Movies

With The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan Earns His Place as Hollywood's Great Liberal Humanist 

It's not woke. It's a rousing analog epic about cracks in the liberal order. 

Peter Suderman | 7.17.2026 9:45 AM

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(Universal Pictures)

For two and a half decades, Christopher Nolan has been Hollywood's great liberal humanist, a defender of the secular, human ideal, and a mournful viewer of man's tragic nature—and society's. His Batman trilogy began with his hero defeating the threat of martial authoritarianism, moved on to a story about the destruction wrought by nihilistic chaos-mongers, and closed with a warning about the appeal of strongman populism. His Interstellar warned of decline through stagnation, as humanity forgot how to be bold in progress. His Tenet and Oppenheimer foretold man's capacity for self-annihilation. We've been living in Nolan's world. 

His latest, an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey, takes us even deeper into that world, via an ancient epic poem. Those familiar with the Greek epic will recognize much of what's on screen, and Nolan has done justice, at least visually, to many of its most iconic moments, from the whirlpool to the encounter with the cyclops to the Trojan horse attack that left the story's hero stranded and separated for years before his return........

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