Matt Damon is no stranger to big-screen spectacle. With the Jason Bourne movies, he helped reinvent the spy movie so thoroughly, it left James Bond running to keep up; he made complex heists look like easy money in the Ocean’s trilogy; he single-handedly escaped Mars (with his own ‘fertiliser’) in The Martian. The guy was literally Private Ryan, of Saving fame. So, when he says that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a total cinematic blockbuster – meticulous craft in service of eye-popping popcorn-ready thrills – you believe him. And that’s precisely what he says. As he tells Empire, in our world-exclusive The Odyssey issue, Nolan’s latest is “exactly what you want of a summer movie.” Given everything the legendary director has at his disposal? “It should be the most massively entertaining film. It should feel mythic.”
Nolan’s Oppenheimer follow-up casts Damon as Odysseus, in a grand-scale retelling of Homer’s epic poem – charting his decade-long journey home after the Trojan war. “I can say, without hyperbole, that it was the best experience of my career,” the actor enthuses. It was a massive production, spanning vast swathes of the globe, open oceans, thousands of extras, and gigantic props. Including an actual Trojan horse. “I saw the horse on the beach and I was just like, ‘Fuck,’” Damon says. “It was just so cool.” Through it all, on his third Christopher Nolan movie (after Interstellar and Oppenheimer), he helped lead the way on a process that was part thorough planning, part going wherever the movie took them. “We were shooting that [Trojan horse] stuff next week, so I go, ‘How are you going to do it?’ And [Nolan] goes, ‘I don’t know. We’ll just get in there and figure it out.’”
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Of course, in the screenplay – penned by Nolan himself – it was abundantly clear what feats would belie Odysseus, and therefore Damon himself. “If you’re going to have an existential crisis as you pass the Sirens and you’re lashed to a mast, it’s there,” he says. “If it says you’re running for your life from a Cyclops, you’re going to run for your life. Chris doesn’t hide the ball.” That ball is rapidly approaching; prepare for Christopher Nolan’s biggest ever swing.
Stay tuned to empireonline.com for more The Odyssey exclusives, coming soon.