Filming with an IMAX camera is not a piece of cake, as several filmmakers who used it on their films — from Christopher Nolan and his cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, to Ryan Coogler — have already pointed out. The latest is Matt Damon, who described his experience performing in front of these cameras as akin to having a "blender, like a Cuisinart in your face."
Since Nolan shot The Odyssey entirely on IMAX, a first in cinema history, the challenges were naturally doubled. “On this one, it was 100 percent on Imax,” said Damon in an interaction on the New Heights podcast. “It was the first movie that was ever done all on IMAX. IMAX cameras are really loud. It sounds like a blender, like a Cuisinart in your face when the camera’s close to you. So there’s never been these dialogue [scenes in IMAX]. We couldn’t have this conversation with a normal IMAX camera because you wouldn’t be able to hear us.”
The actor, who previously worked with Nolan on Interstellar and Oppenheimer, said the filmmaker devised a new technique to get actors to perform convincingly with IMAX cameras. “They built this giant thing around the IMAX for those dialogue scenes and a system of mirrors so your eyeline would be close to the camera and you could talk to the other actor. The amount of work that went into figuring out how to do [that], because he wanted to do 100 percent IMAX, and he did it!”
The first trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey dropped recently with much fanfare (obviously!). It goes without saying that the filmmaker has scaled up with every new film, and the jaw-dropping visuals of the trailer suggest that he may have made his biggest, most ambitious film yet. Social media is already buzzing with excitement about the amount of possible awesomeness that Nolan is going to deliver.
We get a succession of gorgeously composed images. We get ancient ships gliding across calm waters, their square sails silhouetted against fading skies. We get armored Greek mythological figures — Benny Safdie's costume looks incredibly cool; the Oppenheimer actor plays King Agamemnon — with ranks of soldiers behind them. We get a group of men rowing a wooden ship in unison in waters both turbulent and calm. We get men facing unseen otherworldly opponents (Nolan is finally tackling giant creatures!). We get a wide shot of a group of people straining to pull the Trojan Horse out of the water with thick ropes, and much, much more...
It goes without saying that watching it on anything less than a huge theatre screen would be ridiculous. Interestingly, for a film shot entirely on IMAX (making Nolan the first filmmaker to do so, yet), one gets the feeling that the film would look as splendid on a scope/Cinemascope/Anamorphic aspect ratio (2.39:1) screen as on any of the Flat/True IMAX/Full Container aspect ratios (1.85:1, 1.43:1, 1.90:1).
Perhaps Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema designed their shots to make them look great in either of these categories. On social media, some cineastes are leaning towards the view that the film would look good in either dimension, unlike some of Nolan's earlier films, which featured sequences that were cropped in the scope screens.
Anyway, we'll know for sure on July 17, 2026. Perhaps IMAX will be the ideal way to see it. Or perhaps both.
An adaptation of Homer's epic poem of the same name, The Odyssey features a stellar ensemble comprising Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, Rafi Gavron, Shiloh Fernandez, Mia Goth and others.
