Tom Cruise Just Gave Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ the Ultimate Seal of Approval
Christopher Nolan has spent his entire career building anticipation for big screen spectacle, and ‘The Odyssey’ might be his most ambitious swing yet. The film is the first in history to be shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film cameras, meaning it was built from the ground up to look massive on the largest screens available. That kind of technical achievement has made the movie one of the most talked about theatrical events of the summer.
The cast backs up that scale. ‘The Odyssey’ adapts Homer’s epic with Matt Damon as the Greek king Odysseus, alongside Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope and Tom Holland as his son Telemachus, with Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal, Elliot Page, Travis Scott and Charlize Theron rounding out the ensemble. Early reactions have been staggering, with the film reportedly holding a critics’ score that would place it ahead of both ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ in Nolan’s own filmography.
That reception is exactly why Tom Cruise’s reaction landed so hard this week. Cruise posted a photo of himself outside an IMAX 70mm display for ‘The Odyssey,’ holding up his ticket, and wrote a message aimed directly at Nolan and his longtime producing partner. “Wow! To Chris, Emma, and ALL of your brilliant cast and crew. Thank you for an amazing night in a movie theater. I can’t wait to see it again!”
The gesture carries extra weight given who is delivering it. Cruise shared the photo on X while standing in front of the movie theater display, addressing both the filmmaker and Emma Thomas, Nolan’s wife and longtime producing partner, directly in his caption. Coming from someone who built his own brand around theatrical spectacle, the endorsement functions almost like a passing of the torch between two of Hollywood’s most vocal defenders of the big screen.
This is not new territory for Cruise. He previously watched and praised Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he has a broader history of championing other filmmakers’ work, having publicly supported movies like ‘Sinners,’ ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,’ ‘Twisters,’ ‘F1: The Movie,’ ‘The Running Man,’ and ‘Disclosure Day.’ Cruise’s advocacy has become something of a recurring event in itself, one that fans and industry watchers now track alongside the films themselves.
Critics appear to agree with him. Film critic William Bibbiani argued the movie plays less like a traditional sword and sandal epic and more like a mournful horror story on an unprecedented scale, and he went as far as calling it Nolan’s best work yet in his review for TheWrap. That kind of praise, paired with Cruise’s public endorsement, has only intensified the buzz heading into release weekend.
The film is tracking to open between eighty five and ninety five million dollars domestically, which would surpass the eighty two point seven million dollar opening that Nolan’s Best Picture winning ‘Oppenheimer’ pulled in back in July of 2023. For a three hour literary epic built around one of the oldest stories ever told, that kind of number would be a remarkable outcome.
Between the technical achievement, the star studded cast, and now Tom Cruise personally vouching for the experience, ‘The Odyssey’ is shaping up to be the theatrical event of the year. Did Cruise’s endorsement move the needle for you, or were you already lining up for Nolan’s take on Homer regardless?
