The Odyssey trailer: Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon’s Homeric epic releases first clips

You can already tell the dads and the film bros are going to love The Odyssey.

Of course, they’ll follow Christopher Nolan wherever he’ll lead them, especially if that’s Ancient Greece. It’s not quite Ancient Rome, but you know, adjacent. But still, all that Homeric gravity, sad Matt Damon and those broomstick helmets, it’s a dream combination!

Not to make too light of what looks to be a weighty epic born out of grand cinematic ambition, there’s definitely something to be said about the fealty Nolan inspires among certain demographics, for the next story in the British filmmaker’s oeuvre of things that men do.

The Odyssey has released its first trailer online, just over six months out from its release.

It’s just glimpses so far, quick moments of familiar moments from the tale of Odysseus, the King of Ithaca who spends 10 years trying to return home from the Trojan War. There are flashes of that home, with Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland playing his wife and son, Penelope and Telemachus.

We hear in voiceover from Damon, “After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home, not even home”.

Except that many obstacles end up doing exactly that as Odysseus is constantly forced off course, running into challenges and foes.

The trailer suggests huge chunks of the film will take place on the water, and a lot of production took place on open water, a notoriously difficult environment to shoot in. Things are going to get very wet.

Filming locations included Morocco, Scotland, Greece, Italy, Iceland and Los Angeles, and took three months.

The film also features Zendaya as Athena, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Mia Goth as Melantho, John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Himesh Patel and Samantha Morton.

A six-minute prologue sequence from the film is currently screening in Australia before select sessions of Avatar: Fire and Ash, which has not yet been released online.

Nolan said in an interview with Empire that The Odyssey has been hugely influential in storytelling traditions over the past two and half millennia, including in his own filmmaking.

“I remember seeing a school play of Ulysses when I was five or six years old. The older kids were doing it. I remember the sirens and him being strapped to the mast and things like that,” he said.

“But that’s barely a conscious memory. I think it’s in all of us, really. And when you start to break down the text and adapt it, you find that all of these other films – and all the films I’ve worked on – you know, they’re all from The Odyssey.

“(Wife and producer) Emma (Thomas) said it best when we first announced the project: it’s foundational.”

Nolan had previously come close to telling a part of this story on screen. Twenty years ago, he had been hired to direct the Brad Pitt and Eric Bana movie Troy, but it was wrested back by Wolfgang Petersen, who had developed it, when another project fell through.

Nolan’s most recent release, Oppenheimer, grossed almost $US1 billion at the box office and won seven Oscars including best picture.

His other works include the Batman trilogy with Christian Bale, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Inception and The Prestige.

The Odyssey is in cinemas on July 16