It seems unnecessary to describe the tale of the most delayed boat ride home ever as 'a bit long' but let's just say the real advantage of an IMAX screening might actually be the comfy seats. While I am by no means Christopher Nolan's biggest fan, however, a numb bum is probably my only real complaint about seeing The Odyssey.
Nolan turns the epic poem into a cleverly-structured, well acted and thoroughly entertaining 3 & a bit hours. The scale of the production is as epic as the verse, with Nolan aiming for realism and practical effects where possible (an incredible sequence during a storm at sea was filmed, for example, by simply sailing a ship into a storm and filming it) but makes good and subtle use of CGI where it is not. The world is vividly created and never feels like an idealised, Classics Illustrated evocation of the period.
Nolan doesn't include every element of the 24-volume epic, but most of the good stuff you know is in there. The Cyclops, Charybadis, Hades, gods and goddesses and their wrath. It all gets crammed in, but not at the expense of the human story. This is a film with something to say about duty, regret and the lies people tell themselves. It also has a relevance to contemporary politics that works well without feeling laboured.
Matt Damon is impressive as the cunning and perma-knackered Odysseus and Anne Hathaway is regal and emotive as his abandoned wife Penelope. Tom Holland is solid as their son Telemachus and Robert Pattinson continues his weird little guy era as the suitor and would-be usurper Antinous.
Excellent support all-round from the likes of Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Lupita Nyongo and John Leguizamo. Special mentions too for Samantha Morton, who is exceptional as the witch Circe and Zendaya, who plays the goddess Athena and is responsible for a scene that not only provides an emotional gut-punch but re-contextualises everything we have seen before.
Yes, it is almost the same role she played in Dune but any casting director worth their salt knows, if you want a beautiful yet mysterious woman to wear floaty, headdress-forward robes and offer cryptically sage advice against a sandy backdrop, you want to go with the best ever to do it.
See this on the biggest screen you can.