universal duty to provision charity and basic respect for all men in need of food or shelter, be they a beggar, a slave or a warrior. These concepts are so commonly mis-attributed to Jesus Christ in our contemporary stories, yet here Nolan has them (as well as the universal reverance to the female god Athena) continually and obediently respected by all men and women of all the far-flung places encountered by our hero, centuries before Christ came on the scene. In this way, Nolan forces modern audiences of both the MAGA-influenced and the normative-thinking to pause and reflect on how much we think we know we know is really true (and perhaps most importantly, from whence it came.)

And it’s a bloody entertaining cinematic achievement – with (gasp) no guns! 

Good show, old chap. I can almost see Yoda himself nodding in approval.

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