Matt Damon gets in

Last night was Jimmy Kimmel’s last appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! before his summer, he’ll be backfilled by guest hosts until the fall. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens in theatres exactly a month from today and promo is picking up but since they won’t have the Jimmy Kimmel option closer to release date, Matt stopped by yesterday to extend their now 20+ year fake feud…which got tiresome a few years ago and now it’s managed to push through the fatigue and get into familiar tradition territory. Like at this point it would actually be weird if Matt just showed up for a regular interview instead of the two of them yelling at each other.

Plus, the set-up for this kinda wrote itself. He’s starring in The Odyssey, occurring after the events in The Iliad, and of course the marquee scene in The Iliad is the Trojan Horse – and since Matt is always trying to sneak his way onto Jimmy’s set, hiding in a model horse is… the most obvious and expected bit to pull off right now.

But that’s not where they both demonstrate their level of commitment. The commitment is in their performance – specifically with how immature the jokes are, how mean the jokes are, and how hard they hit each other with those pool noodles. Jimmy always looks convincingly annoyed and Matt always looks convincingly desperate and the fact that they’ve been doing this for over two decades is actually kind of impressive and mostly… well… comfortable. Habits are comfortable. They may not be artistically adventurous but I’m not sure we’re asking for a major artistic swing where these two are considered in this particular setting.

Also, is it just me or does Matt Damon look better than he has in a long time?

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As for The Odyssey, remember this is a film that sold out of advance tickets for screenings in 70mm a year in advance. And when advance tickets for regular screenings went on sale earlier this month apparently there were wait times in the queue like for concert tickets. The awareness is definitely there. Early projections are putting opening weekend at $100 million, on the low end. More accurate projections should be arriving next week but Christopher Nolan is one of very few event directors, will be interesting to see the numbers on July 17 which, by the way, is the World Cup final weekend. So that Sunday box office will be worth keeping an eye on.