Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey blends filmmaking tradition and innovation in one epic movie. The fact that it's the first feature film to be made entirely using IMAX film cameras feels like both a technological milestone and a retro curiosity given that for over a decade most movies have been filmed digitally.
Matt Damon said that he felt nostalgic making the movie because of a sense that it will the last of its kind. That seemed to be a reference to a cultural shift in Hollywood as studios turn to YouTube filmmakers with viral potential (see the Skibidi toilet controversy). But The Odyssey also feels nostalgic in how it harks back to the era of Hollywood's most iconic epics. A failure to live up to people's memories of those movies could define its reception.
Christopher Nolan has described The Odyssey as an attempt to recreate the classic myth movies of his youth, including films that featured the classic stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen.
“As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before. And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with – Ray Harryhausen movies and other things – I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, IMAX production could do,” the director said in an interview with Empire.
Harryhausen is most acclaimed for a process he called Dynamation – stop-motion animation blended with live action film. The most celebrated examples are in movies like Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981) as well as the iconic Sinbad trilogy (it might be time to revisit Ray Harryhausen's sketchbook if you're a fan. Also see our pick of the best cartoons of the 1960s).
The technique was even more labour intensive than Nolan's use of huge IMAX cameras. His team would have to manipulate miniature models frame-by-frame to create sequences that had to be matched to live-action footage of real actors. The iconic fight with sword-wielding skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts took four and a half months to complete.
It's not surprising that it continues to inspire animators and effects artists today.
Like The Odyssey, Jason And The Argonauts and Clash of the Titans involved epic journeys interrupted by a host of fantastical creatures based on Greek mythology.
But Nolan couldn't really make a Harryhausen movie for the modern age. He had to give Greek mythology and more mature and earnest treatment in The Odyssey, making it a deeper movie about the cost of war. In comparison, Harryhausen's movies feel camp and superficial today, but the tactility of stop-motion animation and practical effects also have a warmth that CGI can't replicate.
When Tom Hanks handed Harryhausen an honorary Oscar in 1992, he said Jason And The Argonauts was the greatest film ever made; not Casablanca or Citizen Kane. For many, The Odyssey will probably be measured against how they remember that film making them feel. Will the film be able to evoke the same mystery, wonder and adventure using modern effects?
