HistoryFlights #14: Christopher Nolan’s American Odyssey
Hello and welcome to HistoryFlights, your monthly-ish tour of contemporary, historical and fictional politics through video games by me, DC Shepard. Today, while playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 to trace the legendary journey of Odysseus and fly over Ithaca, the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Discovery Tour to explore locations across Greece from Ithaca to Mycenae and Pylos, and Troy a Total War Saga to show Bronze Age battles in action, I’ll be reviewing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with more than 163 clips and photos, all compiled into a 100% human-written script!
I first started writing this script on July 22nd, 2026, only a few hours after seeing this three-hour cyclops at my local Alamo Drafthouse. Then it took me another couple weeks to find time to go see the IMAX version in the fourth row with friends on August 3rd. Then I also read a translation of The Odyssey from 1900 by Samuel Butler, who argued that Homer may have been a WOMAN, as well as Nolan’s screenplay and 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed.
With all this in mind, I’m reviewing Nolan’s Odyssey as a contemporary American interpretation of a two and a half millennia PLUS year old myth that would’ve been ancient and heavily retold even to “Homer” (keep those air quotes in mind); how it personally resonated with me; and most crucially as a product of a collapsing world heavily reliant on trade, with parallels between the Bronze Age and today. I’m moving beyond the trope of the “Sea Peoples" to examine the fragile economies of Mycenean Greece, the wide-ranging climate change, and stressed trade routes that have eerie parallels to our own Age of Silicon. Hence why I split it into two acts; ACT I: THEIRS WAS AN AGE OF BRONZE… & ACT II: …AND OURS IS AN AGE OF SILICON.
It may seem off-topic but I also weave real-life visa struggles and a heated online feud with a deranged cultist who constantly harasses me and wants me to die and his creepy and incurious lackey from Thailand into the essay to illustrate the pain of distance (nostos) and the reality of modern "rhetorical marooning,” as well as the dangers of political and religious authoritarianism. I hope that also bringing in queer theory, the real history and archaeology of the area, analyzing what “historical accuracy” even means in online debates, and examining other adaptations of The Odyssey among other things academically grounds my analysis and helps you understand the movie far more deeply than whether it’s “good” or “bad” (personally, it’s my favorite movie so far this year!) or whether you agree with Nolan’s every choice, as well as provides a jumping-off point for your own research! That’s what an odyssey should be about- a meandering journey, yes, but one that ultimately helps you gain understanding.