Matt Damon, Tom Holland And Robert Pattinson Lead The Hot Cast Of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”
Christopher Nolan has built his career on time-bending puzzles and nuclear dread. For his next film he’s doing something far more generous to the gay eye. The Odyssey reaches cinemas on 17 July, and the cast reads like a group chat we’d very much like to be added to.
Matt Damon leads as Odysseus, the Greek king clawing his way home from Troy. At 54, he trained down to his lightest weight since high school to get there. “I used to walk around at between 185 and 200 [pounds], and I did that whole movie at 167,” Damon told the press.
“And I haven’t been that light since high school. So it was a lot of training and a really strict diet.”
The gluten went, the abs arrived, and a real grey beard came along for the ride, since Nolan refused to glue on a fake one.
His best mate Ben Affleck clocked the effort. “First time Matt’s got into shape in his life, rips his shirt off,” Affleck joked, adding that Damon “keeps asking when he can take off his shirt.” Same, Matt. Same.
The supporting bench is doing plenty of heavy lifting
Tom Holland plays Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, suited up in white armour as the fit young prince chasing his missing dad.
Jon Bernthal turns up as Spartan king Menelaus with a shaved head, a full beard and the Punisher build we already knew he was hiding. Robert Pattinson takes the sleazy lane as Antinous, one of Penelope’s oily suitors, a role he’s compared to Lester Diamond from Casino.
Around them sits a proper ensemble. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, Zendaya is Athena, Charlize Theron is Calypso, and Lupita Nyong’o joins alongside Benny Safdie, Jovan Adepo and Travis Scott.
Out actor Elliot Page is in there, too, playing the Greek soldier Sinon, so the queer representation isn’t only sitting in the audience.
Why the fuss is warranted
This is the first film shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras, with a reported $250 million budget behind it. Tickets for opening-weekend IMAX screenings sold out within hours when they went on sale a full year early.
Beautiful men, the biggest screen going, and Homer’s oldest road-trip story. Book the good seats.
