Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” was an epic undertaking for all involved. The cast and crew embarked on a globe-trotting mission to bring the story of Odysseus’ homecoming to life in the most realistic way possible.
Here’s a look at “The Odyssey,” in theaters Friday, by the numbers.
It’s shorter than “Oppenheimer” (180 minutes), which was at least partially because IMAX film projectors can’t handle more than three hours. “It’s an epic film, as the subject matter demands,” Nolan told The Associated Press. “But it is shorter.” In case you don’t want to do the math, that’s 2 hours, 52 minutes.
The shoot happened across six months though it was scheduled for 100 days. The efficient production finished nine days early.
“I found that after 100 days, it’s very diminishing returns. It’s very tough to keep getting new material because everyone’s so exhausted,” Nolan said. “We finished a little early because a lot of things broke our way in terms of weather or getting the conditions we needed or wanted to make particular shots. And at the end of that 91 days, I certainly couldn’t have done another 9 days, so I think the shoot took the length of time that it needed to take.”
“The Odyssey” filmed in Greece, Italy, Morocco, Iceland, Scotland and the United States.
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“For me, being on a real location, shooting certain things like when the crew is out setting sail on that boat, or going through a storm, I want it to feel almost like a documentary,” Nolan said. “I want to just put the audience there, like they’re really there.”
Hathaway appeared in “The Dark Knight Rises,” Damon in “Oppenheimer” and both were in “Interstellar.”
According to the production, that’s longer than the distance from Toronto to New York.
“By shooting on IMAX 70mm film, you’re really letting the screen disappear,” Nolan said. “You’re getting a feeling of 3D without the glasses. You’ve got a huge screen and you’re filling the peripheral vision of the audience. You’re immersing them in the world of the film.”
Instead of being a hindrance, though, it kept everyone hyper-focused.
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“That’s an expensive camera. You got two and a half minutes with each roll of film, so you gotta get it in and keep it moving,” said Lupita Nyong’o. “There’s a different vibration on a Chris Nolan set. Everyone is present, everyone is ready, alert, and doing their bit to keep the train on the tracks.”
The camera, plus the noise-reducing muffler they dubbed “the blimp” that encased it, weighs approximately 300 pounds.
Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick oversaw a team of 175 artisans in Los Angeles and a crew of over 500 around the world who helped bring the costumes to life.
Aulos and the lyre provided the bedrock of the score, but Göransson also used bronze gongs to develop a unique soundscape for the film.
“I really loved the idea of approaching the music from the point of view that’s more the materiality of that world,” Nolan said. “My point to him was I’m trying to do this kind of earthy accessible kind of grounded version of the story … we should probably have the same discipline for the music and just try and create something from a different set of sounds.”
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“That was fairly early on in the shoot, and it really brought home to me what we were trying to achieve with this movie,” said actor Himesh Patel. “We were shooting the scene where we all rush in and we’re all just storming the whole city. It’s all going crazy. It is fire light. There’s people screaming. There are people being killed. And the amount of actors and extras is kind of unfathomable. And then Hoyte (van Hoytema), the DP, turned to Matt (Damon) and went, ‘this is a flashback.’…the scale of it suddenly came home to us all that this is just the beginning.”
That’s about the height of a telephone pole. Production has not said exactly how many Trojan Horses there were, but there were more than one.
Much of the cast and crew, including Nolan and Emma Thomas, hiked up a rugged hill to Castello di Santa Caterina every day. This is a moderately challenging hike that requires a good level of fitness.
“I hiked one day. I was like ‘I’m not doing this again,’” Leguizamo said. “I mean, 40 minutes climbing up that 900-foot cliff and then you got to act for 12 hours? No, I took the helicopter.”
About 1/3 the length of a standard soccer field, this full-scale reconstruction of a Viking longship played Odysseus’ ship in the film. The working, wooden ship has 25 pairs of oars.
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“All of the actors had to learn how to row,” Damon said. “We went to a rowing camp. We had to really move this hundred-ton ship. That’s not a standard acting job, right? You’re playing a role, but you’re also really serving a real purpose on the ship and moving it around.”
The floor to ceiling height is about two letters of the Hollywood sign, stacked atop one another, high. The design of the Cyclops was something that Nolan and production designer Ruth De Jong started on very early in production, inspired partially by Goya’s painting “Saturn Devouring His Son.”
“That was a sort of touchstone for the mood, the sort of horror of it that we wanted to achieve,” Nolan said. “And Ruth came up with a very brilliant idea fairly early on of rotating the eye, having the eye vertical in the face and that just clicked together for me.”
Nolan studied many translations and adaptations to write his screenplay.
Hathaway (“Les Misérables”), Charlize Theron (“Monster”) and Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”) all won for acting. Damon won for screenplay (“Good Will Hunting”).
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Nolan’s favorite exhibition format is also the rarest, and some of the most popular locations in New York and Los Angeles are virtually sold out for weeks.
“The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled,” Nolan said.
According to analytics company EntTelligence, the current average “premium” movie ticket price is $18.22. In 2022, it was $15.85.
But it’s not Nolan’s most expensive film; “The Dark Knight Rises” is. As far as modern production budgets go, this is in the range of a big blockbuster (the live-action “Moana” had the same), though sometimes they balloon. “Jurassic: World Dominion,” released in 2022, is considered one of the most expensive films ever made with a production budget of $531 million, which accounts for tax rebates and incentives.
It’s also going for $115 on eBay.
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For more coverage of “The Odyssey” visit: https://apnews.com/hub/movies
