Christopher Nolan has spent his career worrying at time, memory, guilt, and the limits of human perception. With The Odyssey, he has chosen the story that first gathered many of those anxieties into one long voyage home.
Matt Damon plays Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, returning from the Trojan War through seas crowded with gods, monsters, temptations, and graves. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, whose waiting has its own terrible duration. Tom Holland appears as Telemachus, their son, raised beneath the shadow of an absent father. Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, and Samantha Morton complete Nolan’s immense ensemble.
The early response suggests that Nolan has found a natural home inside Homer’s world. Critics have praised the film’s physical scale, formal ambition, and surprising emotional clarity. Here is how The Odyssey currently scores across Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Metacritic, Letterboxd, and other major platforms.
Current The Odyssey Ratings at a Glance
| Rating Source | Score |
| Rotten Tomatoes Critics | 96% |
| Rotten Tomatoes Users | Not yet available |
| IMDb | Not yet available |
| Metacritic Critics | 89/100 |
| Letterboxd | Not yet available |
The Odyssey Average Rating Across Major Review Sites
Rotten Tomatoes lists 214 critic reviews, though its verified Popcornmeter has not produced an audience score. IMDb has yet to publish an aggregate rating. Metacritic also lacks a user score. All that’s rolled in so far are the critic reviews, which are stellar.
Letterboxd members have begun logging and reviewing the film. However, the platform has not displayed a stable public average.
What the Ratings Say About The Odyssey
The first reviews place The Odyssey among the most acclaimed films Nolan has made. Its 96% Tomatometer currently leads his filmography. The Dark Knight and Memento follow at 94%, while Oppenheimer stands at 93%.
The consensus has formed around the film’s scale and control. Critics have praised Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography, Ludwig Göransson’s score, and Nolan’s commitment to physical production.
The ships, shorelines, battles, and creatures possess weight. They look built, weathered, and occupied. Nolan’s spectacle has often depended upon the audience sensing the machinery beneath the illusion. Here, that instinct suits a story shaped by wood, water, blood, and divine cruelty.
Damon has also received strong notices for his Odysseus. The role asks for intelligence, vanity, endurance, and a deepening exhaustion. His hero survives through cunning, though every escape carries him farther from the man who left Ithaca.
Several critics have singled out Samantha Morton’s Circe. Her appearance reportedly carries the concentrated terror of a myth remembered from childhood. Tom Holland has also earned praise for giving Telemachus uncertainty without reducing him to innocence.
The Metacritic score deserves equal attention. The Odyssey holds an 89 from 57 reviews, which the site classifies as “Universal Acclaim.” Fifty-three reviews are positive, four are mixed, and none are negative.
An 89 represents extraordinary critical agreement. The score sits one point below Oppenheimer, which received a 90, and five below Dunkirk, Nolan’s Metacritic high at 94.
Those comparisons place The Odyssey in severe company. They also show how completely critics have accepted Nolan’s movement from modern history into ancient myth.
Audience scores will sharpen the picture after the film opens nationwide. For now, the reviews have amplified a release that already feels culturally unavoidable. Nolan’s return, Homer’s story, and the enormous cast have made The Odyssey one of the year’s defining movie events. The 96% Tomatometer and 89 Metascore, most gloriously, give that anticipation the critical response to match the ballyhoo.
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