‘The Odyssey’ Just Delivered A Rotten Tomatoes Gut Punch To ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ Trilogy
Christopher Nolan has spent the better part of two decades building a reputation as one of the most trusted names in blockbuster filmmaking, and his latest swing might be his biggest yet. Known for turning dense, ambitious material into must see theatrical events, Nolan set his sights on Homer’s epic poem for his follow up to ‘Oppenheimer,’ and the anticipation leading into release has been almost unmanageable for fans of prestige cinema.
‘The Odyssey’ arrived in theaters with a cast most directors would kill for, including Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and Tom Holland as Telemachus, alongside Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong’o rounding out the ensemble. The film follows Odysseus on his decade long journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, while Penelope fends off a legion of suitors and Athena watches over his perilous path. The project was not without controversy either, with early casting reveals sparking online debate over representation and creative liberties taken with the source material.
That backlash appears to have done little to slow the film’s critical momentum. According to a post from X account Pirat_Nation, ‘The Odyssey’ has officially overtaken ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ on Rotten Tomatoes, with the Nolan epic edging out the beloved Peter Jackson finale on both the Tomatometer and the audience driven Popcornmeter. The claim lines up with what critics have been reporting all week, as Rotten Tomatoes tallied 140 reviews for ‘The Odyssey’ with a striking 99 percent of them positive, a number that continued climbing as more reviews rolled in.
That kind of reception would already be a career best for Nolan, whose previous high water mark on the Tomatometer belonged to ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Memento’ at 94 percent each. On the audience side, the numbers are just as staggering. With over 1,000 verified ratings counted, ‘The Odyssey’ broke Nolan’s own Popcornmeter record of 97 percent, carrying an average rating of 4.80 out of 5 stars.
The love from fans and critics alike has translated directly into ticket sales. The film pulled in 51.2 million dollars on Friday alone from 3,900 North American screens, including Thursday previews, and earned an A CinemaScore from opening night audiences. That performance puts ‘The Odyssey’ on track to become the third highest domestic opening ever for an R-rated movie, trailing only the ‘Deadpool’ trilogy.
For a filmmaker whose last outing swept the Oscars, matching or beating the Tomatometer scores of a trilogy as beloved as ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is no small feat. The film also carries a hefty 250 million dollar production budget, and marks the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX cameras. Whether ‘The Odyssey’ can sustain this pace through awards season remains to be seen, but the early numbers suggest Nolan has once again turned a notoriously difficult adaptation into box office gold.
With ‘The Return of the King’ now technically bested on the Tomatometer, do you think ‘The Odyssey’ deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Peter Jackson’s Oscar sweeping trilogy, or is the comparison premature?
