The film "The Odyssey" is not just an epic adventure movie, but a deeply human story about hardship, family and the meaning of homecoming, according to Christopher Nolan, the director.
Based on Homer's ancient Greek epic poem, the Universal Pictures' epic action film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, and chronicles his long and perilous journey home following the Trojan War.
"The Odyssey" has become the highest-rated film of Nolan's career while also securing the third-largest opening box office take of the year in North America, behind only "Toy Story 5" and "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie."
In its opening weekend (July 17-19), the film dominated the North American box office with revenues of 124.5 million U.S. dollars.
In an interview with China Movie Channel, Nolan noted that while the film is set in a world of Greek mythology, audiences don't need any prior knowledge of the Classics to enjoy it.
"Actually, it's very exciting to come to the story completely fresh and just experience, because it is a great story and it's a really interesting world, and I think we try to present it in a way that's accessible and that you can just tap into without knowledge of Greek mythology, without knowledge of the Odyssey," he said.
Nolan elaborated on the themes of the film, noting that the concept of homecoming, or 'nostos' in Greek, is inseparable from finding oneself.
"I think the two things are the same. They're not mutually exclusive. I think that returning home is really about returning to yourself and finding yourself and where you belong and restoring things to how they should be. And so that idea of a very long journey, that idea of being taken away from your home for so long and then reunited with home in all the forms of what it means -- family, geographical place, time as well. It's really about that feeling of return where Odysseus has changed, but the place he's returning to, the idea of home has changed as well. And finally restoring that I think is a very satisfying sense of 'nostos', of homecoming," he said.
Nolan shared his experience of making the film, adding that he always wants to create a sense of wonder for audience.
"I think watching the film when it was completely finished, watching the film on IMAX for the first time and seeing the entire image and looking at where we represent the fall of Troy and realizing that that section of the film we did without visual effects and that we had thousands of extras and we had buildings on fire and this whole city kind of being destroyed, it was pretty nutty to look at that and realize that 'yeah, we had done all that.' Yeah, it was kind of crazy, but the film is just full of every day we were doing something outlandish and something that we had never seen before," he said.
"I don't know what to do in the future, but certainly I've always tried to use the big screen in that way to try and create a sense of wonder, to try and build a world that the audience can escape into," he added.
The director also said he is looking forward to seeing how Chinese audiences will receive the film.
"I think for China Movie Channel viewers, really what I want to get across is The Odyssey is the story of a man's struggle to get home after this massive conflict, and it's an adventure story. It embraces elements of mythology and fantasy, but it's also really about family. This is a very different film than I brought to China before, in that sense, but we're very excited to see what people think of it," he said.
"The Odyssey" a human story about hardship, family, meaning of homecoming: Nolan
