(Tl;dr is at the end too ⬇️)
Tl;Dr: I think if you don’t know anything about the odyssey beforehand and you like big dramatic action movies, and you don’t mind somewhat questionable dialogue at times, the movie’s probably fine, and you’ll enjoy it. I just really should have watched the trailer, and I have too many opinions about the odyssey already to enjoy it :(

I’ve been waiting for a chance for my schedule to be free to finally watch this movie, and I finally got the chance today! But I didn’t love it as much as I hoped I would. Just as a foreword, I don’t normally criticize movies, but this production of The Odyssey just left me feeling very disappointed. I think Nolan’s The Odyssey was disappointing to me because I really do love the story of the odyssey and just Greek mythology as a whole. I’ve read Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, and various parts of Robert Fitzgerald’s translation. I’ve also read a graphic novel version, and listened to two musical adaptations. All of these I’ve absolutely adored, whereas with Nolan’s version I just felt kind of disappointed afterwards. Which is not to say it was all bad—there were parts I did like, so I’ll break this up into two parts.  
**For your convenience I’ll break up my opinions into their own sections with headers, and I’ll make it so you don’t have to read all of them. I have a lot to say, and I’m sure you don’t want to read all of it.**

🟩What I liked🟩

▪️|| Cinematography ||▪️

To start, if there was anything to expect to be good out of a Christopher Nolan film, it’s definitely the cinematography. It was absolutely STUNNING. I’m not sure how it will hold up on a regular screen, but at the very least in the cinemas, it was so beautifully shot. The practical and special effects came together to create some amazing looking shots. I also liked that he used the lighting to his advantage.
I’ve found that a lot of new movies have too much darkness, and I can’t see anything happening on screen. Nolan makes sure that everything is still visible even in dark scenes, without taking away from the darkness. And during the couple of scenes where nothing is visible, it’s intentionally done to create tension.
For example when they’re in the Cyclopes’ cave, after Polyphemus shuts the entrance to his cave with a large rock, it drops Odysseus’ entire crew into darkness, and there’s tension in not knowing where he is. After this scene is over, and the tension of not knowing where Polyphemus is over, the audience can see into the dark again, and I appreciate that.

▪️|| The Costuming ||▪️

I’m actually kind of split on this one. For some of the costuming I really love it, and others, it just feels…off. However, this part here is for the stuff I like! I’ll complain about it in the complaining section :D
To be perfectly honest, I don’t really care about historical accuracy at all. So long as it doesn’t feel overly anachronistic, I think it’s fine. I actually really liked Agamemnons armour. I liked the way his headpiece looks like a spine. It also gives nice contrast as to how he looks all clean and polished whereas the others are a bit more beat up. I actually really liked all the variations in armour types between different armies.
I also liked Telemechus’ princely outfit near the end. Although that might just be because I thought he looked pretty in it. Penelope also looked pretty too.
I do really wish they gave Odysseus his Pilos hat though :(

🟥What I didn’t like🟥

▪️|| The lack of Gods (mainly Athena) ||▪️

I was excited to see the dynamic between Odysseus and Telemachus, and Athena. I didn’t realize she didn’t actually have a part in the movie past just like—sitting there? And looking pretty? Which I guess she’s just there for symbolism, and to represent the traumas of war, but I really do wish she had a bigger part.
To those who haven’t read the original poem, Athena and a few other gods all actually have pretty major roles throughout the story, and I was quite surprised to see them pretty much completely cut out of the story. Telemachus and Athena interact a ton throughout the poem. She’s the one to tell him to look for Odysseus. She told him where and how, and what to do. She assembled his crew for him. She gave his ship good winds to get there. She was just kinda there the whole time doing stuff for him, and keeping him safe. And I guess in the movie she’s there in spirit kind of?
I suppose it’s not necessarily a bad thing to remove her from the movie. It makes Telemachus look more capable, I suppose. I just really enjoyed Athena as a character when I read the odyssey.
She also helps Odysseus out a lot too. She bargains a lot with the other gods to try and keep him safe. Here’s a snippet from Wilson’s translation:

The gods sat down for council, with the great
Thunderlord Zeus. Athena was concerned
about Odysseus’ many troubles,
trapped by the nymph Calypso in her house.
“Father, and all immortal gods,” she said,
“No longer let a sceptered king be kind,
or gentle, or pay heed to right and wrong.
Let every king be cruel, his acts unjust! 10
Odysseus ruled gently, like a father,
but no one even thinks about him now.
The wretched man is stranded on an island;
Calypso forces him to stay with her.
He cannot make his way back to his country.
He has no ships, no oars, and no companions
to help him sail across the wide-backed sea.
His son has gone for news of his lost father,
in sandy Pylos and in splendid Sparta;
they plot to kill the boy when he returns!” 20
Smiling at her, Lord Zeus who heaps the clouds
replied, “Ah, daughter! What a thing to say!
Did you not plan all this yourself, so that
Odysseus could come and take revenge
upon those suitors? Now use all your skill:
ensure Telemachus comes safely home,
and that the suitors fail and sail away.”
Then turning to his son he said, “Dear Hermes,
you are my messenger. Go tell the goddess
our fixed intention: that Odysseus 30
must go back home—he has endured enough.

I don’t think that it’s made very clear in the movie that this is all Athena’s doing. Maybe it’s not supposed to be. I’m not sure. Either way, I miss her.

▪️|| Calypso + The Amnesia ||▪️

I don’t like what was done with Calypso’s character at all. I feel like Nolan took away her personality. She just got turned into the usual “tender nurturing woman” trope. The Calypso from the original poem has a whole speech pointing out double standards about how the male gods can take, and rape, and do whatever they like to any mortal woman, but when she—a goddess—does so, it’s suddenly a problem (god forbid women do anything 🙄). She has to be forced by Hermes (on behalf of the other gods) to finally let Odysseus go.
Meanwhile movie Calypso is just there drugging and doing therapy for Odysseus. Maybe it’s important, but I also don’t understand why she kept going like “REMEMBER YOUR PAST (and then eat the lotus again to forget) BUT REMEMBER (but please forget again) BUT REMEMBEEEERRRRR”. I know she’s written like that to get Odysseus to tell his story, but couldn’t that have happened with the Phaeacians like it happened in the poem? I don’t think it would have made the movie that much longer to just remove all the parts where he remembers/forgets with Calypso, and make it so he recounts it to the Phaeacians.
Another thing I didn’t enjoy was that Odysseus couldn’t remember his years on the island because of the lotus. First of all, why was the lotus even on Calypso’s island in the first place? That part happens way before Calypso, and it’s meant to be a temptation for his crew that he has to drag them away from. Also I feel like it completely takes away from the years of suffering that he’s supposed to endure. His time away from home is meant to be a punishment from Poseidon, but if he doesn’t remember any of it, and wants to stay, then how is that a punishment? In the movie he says that he is happy there and wants to stay, which is the complete opposite of the actual poem. I mean, I know he says afterwards once he starts remembering everything again that he wants to leave, but I still feel like it takes away from the story. Here’s some sections from Wilson’s translation of Odysseus’ time on the island:

But Hermes did not find Odysseus,
since he was sitting by the shore as usual,
sobbing in grief and pain; his heart was breaking.
In tears he stared across the fruitless sea.

Also:

[Calypso] found him on the shore. His eyes were always
tearful; he wept sweet life away, in longing
to go back home, since she no longer pleased him.
He had no choice. He spent his nights with her
inside her hollow cave, not wanting her
though she still wanted him. By day he sat
out on the rocky beach, in tears and grief,
staring in heartbreak at the fruitless sea.

In short, my boy is not having a good time at all, and I think the amnesia takes away from the suffering he’s supposed to endure.

▪️|| The Cyclops ||▪️

I am so incredibly sad that they didn’t include the “my name is nobody” bit. I went to see the movie with a friend, and beforehand I was jokingly referring to Odysseus as a nobody, which they didn’t get, because they hadn’t read it yet. I was like “you’ll see”(enthusiastic eyebrow wiggling on my part) and I was excitedly elbowing them during that part of the movie where Odysseus beats the Cyclops, and then it never happened! I was so sad, and my friend laughed at me, and I had to explain what was supposed to happen afterwards :(
On a non personal note, the scene is also supposed to show Odysseus’ smartness, and ability to trick people (and also his lying tendencies). In the poem Odysseus gets Polyphemus to drink the wine they brought, to get the cyclops really drunk. Then later, Odysseus lies to it and tells it that his name is “nobody”. The Cyclops doesn’t question it since it’s drunk, and so when they stab it in the eye to blind it, and it yells out for help to the other Cyclopes, it ends up telling them that “nobody is attacking me” and they all just shrug and leave him to his fate.
Later after leaving the cave, he yells back at Polyphemus telling him (from Wilson’s translation):

‘Cyclops! If any mortal asks you how
your eye was mutilated and made blind,
say that Odysseus, the city-sacker,
Laertes’ son, who lives in Ithaca,
destroyed your sight.’

(He really just doxxed himself didn’t he)
This moment also shows his hubris, and how by revealing his name he gets himself and his men cursed by Poseidon, leading to him taking so long to get home. So then this scene also adds to the guilt Odysseus has, because it’s a mistake that is entirely his own fault.
By having movie Polyphemus just be a big dumb brute, it doesn’t really show anything other than the fact that Odysseus can tell people to stab a giant in the eye. It doesn’t really show how Odysseus is a flawed person at all, and it also makes him kind of boring,
At least the Cyclopes looked cool? (No like actually he looked SO cool)

▪️|| Circe ||▪️

Movie Circe kind of just felt like a generic evil witch instead of the goddess that she is. Her hut is dark and dilapidated like she’s the baba-yaga or something, whereas in the poem she lives in a palace. She still has magic and everything, but she feels very flattened in a way that she wasn’t in the poem.
In terms of how she reacts to her guests, in the movie, when Circe first sees the soldiers, she is terrified and runs, whereas Circe in the poem does this:

They stood outside
and heard some lovely singing. It was Circe,
the goddess. She was weaving as she sang,
an intricate, enchanting piece of work,
the kind a goddess fashions. Then Polites,
my most devoted and most loyal man,
a leader to his peers, said, ‘Friends, inside
someone is weaving on that massive loom,
and singing so the floor resounds. Perhaps
a woman, or a goddess. Let us call her.’ 220
They shouted out to her. She came at once,
opened the shining doors, and asked them in. 230
So thinking nothing of it, in they went.

She lets them in, tricks them, and turns them into pigs. I appreciate the point that Nolan’s trying to make with how women are so often victims of assault in wartime, but I feel like she could have still had more power. I feel like if Nolan wanted to show the horrors of war more, he could have showed Odysseus’ men actually try something, and try to take advantage of Circe, but fail because she turns them into pigs. Or go the route of how Madeline Miller’s novel ‘Circe’ does it (slightly related—I LOVE Miller’s books, and highly recommend), and explain how she’s been assaulted before. She can explain to Odysseus how she’s dealt with people like him before, and she won’t make the same mistake twice. I feel like there could have also been something in there about her protecting her servants from what she fears the soldiers would do to them (servants who don’t exist in the movie, but do in the poem). I feel like that would both show the desperation of Odysseus’ crew, and have her lines about the pigs being their true form—and the humans their disguise—still work.
(All of this aside, the actress who played Circe still did a wonderful job. I’m not criticizing her, I’m criticizing the story.)

▪️|| The Costuming (again) ||▪️

While I did say in the other costume section that I really liked a lot of it, there’s also a lot that I didn’t like. One of those being the lack of colour in a lot of the armour. While the shapes of the armour were cool, I do wish there was more diversity in colour, like they would have actually had in the past. I’m not a stickler for historical accuracy, I just think that the mostly monochromatic armour felt a little bit boring.
Another small thing was the hunting armour when Telemachus is with Menelaus. Something about it just felt a bit too modern. It took me out of the scene because it honestly just looked like a bulletproof police vest.
Calypso’s outfit was another one that I didn’t enjoy. I can’t pinpoint exactly what I don’t like about it, but I think I was hoping for a bit more. Since she’s a goddess, I expected her to have a more godlike design rather than a random beach goer that got stuck in fishnet. Honestly my main complaints here is just that I was bored.
And finally, once again, GIVE ODYSSEUS HIS STUPID LITTLE HAT. I love his dumb little Pilos hat. It makes me happy :(

▪️|| The Casting ||▪️

I’m going to be so honest, this section is so nitpicky on my part. I’m just so tired of every single character being a famous person. It just breaks my immersion. Also I really wanted someone good-looking, with pretty hair to play Odysseus (Not that Matt’s ugly, but he’s not Mr. Handsome Odysseus). Mainly because of this bit here:

Athena made him look
bigger and sturdier, and made his hair 230
grow curling tendrils like a hyacinth.
As when Athena and Hephaestus teach
a knowledgeable craftsman every art,
and he pours gold on silver, making objects
more beautiful—just so Athena poured
attractiveness across his head and shoulders.
Then he went off and sat beside the sea;
his handsomeness was dazzling.

Athena gives him multiple magical glow-ups throughout the story (I just think it’s funny) and I think they should have at least cast someone with some nice curly hair to play Odysseus. Also preferably someone actually Greek or something. But I know that’s a big ask for Hollywood. I’m also just not really a big fan of Matt Damon. He hasn’t done anything, I just find him annoying. I am glad they didn’t cast Gerard Butler though. I was worried before I checked the cast.
I also like drawing fanart, and I was disappointed that no one really looked interesting enough to draw. I think I might post here later how I pictured some of the characters vs. what they looked like in the movie.

▪️|| The Dialogue ||▪️

There wasn’t any specific part that was wrong with it—just generally everything felt a bit forced? I’m not sure how else to describe it. The dialogue just didn’t feel natural at times, like a thirteen year old writing their first fan-fiction. Some of the lines gave me some serious secondhand embarrassment. My face was red in the theatre… Idk. But I do get secondhand embarrassment really easily, so it’s probably not as bad as I’m making it sound. But It was enough to make me not really enjoy it.

🟦In conclusion 🟦

After writing all that, I think I was the problem in not enjoying it. I had too many expectations of it actually following, and being true to the story. It’s a Hollywood movie, it was bound to take creative decisions I didn’t like. Overall, it was beautifully shot, the cinematography was absolutely stunning, and I’ll probably end up watching it again at some point once it’s free—just…muted, I guess.

Tl;Dr: I think if you don’t know anything about the odyssey beforehand and you like big dramatic action movies, and you don’t mind somewhat questionable dialogue at times, the movie’s probably fine, and you’ll enjoy it. I just really should have watched the trailer, and I have too many opinions about the odyssey already to enjoy it :(