← Cannonball with Wesley Morris
Cannonball with Wesley Morris
Nolan’s Been Making ‘The Odyssey’ All Along
00:51:23
If you haven’t seen Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” yet, good luck. The hit of the summer is selling out showtimes around the country. Wesley Morris initially thought he didn’t need this adaptation. Then, Matt Damon was cast as Odysseus. Curiosity piqued. Fast forward to him in a packed theater (IMAX 70mm, of course) excited by the prospect of an old-fashioned all-star-cast movie. But with Nolan’s filmmaking, it’s never that simple. There’s a lot going on within the nearly three-hour epic that’s fascinated moviegoers and critics alike. And so, whenever there’s a big movie that everybody is talking about, Wesley wants to hear from his pal, Sean Fennessey. Fennessey is head of content at The Ringer and a co-host of the podcast “The Big Picture.” Together, Wesley and Sean go deep on the “The Odyssey” and the evolution of Nolan’s career.
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- [00:00]
Ad Council Announcer
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- [00:38]
Wesley Morris
I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball. Today, Danny's home. Okay, so you probably already know this, but the Odyssey came out last week. Three hours of a very famous epic poem that, you know, some people left this thing saying, man, that was epic. After years of war,
- [01:11]
Sean Fennessey
no one could stand between my men and home.
- [01:17]
Wesley Morris
This is the story of Odysseus. He's played by Matt Damon, and he goes off to fight in the Trojan War and leaves behind his wife Penelope, and she is played by Anne Hathaway. And their son Telemachus, who is played by, or sorry, grows into Tom Holland.
- [01:33]
Sponsor Announcer
What would he do if he came
- [01:34]
Wesley Morris
back here to find all these suitors in his house? You're pining for a daddy you didn't even know. After decades away from his family, it's been like 20 years. Odysseus is really, really, really, really, really desperate to get home. And in his quest to get there, this man undergoes a lot of very interesting experiences. Some of them gross, some of them magical, some of them harrowing.
- [02:04]
Sean Fennessey
No one could stand between me and home, not even the gods.
- [02:12]
Wesley Morris
You know, this is a huge story. It's a huge production of a huge story. And it's by. I mean, probably the biggest director on earth right now, Christopher Nolan. He directed, he wrote, and he envisioned. The budget is like $250 million. You can see it, and it has got a lot of people in it. Matt Damon, of course, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, but also Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong', O, Zendaya, Elliot Page, John Byrne, Fall. I'm just gonna stop there because I could. Samantha Morton. I'll stop. I really will stop. But anytime there's a big, auteur driven movie that everybody is talking about, a big pop spectacle. I just want to talk to Sean Fantasy about it. Shawn, of course, is the host of the Ringer's Big Picture podcast along with Amanda Dobbins, and he's just one of my favorite people to talk to about big movies that people are talking about. Sean Fenasey, welcome to Cannonball. Again.
- [03:36]
Sean Fennessey
Thank you for having me so happy to be returning home with you.
- [03:39]
Wesley Morris
I only, I only want you here for, for the best. Only, only the best directors for you. And today we're going to talk about the Odyssey by Christopher Nolan. I think I would like to start by telling you some things about me because, I mean, these aren't things that would shock you, but I'm just going to set you up for, for my relationship to this movie. The short version is I didn't, I don't know, I didn't need it. There was nothing about this. Nothing. I just, I. I don't know. Other people have tried. My favorite version, my favorite movie version of this is in Jean Luc Godard's Contempt. Godard did it. It's one of the great comments on Hollywood trashiness, the classics. But I found out a very crucial piece of information that was like, okay, I think I'm. I'm curious to see how this goes. And it was the fact that Matt Damon was gonna play Odysseus. Anyway, you find out Christopher Nolan is doing the Odyssey, what happens to you?
- [04:45]
Sean Fennessey
I just thought it makes sense. Seems logical. I mean, you know, you make a great point about contempt, but the thing you have to remember about this movie is that while there have been many partial adaptations and allusions to this story, there has never been a full on full blown Hollywood production adaptation of Homer's the Odyssey for a feature film. It just has not. It's never happened. And part of that is because it's been impossible technologically and it would be too expensive and maybe the story in some ways is unadaptable. And we can talk about that if you'd like to.
- [05:19]
Wesley Morris
We can, because I think it is.
- [05:21]
Sean Fennessey
Well, he changes some things, I think, to make certain components work together. But I'm fascinated because Nolan is the great. I'll show you filmmaker of his era. You know, the great. There's no wall too high to scale for his work. And I've had a complicated experience with him as a filmmaker.
- [05:45]
Guest or Co-host (possibly Amanda Dobbins)
Me too.
- [05:45]
Wesley Morris
We can talk about that.
- [05:47]
Sean Fennessey
I've been up and down over the years. I'm in a very big upswing. And I was a full blown Oppenheimer allegiant. And I remember thinking to myself after that movie, I was like, I don't know what else this guy's gonna be like, what else can he do After Oppenheimer? Yeah, he made a billion dollar biopic about a nuclear bomb and the man who made it. And yeah, there's a short list of things and this is on the short list, obviously. So I went in looking forward to it.
- [06:12]
Wesley Morris
Well, what happened when you saw it?
- [06:14]
Sean Fennessey
I was swept away. I don't know if I was blown away, but I was swept away. Okay, that's a problem. I have a few notes, but the notes are modest. And I think that there is only one person on the planet right now that could have made the movie. And the thing that I admired most about it was its eagerness to be contemporary and modern and to be interested in what is plaguing us right now and to go back thousands of years to show that it's not such a new concern. I found that to be really, really powerful. And it's on the nose. But the fun thing about adapting an epic poem is that there's no need for subtlety. It's just not part of the design of the piece. And so everything that feels broad and overstated and at times absurd and ridiculous, that's in the contract of adapting the Odyssey. So in that way, I found it very easy to turn myself over to it and love it.
- [07:16]
Wesley Morris
You know, I think I really like the experience of this. There was all of the things that are true about moviegoing held for this. I saw it in a packed theater, saw it in imax. But the thing that really excited me about this movie the most is that it's so old fashioned. In some ways, I think that we are watching a style of movie that is hard to do in 2026 for all kinds of industrial reasons. But it's basically a big all star cast movie.
- [07:55]
Guest or Co-host (possibly Amanda Dobbins)
It is.
- [07:57]
Sean Fennessey
And yet I would argue that the style and structure of the movie is as dramatically transgressive as almost any major Hollywood production I've ever seen. The editing style of this movie say more about that. Well, you're right that it is classically mounted. It's across multiple continents, seven countries. It's a $250 million budgeted movie using state of the art technology. So it fits all of those guidelines. But all of the Christopher Nolan films are about memory and time and the loss of time and the failure to achieve what you need to achieve to be a completed human being, because there is not enough time to do so. For example, the film features a recreation of the Trojan War and the sacking of Troy.
- [08:46]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [08:48]
Sean Fennessey
And during that sequence we see a statue of Athena beheaded early in the film. And it's depicted solely as triumph. It is an extraordinary moment for the soldiers who have escaped from the horse and Agamemnon's army behind them. The film circles back to this moment much later. And the telling is told through the eyes of Odysseus and not through Menelaus, who originally shares the story. And when Odysseus tells the story, we see similar images, sometimes the exact same shot, but they're spoken and explained in significantly different context. More sorrowful, more mournful, more regretful than what we saw previously in the film. And he'll sprinkle these images, the beheading of Athena, or the perspective of a fire being lit inside of Troy, or the escape from the horse, and he'll turn the dial one degree. And just that simple turn in the image radically changes how we understand what. What the characters have done and how they feel about what they've done. It's a very sophisticated filmmaking technique that like you see in a lot of experimental film in the 50s and 60s that you see in a lot of European cinema from the 60s and 70s.
- [09:58]
Wesley Morris
Yes. Speaking of Godard.
- [10:00]
Sean Fennessey
Yes. And in the last three films in particular, he's working with a new editor named Jennifer Lame. And you can see that with Lame, he's really refined this specific idea of what movie chronology means and how to use images in recurring fashion across long run times.
- [10:18]
Wesley Morris
When did she show up?
- [10:19]
Sean Fennessey
She showed up for Tenet.
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Wesley Morris
Tenet. Okay, Okay.
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Sean Fennessey
I see these movies as all pretty closely linked, you know, Tenet, certainly Tenet, the least narratively coherent. But it is like. It's the birth of a style to me.
- [10:31]
Wesley Morris
And also the birth, the like sort of reorientation of the priorities too, with respect to time, duration. You know, he. His ideas. I don't. I don't know. I. His. He's got. There's a mix of, like, real, you know, blackboard ideas. Right. Things you would, like, put on a big board and like, work through. Some obvious ones are just like, you know, the family saving the world. And it's interesting watching those play out here, mostly between characters who are explaining the plot to each other.
- [11:10]
Sean Fennessey
That's a hallmark of all Nolan films.
- [11:12]
Wesley Morris
A real Nolan, a real Nolan specialty.
- [11:16]
Sean Fennessey
He enunciates specifically what's happening. I think, again, this film is in a better position to withstand that because so much of the Odyssey is told through storytelling in the film.
- [11:28]
Wesley Morris
Exactly.
- [11:28]
Sean Fennessey
It works not just. Yes. It's not just in the oral tradition, but in the text of the poem. The film changes something very specific, which is that Odysseus is telling his tale at a feast in the poem, and in this case, he's telling his tale as a recounting of his memory to Calypso. But in both cases, it does make sense At a certain point, Telemachus visits Menelaus and he's seeking more information about his father in a separate timeline in this story. And. And he just plainly asks Menelaus to tell him about his father, to tell him about what transpired with the Trojan Horse and in the war. And so it's actually okay to just have characters say, well, this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. There's a counterpart to this, though, that is interesting, and I'm curious how you feel about it. This movie and Oppenheimer together are the two films in which I feel like his characters are not just talking openly about plot or story, but about theme. They are enunciating theme. This movie is about civilization, the degradation of civilization, how we treat each other. What is the social contract between people in civilized societies? And has it been broken? Why has it been broken? And can we do anything to repair it? I mean, you could hear Penelope and Odysseus and Telemachus talking to other figures in the story about these ideas. And there are not a lot of examples in Nolan's movies where he's clarifying the subtext so overtly. He's usually making the text extra loud, but in this case, I found the subtext to be very loud.
- [13:02]
Wesley Morris
I love this observation, because to me, it feels like this, in many ways, is the thing that he has been trying to make the whole time. Because, you know, every movie is an Odyssey story, right? Every movie is a man trying to understand or get someplace he wants to. Like, if he's not coming physically home, he's trying to get back to his original self. And yet the. The. The text being the text means that. I mean, I appreciated this, really, as a work of adaptation that can sit alongside what Emily Wilson has done, that can sit alongside what Daniel Mendelsohn has done in their translations of the Odyssey from the Greek into English. But here, I don't know if Christopher Nolan speaks Greek. I don't know what his source text was, but this is as much an adaptation as, you know, anybody else's.
- [14:05]
Sean Fennessey
I completely agree. I feel like he has said that he's read multiple translations, and I think that that informed the way that he applied it, but he did. He's changed things. You mentioned Matt Damon at the top of this conversation. Making Matt Damon Odysseus is a counterintuitive move. Yes, it's an incredibly. It's a smart choice thematically.
- [14:27]
Wesley Morris
I mean, there are all kinds of reasons that this is an idiosyncratic choice.
- [14:32]
Sean Fennessey
The framework that I've been suggesting to people when I've been talking about it, is, think about this movie. Think of two previous Nolan collaborators and slot them into Odysseus. Think if Tom Hardy is Odysseus. Or think if Cillian Murphy is Cillian Murphy. Yeah, yeah. These are the two actors who I think would be fascinating in those roles, and they bring something different. Tom Hardy is more of a. He's more of a restrained trickster, which is a component of the Odysseus.
- [14:57]
Wesley Morris
Is Tom Hardy restrained?
- [14:59]
Sean Fennessey
Well, his performance style is not restrained, but he's not somebody who reveals a lot of information. He kind of mumbles, oh, no, no, he's opaque.
- [15:07]
Wesley Morris
He's opaque. You don't know what going on with these men.
- [15:11]
Sean Fennessey
And Cillian Murphy is. Everything is in his eyes. It's this wash of Irish sadness, you know? And Matt Damon is likable and lovable, and you root for him, naturally. Inherently, he is just. He's everybody's cool older friend or dad or uncle, and you want him to win, and it's uncomplicated. But Odysseus is a very complicated protagonist. Sure, he does terrible things. He makes huge mistakes. He kills many people because of his foolishness. And he. He cheats on his wife and he does all this crazy stuff. Not in this movie, but not in this movie. In this movie, it strains the character of some of those faults. It doesn't mean that he doesn't. It doesn't mean he's without flaw in the film. Cause he clearly has many flaws and does many foolish things, but he doesn't have the conquering hero quality where you're allowed to kind of maraud in a way, when you have that Persona. And then the other thing that it does is it makes Odysseus American. Right.
- [16:09]
Wesley Morris
I was gonna say that's the fundamental thing about Daemon here, too.
- [16:13]
Sean Fennessey
And it makes every other actor in his cast American, even if they're not born in America. So you have Tom Holland's accent turned into this kind of mangled Indiana boy. You know, like, he doesn't quite know how to get the tone, but it makes someone like Anne Hathaway very legible in this movie. You know, she seems like a perfect Penelope opposite someone like Matt Damon. And so it's a really, really big choice that he makes that I think pays off. Matt Damon's just so watchable.
- [16:39]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
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Sean Fennessey
There's not a lot of people who are like, you know, who I hate is Matt Damon. Like, that's just not an opinion people have.
- [16:44]
Wesley Morris
I Think there's somebody out there? There's somebody.
- [16:47]
Sean Fennessey
Sure. There's always some. I'm sure I'm gonna get an email from that person. Hate society. Yeah. But I think there's something just very comforting about him leading a movie in our society right now. And he has talked about one of the reasons why he wanted to make the movie when Nolan asked him to do it was he was like, I don't know if there's ever gonna be a movie like this again. You know, he's been making movies for three decades, and there just are not movies that are mounted in quite this way. And so he saw it as like almost kind of one last challenge in his 50s. And, you know, it's such a huge physical ask to make this movie.
- [17:20]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a wonderful moment at the end of this film spoiling nothing. But, like, everybody in this room has to bow down to Matt Damon, and I'm just like, wow, here's a star who I never thought would need genuflection. But now that it's happening, I'm like, yeah. Cause, you know, I mean, he made it this far and he's still able to work. We still want to see him and he still got it.
- [17:51]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. It's gratifying at the end when we feel like he, sure, you are our king, at least for now. Or you were the king of something,
- [18:00]
Wesley Morris
and it's probably king of something. Right? We remember. We remember. It's been 20 years. It's been 20 years, but we have not forgotten.
- [18:08]
Sean Fennessey
That's such a classically Wesley insight. I wonder if Nolan even occurred to him that he was nodding at the durational quality of stardom and how if you held a place at a certain time, you hold that place forever. The same way that Odysseus holds it in the minds of the people of Ithaca.
- [18:26]
Wesley Morris
I mean, here's like, you know, the most. The biggest director in the world saying, you know what? I know what this guy is worth. I remember, and I'm gonna build a whole movie around him. But I also think that what makes this exciting to me is getting back to this all star cast situation, is that I don't know when's the last time we've had a movie where the bench on this thing, like not even everybody really gets on the field is how many people, is how many great actors. There are, like interesting actors here. Yeah.
- [19:01]
Sean Fennessey
I mean, we no longer get how the West Was Won or the Ten Commandments or Cleopatra style film where you've got seven or eight or nine Academy Award nominated performers. That doesn't really happen anymore. We have had in the last 15 years films like Valentine's Day, you know, the sort of the all star cast comes together for a light comedy where they get three scenes.
- [19:22]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, you get three scenes. You get three days of shooting. That's it. Yeah.
- [19:26]
Sean Fennessey
This also, it operates in a somewhat similar fashion. You know, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, you know, they co starred together in a movie earlier this year. The way of Hollywood's future is on the shoulders of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. I mean, they're two of the most important people to movies in the next 15 years and they're asked to do relatively modest things and they're somewhat underwritten
- [19:46]
Wesley Morris
parts in this movie.
- [19:47]
Sean Fennessey
In this movie.
- [19:48]
Wesley Morris
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- [19:49]
Sean Fennessey
They're crucial roles, but I wouldn't say that they have the depth that Odysseus or Penelope are offered. No, but they wanted to be a part of this because it's a Nolan movie. And so they'll bring the absolute best that they can to these parts because they know, I mean, this is the movie of the year, is it not, Wesley? Like, whether or not you think it's the best movie of the year, it feels like it is the movie of the year.
- [20:10]
Wesley Morris
It's definitely the. I mean, you would know. I don't like, you know, I'm not a big forecast person, but so you would know better than I would what's out there. But yes, all these people are here because they believe in this director. Like he is maybe one of the only people who could get all these people together. I don't know what the schedule was like. Many of these people do have to share scenes together. So it really is getting all these schedules to align. There are people, I mean, I guess you, he is now the director that you kind of change your schedule for. I don't know, maybe there was somebody who was like, you know what? I can't do it. I would love to be able to do it, but I can't be on We Are the World Today. I just can't do it.
- [20:53]
Sean Fennessey
There's a wonderful anecdote in Zack Baron's profile of the making of this movie where Pattinson gets a call from Nolan and they've worked together on Tenet and he says, hey, I've got a part for you in the Odyssey. And Pattinson's response is, oh, awesome, I can't wait to read it. And Nolan says, well, no one else asked to read it. Everyone else just agreed. When I called them, which I think says something wonderful about Pattinson, you know, who's a little bit of a kook. And also something about that weight that you're talking about that Nolan has, you know, that he really. That people, you know, Anne Hathaway is just like, I'll do it. Like, I don't even have to read it. I'll do it no matter what. And she's a huge star, and she's in five movies this year. And she's like, I will travel to wherever I have to go to make this movie with you. That's true power. He exists in a very singular class in movie history.
- [21:43]
Wesley Morris
Well, I'm just thinking about the fact that he isn't. I mean, I'm thinking about the way Nolan uses stars, too. And I like that it's Tom Holland who is Telemachus here and not. I mean, I'm gonna say Timothee Chalamet, but I like that it is. There's clearly a Stars of Tomorrow dimension here.
- [22:06]
Sean Fennessey
It cuts both ways for me because I think Holland is not as skilled an actor as many of the people that are in the film. And so I do feel like he's often a step behind some of the performers in the way that he does.
- [22:18]
Wesley Morris
It's like he's also years behind. He seems like he's 15. I don't know how old Tom Holland really is.
- [22:24]
Sean Fennessey
And I kept waiting for him to say, like, to tug on someone's shirt and say, like, Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark. You know, like, he's just. He's inevitably Peter Parker to me in so many ways. And I think he's a wonderful Peter Parker. So it's not against him entirely. But on the flip side, the point that you're making is so dead on, which is like, Telemachus is kind of a fail son, right? Like, he's just. He's kind of a like, hopeless little boy, you know, who didn't. Never had a father and maybe doesn't have a role model to understand how to become a man. And so you do need a very youthful, childlike figure. Whereas Timothee Chalamet is like all swagger.
- [22:59]
Wesley Morris
And also he's going to act the part in a way. You know what I mean? He's gonna act the part in a completely different. He's not gonna be as willing to be a failson. I mean, there's no other way to put it.
- [23:10]
Sean Fennessey
That's true. And some of the clever casting, you know, Benny Safdie is Agamemnon, you know, there's Some kind of amusing kind of undermining of our expectations around some of these figures.
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Wesley Morris
Well, also, Lupita Nyong' o as Helen and Clytha Nestra.
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Ad Council Announcer
Right.
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Wesley Morris
Like, I mean, I thought that, to me, there's a whole level of inspired casting, like, truly inspired casting, even though Lupita doesn't have enough to do.
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Sean Fennessey
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
I felt like that plot could have. I mean, it risks taking over the movie because it's such a. It's such a. It's the juiciest plot line in the whole thing. Yeah.
- [23:48]
Sean Fennessey
I mean, we just need to see Christopher Nolan's the Iliad if we want that. Right. I mean, the. The. Everything that is in the movie that is, you know, about Helen or Clytemnestra. He even kind of bends that story around his finger a little bit by making them twin sisters when they're not really twin sisters, they're half sisters in the poem. But he wants to kind of maximize as much Lupita. He's like, I got Lupita. I gotta try to get her in as much of this thing as I possibly can. Even though there's not a whole lot for either of these characters to do in this story. But I think also, is Lupita not one of the most stunningly beautiful people on earth? Could she not spark a war?
- [24:24]
Wesley Morris
Don't ask the Internet. I can't even get into it. But of course. Of course she is. Of course she is. It's not hard.
- [24:30]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. In a cynical way, I'm very disinterested in the culture war of this movie, personally.
- [24:36]
Wesley Morris
Me too.
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Sean Fennessey
But I also do think that there is a little bit of a poking of the bear. That is honestly good filmmaking.
- [24:42]
Wesley Morris
I mean, we haven't even talked about Elliot Page. Right. I mean, having Elliot Page play Sinan is also inspired. Right.
- [24:52]
Sean Fennessey
Very smart. Another reunion for a Nolan previous collaborator. And I think his performance is really good.
- [25:00]
Wesley Morris
Listen, one of the first people we see in this film is Elliot Page. We don't know who this character is, but, I mean, it's clearly a soldier in Odysseus army. And I mean, I'm just gonna say he dies immediately. And you're like, what? Oh, we can't be killing Elliot Page in the opening scene of the movie.
- [25:27]
Sean Fennessey
What are we doing?
- [25:28]
Wesley Morris
But of course, you know, it's a Christopher Nolan film. Nothing that happens in one minute is true two hours later. So at some point, there's this wonderful sequence where the dead sort of come to life via Hades and they begin to speak their wishes to Odysseus and they give him. I mean, we'll just say that Elliot Page's character, Sinon, instructs him to essentially avenge his death. If, you know, you're watching Elliot Page, you know what country we live in. There is something about the anger and heartbreak, but also vengeance that Elliot Page is acting here. That, I mean, immediately corresponds to an. To, you know, a trans community. A group of people who want to have a voice and be. Be represented and avenged. Right. If not by themselves. And definitely by. By. Yeah, I'm going to say an ally here. I don't know. Like that. That is a very. That was. It's on the nose, but it's still in the world of this movie being watched in the world we live in. Extremely powerful.
- [26:49]
Sean Fennessey
I completely agree. And it's all intentional. None of it is unintentional. So when I say poking the bear, it's like it's a provocation that is asking you to think about this idea that you just enunciated, which is great filmmaking, to confront your audience with something like that that might otherwise make them uncomfortable. Especially Nolan frequently has white male protagonists who are mega movie stars and works in a very conventional way, works in a way that is not unlike the way the directors worked 60, 70, 80 years ago. He eventizes big scale, big story, but he's also someone who likes to upset your expectations. Memento, his second film is all about feeling uncomfortable while you're watching the story. It is something that he really, really likes to do that I admire about his movies, even if I'm not even loving the movie. I'm like, well, you tried to fuck with me in an interesting way. You know, like, I kind of like that.
- [27:43]
Wesley Morris
Yeah.
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Sean Fennessey
And this movie is kind of dotted with those choices all over the place. The same way that the daemon casting is a similar thing in reverse. You know, it's sort of like, let me try to soften your expectations on one thing over here and then take you over here for something different. I also agree with you about the Hades sequence, and I think the film can very easily be read as a horror movie. And there's three distinct, almost consecutive sequences that show this. The first one, of course, is the encounter with the Cyclops in the cave. The second is a standout sequence in the movie where Odysseus and his men arrive on the shores of Circe's island and Circe, the witch portrayed by Samantha Morton, who draws in Odysseus fleet, his crew.
- [28:28]
Wesley Morris
It's a great sequence.
- [28:29]
Sean Fennessey
The crew find their way to Circe's home. And very quickly she feeds them.
- [28:35]
Wesley Morris
They're eating, they're starving and they're going to town on whatever.
- [28:41]
Sean Fennessey
She's given them some grotesque stew that she has concocted and they eat this food and she transmogrifies them into pigs and she's punished them for being brutes and she's dooming them to a fate. And this is a very loaded, very feminist interpretation of the Cersei character and is truly horrifying. It is clearly the most disgusting and upsetting sequence in, I think, any Nolan film. It makes me want to see his proper horror movie. And it also is. It reminded me a lot of the transformation in An American Werewolf in London.
- [29:22]
Wesley Morris
Oh, yeah.
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Sean Fennessey
When she's.
- [29:23]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, she's physically using her hands to pull the snouts out.
- [29:27]
Sean Fennessey
Yes, yes.
- [29:28]
Wesley Morris
Yeah.
- [29:29]
Sean Fennessey
And so that's very effective. And then that third sequence is the sequence that you're describing. And this is a new tone for him. You know, he has made upsetting sequences, but not very many scary sequences. And his flexibility and fungibility throughout this movie in different styles. A classic adventure movie on the high seas, a romance.
- [29:47]
Wesley Morris
This is my Kurosawa sequence. This is, you know, this is my DeMille sequence. This, I mean, well, I mean, the spirit of a Cecil B. DeMille production really does live throughout this thing. But also he's referencing himself.
- [30:00]
Sean Fennessey
Yes, there are a lot of self referential moments. Like my co host on the Big Picture, Amanda Dobbins, pointed out that Inception opens with a man washing ashore in a confused state, trying to figure out how to get back home to his family. You know, that in some ways, Christopher Nolan has always been making the Odyssey. I thought that was such an astute observation. And I think he is doing both. I think he is referencing his own work and his own career. But also he's clearly referencing Kurosawa's Ron and he's mentioned Scorsese's Passion of the Christ as a kind of work of adaptation. You can feel that in the film as well. You know, like he's kind of picking and choosing all these great genre sandwiches and taking a big old bite and then putting it down and then picking another one up and taking a bite. It's a lot of fun.
- [30:52]
Wesley Morris
All right, we're gonna take a break and when we come back, I. I kind of want to think some more about the Nolanism here and I kind of want to like, contextualize his career alongside some other people. So we'll take a break and when we come back, we'll keep talking about the Odyssey.
- [31:27]
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This podcast is supported by Her Private Hell, official selection of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Her Private Hell is the newest film from Nicholas Winding Refn, director of Drive and the Neon Demon. It has been hailed by critics as a visually striking hypnotic neo noir. Starring Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton. Her Private Hell opens in theaters everywhere July 24th.
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- [32:58]
Wesley Morris
We're back. We're talking about the Odyssey with Sean Fennesee of the Big Picture and my pal, by the way. Thanks for saying that, reminding everybody that we like each other. So really what we're I wanted to sort of think through Nolan's career and where it is at this moment. You know, it feels like he's never been huger. But I also think to your like just thinking about the way that you're thinking about what a complicated movie the Odyssey is, I think that his values as a filmmaker are really still on display here despite dealing with this, you know, great work of the classics.
- [33:49]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah.
- [33:50]
Ad Council Announcer
Literary.
- [33:51]
Sean Fennessey
The one thing I've been saying about him recently is that I find him to be a tremendous adapter of material and not my favorite original storyteller.
- [34:00]
Wesley Morris
Interesting, interesting, interesting.
- [34:02]
Sean Fennessey
I think I'm on the opposite side as a lot of people who love Inception and love Interstellar and feel like those are really the pinnacles of his work or a lot of young people really got obsessed with him because jumping from the Dark Knight, the Batman films, this was sort of like their first grown up movie, Inception, Interstellar. And I know that A lot of people have deep relationships to those movies. Those movies to me, I feel like are flawed specifically because his screenwriting style is very explicative. And I am a little less interested in him having to explain exactly every thought that he had about how the plot works. But when you're taking the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer or the Odyssey or even Frank Miller's the Dark Knight, you've
- [34:45]
Wesley Morris
got great source material.
- [34:46]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. And I think he is so expert at kind of bending and breaking that material to fit his will. And from a technical perspective, I mean he really is unmatched. I mean he has assembled, I think some of the most talented head, you know, department heads in all of filmmaking right now. Hoyte van Hoytema has worked with him on multiple films. Now he is an elite grand stage cinematographer. Yes, I mentioned Jennifer Leem, his editor Ludwig Goransson, who has kind of swiftly moved right into the John Williams wing of like this is kind of the guy in major Hollywood orchestral composition. So he's got those folks. He's got Ellen Mirojnick, his costume designer,
- [35:25]
Wesley Morris
the legendary Ellen Mirojnick.
- [35:28]
Sean Fennessey
He has this great fleet of people in his army that are working to make these movies and they're able to execute on these visions that he has of these historic stories. So there's something really intoxicating about that. Now I'm a fan of Tenet and that's an original conjuring of his as well. But I do think he's at his best when he's got something that he can sink his teeth into and reimagine.
- [35:52]
Wesley Morris
You are a fan of Tenant?
- [35:54]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, I am, I am. Well, I think it's a very funny self commentary on.
- [35:59]
Wesley Morris
It is. No, it's funny. I mean, yes, I agree.
- [36:03]
Sean Fennessey
Don't think about it. Just feel it as a line of dialogue from the film. And it feels like he's kind of hitting back at his detractors in that sequence in the movie which I've always found amusing.
- [36:12]
Wesley Morris
Mr. Nolan, I am unfazed. I would rather feel it. But you often don't give me enough to feel. And I think I have never really bought into the Nolan experience. I think that the Dark Knight might have been the peak for me as a filmmaker. And I think Inception. I really enjoyed the caper of. But I think that the distinction that I make in my. In the way that I appreciate what I enjoyed about it is. I don't know how he. I think he thinks he's going down like I think he is. He thinks he's Plumbing through something. But what I'm experiencing is a. Is a pooling outward. He's more he. It's funny cause there's a whole Hades sequence where like the choice to bring Hades up right. To bring hell to earth feels like to me very Nolan. He does not want to go very far down, but he can go as far out and as vast as his imagination will allow him to. But the depth to me means you never really get interesting people to watch. You never get really interesting conversations between people. And he doesn't trust behavior that isn't attached to plot, which to me, I need a little more human meat on the bones that aren't just themes.
- [37:47]
Sean Fennessey
I generally agree. Oppenheimer kind of shattered a lot of my preconceived hangups with him. I've been super critical of some of his movies over the years and I feel like I'm a little alone amongst the. The film bros who love him.
- [38:01]
Wesley Morris
But to quote the great Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, you got me.
- [38:07]
Sean Fennessey
We can stand together on that. But I have been fully. Oppenheimer fully swayed me. I thought that that was from both a technical and intellectual perspective, a pretty staggering movie. And I really bought it, for lack of a better phrase. And it revealed to me a lot about how he sees himself and how he sees the world and kind of what we mean to each other.
- [38:32]
Wesley Morris
Say more about that.
- [38:34]
Sean Fennessey
Well, it's that world events are orchestrated by humans, by people who make decisions.
- [38:41]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [38:41]
Sean Fennessey
And that there's. You know, I don't know if Nolan is fostering some personal regret or he observed something like that in his parents or something. But he keeps circling back to people at the end of his stories. Confounded and hopeful and frustrated and mourning something all at the same time. And Oppenheimer, the scale of that regret is the highest scale of all time. I mean, it is the ultimate consequence of untamed ambition in the face of an idea. And he is a very solipsistic filmmaker in that way where you can often one to one, map his Persona as a filmmaker onto his protagonist. But I kind of like that. I think that they're actually. That audacity used to annoy me and now I think it's actually quite appropriate. So if he's like, I am Odysseus, I am Oppenheimer, I am Batman. He kind of is.
- [39:31]
Wesley Morris
Yeah.
- [39:32]
Sean Fennessey
No, you know, is it self serious? Maybe a little bit?
- [39:35]
Wesley Morris
I think it is self serious. I mean, I don't know. I think that. I think we agree. I mean, I really appreciate him As a classicist. Right. I, like. You used the word. What did you. You bought Oppenheimer. You bought him in that movie in a way that you hadn't previously. And I think for me, it was Dunkirk. Dunkirk was the movie where I was like, well, okay, this is. This is the most honest thing. This is the first honest thing you said all day. Like, you have the whole time just been wanting to make your grandfather's movie. And I think that what I appreciated about it was that it was so clear about what it was, and it wasn't beholden to anything other than the genre to which it belongs, which is the combat movie, the war movie. But what would a Christopher Nolan war movie look like? It's completely airborne. The disorientation that you experience with that movie with respect to time. I didn't know where I was, like, midway through, and I loved that. I'm saying that it feels to me like he had to actually do, like, a really old genre movie to figure out his own rules. Like, what are my. What are my rules? How do I mess with time? How do I make editing disorient but also involve and. And absorb? Like, I was much more involved in what was happening here because I thought I understood it, but it turned out I didn't because I was watching his adaptation of a historical event that had his signature on it. And so it made his own ticks and. And ideas come to life in a way that I found exhilarating. In a way that I found. You know, it's different from the way I found them. Ridiculous in a movie like Interstellar, I
- [41:49]
Sean Fennessey
can't disagree with you. I think a lot of people saw Dunkirk as the elevation. The movie has always felt a touch gimmicky to me with the shifting timelines.
- [41:59]
Wesley Morris
Fine, fine.
- [42:00]
Sean Fennessey
Just a touch. I like the movie. I think it's extraordinarily executed.
- [42:07]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [42:08]
Sean Fennessey
There are visuals in it, and there are callbacks even to that film. In this film, where the men who are in the Trojan horse.
- [42:15]
Wesley Morris
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [42:17]
Sean Fennessey
Sitting in the water and fearful. Or this. Look just like the young men that are waiting in the boat fearful of drowning in Dunkirk. You know, there are these kind of recurring motifs and images through all of his movies, and Dunkirk is a very mature movie. I've always said that Inception is a very immature movie. Inception's like a dorm room movie to me. You know, it's like, really?
- [42:37]
Wesley Morris
That's a great way to put. That's a great way to put it.
- [42:39]
Sean Fennessey
It's a really cool idea. It's fun to Talk about. There's stunning set pieces, but there's not really any psychology to it. The people don't seem like real people in the movie. It's an adventure movie, which not every movie needs to have this deep and abiding psychology. But it's become clear over the last seven years that Nolan is really interested in this. I mean, look, humanity, you know, you've
- [43:03]
Wesley Morris
got Leonardo DiCaprio chasing Marion Cotiar through time and Elliot Page is chasing the two of them. There is some real kink here that that movie is never willing to unpack because it would blow a hole in his whole project. Right. And the thing that's so crazy to me about Oppenheimer is it's the one time he indulges that impulse, which is to like marry the carnal to these, you know, questions of saving and destroying worlds. And one of the sort of incendiary incidents in the film, in the world of the film, is this sexual encounter that he has with this fellow physicist that's.
- [43:55]
Sean Fennessey
It's interesting that the most carnal maybe he'll ever get is not calypso and Odysseus screwing on the beach rail.
- [44:01]
Wesley Morris
Missed opportunity, Mr. Nolan.
- [44:03]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, I think Oppenheimer, with all of its nudity and shiva sex scenes and all of those things, they do feel like him putting on his big boy pants, for lack of a better phrase. I'm gonna make a movie for grownups.
- [44:17]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. Yeah, and that's definitely true. And I also think that he's not my director, but I loved not liking Oppenheimer. I loved being in our room like a packed theater where people were riveted by a three hour movie about a nuclear physicist. You know, like, it's just, I don't know, like even, you know, watching the Odyssey, I was still impressed by how wrapped that room was by a movie. That to me still feels a little difficult. He's trusting us more than most directors do, and most, I mean, we'll just say most movies do, to follow where he is trying to take us. And I think that that is a really surprising truth about his work, given this fact, which is that, you know, I mean, the movies make a lot of money. And I just wonder, I'm curious about where you think, what, how you would describe or enumerate his commercial instincts here.
- [45:25]
Sean Fennessey
Well, it's impossible to make sense of it now because now he's Taylor Swift right now it doesn't really matter what he does that everybody's going to show up.
- [45:35]
Wesley Morris
Right. But just to distill them to qualities Though, what is he good at getting us to keep coming to see?
- [45:43]
Sean Fennessey
Well, I think the reason he's the filmmaker of the century is because this is a time of increasingly fractured attentions across all forms of art and distraction, and it demands grandeur and big tent filmmaking to get people's attention. And there's not a person who's better at the $200 million movie. And the thing that has aided him, I think, significantly, is that his rise has coincided with the rise of the $200 million movie. Movies did not used to be this big and expensive. And the globalization of Hollywood and the desire to make as much money from overseas as possible has led to a very specific kind of movie that gets made where it's a three act adventure action film. Sometimes it'll be funny, like an MCU movie. Sometimes it'll be more serious, like a Jurassic park movie. Tonally, it can shift, but they all kind of have looked the same over the last 20 years. He's one of the only filmmakers who works at this scale with sophistication.
- [46:43]
Wesley Morris
Okay, well, this is a great time to just tell you who the top 10 highest grossing film directors are, because that is a beautiful description of what makes him unique among many of them. So here we go. You probably know who the top two are. You probably. You might even know who all 10 of these people are.
- [47:00]
Sean Fennessey
Is it Jim Cameron. Steven Spielberg.
- [47:02]
Wesley Morris
That's one.
- [47:03]
Sean Fennessey
And two. Peter Jackson.
- [47:04]
Wesley Morris
Peter Jackson's number four.
- [47:06]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, keep going. Hit me with the rest.
- [47:07]
Wesley Morris
Number 10, J.J. abrams. Number nine, Tim Burton. Number eight, Ridley Scott. Number seven, Christopher Nolan. But after this movie is done its cycle, he will almost certainly be at number three, where Anthony and Joe Russo are. Number five is Michael Bay. Number six is David Yates. That's our list.
- [47:24]
Sean Fennessey
Fascinating.
- [47:25]
Wesley Morris
Really fascinating.
- [47:26]
Sean Fennessey
And a couple of steady hands. A couple of visionaries.
- [47:29]
Wesley Morris
The steady hands being people like J.J. abrams.
- [47:33]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. And David Yates. David Yates, Yeah, yeah. People who came in on franchises. The Russos did a really good job with them. The Russos. Then you've got Cameron and Spielberg, who are absolute visionaries. You've got Peter Jackson, who I think is a wonderful synthesist. Synthesizer, I should say. And you've got Michael Bay, who's kind of the twisted cousin of Cameron and Spielberg, right?
- [47:59]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [48:00]
Sean Fennessey
The kind of, in some people's eyes, the evil descendant. But I think actually Michael Bay and Christopher Nolan have a tremendous amount in common. I mean, I've been a defender of Michael Bay quite a bit over the years, and I've studied his work pretty. But I profiled him in 2010. I spent time with him. I'm fascinated by him and I don't condone whatever angry behavior he was doing on set. And I don't think. I think half of his movies are not good.
- [48:25]
Wesley Morris
So this is the director of Armageddon, the Transformers movies, to just pick the rock.
- [48:31]
Sean Fennessey
Bad Boy. Both bad. The first two Bad Boys films. You know, he's kind of a sullied name right now, but he was one of the most significant filmmakers and probably the most significant action filmmaker in the world from 2000 to 2010. And for the piece that I wrote about him, I talked to Steven Spielberg and James Cameron and they both were like, there's no one who can do it like Michael Bay. And in that very tight brotherhood of train set directors, he was considered the most capable of doing something you'd never seen before.
- [49:08]
Wesley Morris
Oh, yeah. In terms of set pieces, yes. Yeah, for sure.
- [49:12]
Sean Fennessey
And Christopher Nolan is the inheritor of that mantle right now. He is the person who has that title and so he is a part of that lineage of director. You know, Ridley Scott is one of those directors. John Frankenheimer was one of those directors. There have been a lot of directors over the years who get to do that job. And Nolan has that and has best picture, best director, best yada, yada yada. And that to me, it's only Spielberg who has that. He's the only person who is the absolute center of the commercial moviegoing experience and also widely considered at the top of the art form.
- [49:49]
Wesley Morris
Yes, yeah. But I don't know. The next 20 years of Nolan are going to be really interesting for what he can do. And if he had a monkey on his back, when did. When did he slough it off? Was it Oppenheimer? Was it getting it? I mean, was he one of those people who really needed to get that best director Oscar? And now he feels free to just do whatever he wants to the extent that he felt that he couldn't do that before?
- [50:21]
Sean Fennessey
I don't know, but maybe so. But I just feel like he's on a collision course with another Best Picture Oscar right now.
- [50:28]
Wesley Morris
Sure, sure, sure.
- [50:29]
Ad Council Announcer
I.
- [50:32]
Wesley Morris
If we're really talking about this, this being over right now in July, I think we got. You got to come back and we got to have another industry conversation.
- [50:44]
Sean Fennessey
Nolan's in that sweet spot. He's the right age. He's in his mid-50s. He is at the top of his game. This is gonna be one of the most well reviewed movies of the decade. I'm not sure if you've looked at any of the criticism around it, but I mean, I read Manola Dargis's piece last night and it's a full blown rave. So, you know, and I think that's gonna be down the line. I don't think there will be many dissenters. And so you've got huge critical acclaim, a movie that's likely to make a billion dollars coming off of a Best Picture win. He's at the center of the industry. I just think we're there was all this time spent being like, is he the next Hitchcock? Is he the next Spielberg? Is he the next? Is he the next? I participate in those conversations too. But now it's like he's Nolan there. There won't be a comp. There is. He's just him.
- [51:35]
Wesley Morris
He's just him. He's just him. That's for sure. Sean Fantasy, thanks for doing this.
- [51:47]
Sean Fennessey
Thanks for having me.
- [51:48]
Wesley Morris
We solved Christopher Nolan.
- [51:51]
Sean Fennessey
Somebody had to thank you.
- [52:12]
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- [53:11]
Ad Council Announcer
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- [54:06]
Wesley Morris
That's our show. By the way, we're gonna take a week off next week. We'll be back in August with more Cannonball. But this episode of Cannonball was produced by Janelle Anderson and John White. It was edited by Austin Mitchell, and this episode was engineered by Daniel Ramirez. It was recorded by Nick Pittman and Samantha Winter. It's got original music by Dan Powell and Diane Wong. Our theme music, as always, is by Justin Ellington. Bobby Doherty took the photo for our show. Art Our audience team is Katie o' Brien and Maria Abdulkoff. We'll be back once again the week after Next. Thanks for listening. Listening, everybody. Talk to you soon.
- [55:02]
Guest or Co-host (possibly Amanda Dobbins)
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