Tom Holland was trending on socials yesterday after some accounts picked up a story about him being “the lead” in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, The Odyssey. The assumption was that he would be playing Odysseus, and from there the ensuing reaction ranged from complaining to confusion.
Let’s back it up…
Christopher Nolan is one of a handful of directors who can bring people to theatres no matter what the story is and who’s in the movie. His last movie (Oppenheimer) won the Oscar for Best Picture. All actors want to work with him. Any time he’s doing anything film nerds get horny. And then on top of that, there’s the whole mythology around handling a Nolan script. For years now there have been stories about how secretly and fiercely guarded the Nolan scripts are; the instruction manual that basically follows them around; how they’re printed on red paper with black ink to deter from photocopying; how people have to be locked in a room on the studio lot when they read them so that they can’t be shared. Like at this point if you told me that Chris Nolan has invented some kind of tech where his scripts go up in flames after reading, like Mission: Impossible, I would believe you.
So when The Odyssey was announced a few weeks ago, along with some of the cast members, everyone’s been speculating what exactly the film would be, whether it would be a modern take on Homer’s classic or Nolan’s attempt at making a sequel to Troy. (Aside: can you believe Troy was released 20 years ago last year?!)
In addition to Tom Holland, the other actors confirmed are Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Charlize Theron. This is a lot of Oscar winners in one room. So far, on top of Christopher Nolan himself, that’s five – and since The Odyssey is an epic, more names will likely be added. So now it’s about which roles are going to which stars.
And that’s why Tom went viral yesterday. The timing is weird because the source seems to be a Deadline article from January 8 about Tom being attached to an adaptation of a John Grisham novel called The Partner with a quick mention about some of his other projects in development, including The Odyssey, where it’s mentioned that he’s “the lead” and then the internet quickly jumped to interpret “the lead” being Odysseus. I guess maybe with the LA fires etc people were over a week late getting to Deadline’s report.
As to whether or not Tom will actually be Odysseus…
I mean, anyone who’s read The Odyssey and seen the (so far) cast list probably wouldn’t have leapt to this conclusion, right? Sorry if I sound like a snob here but, like, when Matt Damon and Tom Holland are side by side on the call sheet and you know the story, to me it would make much more sense to assume that Matt will be Odysseus to Tom’s Telemachus …God help us all… because we have two years to prepare ourselves for the sight of Matt Damon in ancient Greek costume (if, in fact, this is where Chris Nolan is setting his story and it’s not a modern adaptation). Sorry to Matt Damon fans but this man has never looked right in period pieces. Watching him in The Last Duel a couple of years ago still haunts me.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in THE LAST DUEL look like all the dudes who send me death threats on Twitter pic.twitter.com/6T1MgtNylh
— Dylan Park-Pettiford (@dyllyp) November 24, 2021
Anyway, Odysseus was, like, well over 30 when he left home in The Iliad (Sean Bean played him in the 2004 movie) so if we’re picking it up after the Trojan War and The Odyssey is itself a ten year journey, Matt’s around-ish the right age for the title character and Tom’s the right age for the co-lead aka his son, Telemachus, who is looking for his father at the start of the story. At least that’s how I remember it since it’s been a while – but Greek Mythology was my favourite course in university, I was fully immersed in this sh-t for a few years, so I know the bones of it, and well enough to see that the Matt Damon/Tom Holland father-son thing makes total sense…
Whyyyyy isn’t the internet talking more about this instead of getting wrong-mad and/or wrong-confused at Tom Holland being Odysseus?
We now have a short king and short prince epic on our hands! This is what the memes should be, HELLO?!
While we’re here kicking it back to our school days, here are some of my initial curiosities about Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey – and we can get more granular later on, but this is a start and I guess it relates to what the tone will be. The Odyssey is the ultimate homecoming as Odysseus confronts all manner of obstacle, physical, metaphysical, and moral to make it back to Ithaca.
Are we just making him a classic (and boring) hero? Or are we giving him layers? This was a wily, complicated man. In today’s terms, we might call him a draft dodger, because that f-cker did not want to go to war! He tried to get out of it! Also during the war he was a strategic mastermind and you cannot engineer battlefield victories without being… compromised, on many levels.
That, of course, is before he set sail to return home. On his way home though, to his beloved Penelope, he also loved up a lot of other people, nymphs, and goddesses. Including Circe, who ended up MARRYING HIS SON, Telemachus!?! I mean, this was after Odysseus died, and I’m rusty on exactly which texts has that part of it and it might not be The Odyssey proper but still…
The ancient Greeks were wild! Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya love triangle, LOL?! Make this go viral, it makes more sense! Is this what Christoper Nolan is giving us?!