'Full of magic and humanity': Five things you need to know about The Odyssey

As Christopher Nolan's epic blockbuster starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland arrives in cinemas – here are the key takeaways from the film.

One thing I'd never considered before seeing The Odyssey: it was quite foul-smelling inside that Trojan horse. No detail is too small and no action too big for Christopher Nolan's film, epic in its scope and ambition. 

You may think of Homer's centuries-old poem as the cornerstone of Western literature or as a dreaded school assignment. Possibly both. But Nolan's extravagant adaptation is decidedly more an action-adventure blockbuster than a classics lesson. 

It is also the purest Christopher Nolan. Odysseus fits in his line of morally complex heroes, from the justice-seeking vigilante Batman to Oppenheimer, the conscience-stricken father of the atomic bomb.  

And Homer's digressions suit Nolan's taste for lucid, non-linear narratives. The Odyssey gracefully loops back and forth in time as it tells of Odysseus's nearly decade-long journey back to his kingdom of Ithaca after winning the Trojan War.

The build-up to the film has felt as long as Odysseus's journey itself – remember when tickets went on sale a year ago? – but we can now finally see what Nolan has done. Here are the notable takeaways from his spectacular, thoughtful drama. 

1. A 'mesmerising' hero

Whoever Damon plays, you can always see that his characters are thinking, and he is at his action-fuelled, reflective, Jason-Bourne-best here as Odysseus, a mortal who interacts with gods and monsters and sometimes acts like a god himself. 

A warrior who doesn't hesitate to plunge a sword into an enemy, he eventually grapples with the consequences of the godlike choices that determine the fate of the men he commands. He isn't above lying. And on a journey that literally takes him to hell and back, in the underworld of Hades the prophet Tiresias tells him to choose between sailing toward the whirlpool Charybdis, where all his men will die, or the monster Scylla, who will only kill six. He secretly chooses for them. Damon carries the action and the moral weight of the film and is mesmerising through all its turns. 

2. 'Massive' action scenes

In one explosive set piece after another, Nolan uses his IMAX cameras to reflect the scale of Odysseus's journey and also how powerless mortals are next to the gods. Much of the film takes place on a........

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