Christopher Nolan has spent years talking up Homer, Kubrick, and even his own Batman films as touchstones for The Odyssey. But ahead of release, he just named a far less expected influence, and it’s not a swords and sandals epic.
Nolan has never been shy about his cinematic reference points. He’s cited Jaws and Alien as models for how to shoot the film’s monsters, and he’s talked at length about how directing the Dark Knight trilogy taught him how to build a hero who feels human despite being larger than life.
What fans didn’t expect was a deeply personal, deeply controversial religious drama from 1988 entering the conversation at all.
Nolan Explains How ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ Shaped The Odyssey
Speaking with USA Today, Nolan confirmed that Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ was screened for his cast and crew during preproduction, and that it left a real mark on how he approached Odysseus.
“We screened a few different films in preproduction, and that one in particular we got a print of,” Nolan said. “It’s a stunning movie and a shocking film. There were technical things that Scorsese was doing that were quite inspiring, but more than that, the figure of Jesus and what he does with him was very, very challenging to the audience. That was quite inspiring from the point of view of Odysseus: You want to be true to all the difficulties of the character, and that’s what ‘Temptation’ is.”
The connection makes more sense the longer you sit with it. Scorsese’s film, starring Willem Dafoe as a doubt-ridden, deeply human Jesus, was infamous for refusing to flatten its central figure into an untouchable icon. Nolan appears to be chasing that same instinct with Odysseus, a king who spends The Odyssey dragging the trauma of war home with him rather than gliding through myth unscathed.
It’s not the only classic Nolan pulled into his prep. Tom Holland has said he personally called Sony chief Tom Rothman to arrange a 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia for the cast during production, another epic built around a morally complicated man at its center.
Nolan has also drawn a line between The Odyssey and his own filmography, saying the character work he did across the Dark Knight trilogy directly informed how he built Odysseus as both an icon and a flawed man. Between Scorsese, Kubrick’s 2001, and his own Gotham, Nolan’s Odyssey is shaping up as a mythology built from very unexpected parts.
The Odyssey sails into theaters July 17, shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras.