Key Takeaways
- Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is arriving in theaters in July 2026.
- This list focuses on films that share its mythic scale, homecoming themes, ancient warfare, or Homeric source material.
- Troy adapts The Iliad, the Greek epic that comes before The Odyssey in the Homeric tradition; O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a modern comic riff on The Odyssey itself.
Christopher Nolan's announcement of The Odyssey has reignited Hollywood's love for the sword-and-sandal epic. With the film reaching theaters in July 2026, it is a good moment to revisit the classics and cousins of the genre.
If you are looking for massive scale, ancient mythology, and brutal historical combat, here are five films worth revisiting first. Availability shifts between subscription, rental, and purchase depending on your country, so check current listings before planning a night around one.
Table of Contents
What Homer's Odyssey Actually Is
Most people remember the monsters and forget the shape of the story, which is worth knowing before any adaptation. The poem covers the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War, a journey that takes ten years on top of the ten years of the war itself.
Two things usually surprise first-time readers. First, it does not begin at the beginning: the story opens late, with Odysseus already stranded and his household under siege by suitors, and the famous adventures — the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis — are told in flashback by Odysseus himself, which makes the hero his own potentially unreliable narrator. Second, the back half is not a sea voyage at all. It is a domestic thriller in which a disguised man returns home, assesses who has stayed loyal, and takes a violent revenge.
The poem is also organized around two ideas that give the adaptations their spine: nostos, the homecoming, and xenia, the sacred obligation between host and guest. Nearly every disaster in the story follows from someone violating that second rule.
1. Troy (2004)
The Pitch: The Trojan War story that sets up Odysseus' long journey home.
Based on Homer's Iliad, this Wolfgang Petersen epic tells the story of the Trojan War.
2. Gladiator (2000)
The Pitch: The film that resurrected the modern epic.
Ridley Scott's masterpiece isn't Greek mythology, but it shares the exact thematic DNA of The Odyssey: a capable, legendary warrior who only wants to return home to his family, but is violently forced to endure years of trials by cruel men and fate. Russell Crowe's Maximus is the spiritual brother of Odysseus.
3. The Northman (2022)
The Pitch: Visceral, terrifying ancient mythology.
If you want to see how a modern auteur handles ancient myth, Robert Eggers' Viking epic is required viewing. Like Greek myth, it features witches, prophecies, and bloody vengeance. It is a useful comparison for how a serious modern production can stage prophecy and the supernatural without treating either as a joke.
4. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
The Pitch: A brilliant, comedic retelling of Homer's epic.
The Coen Brothers loosely riff on The Odyssey in the Deep South during the Great Depression. George Clooney plays Ulysses (the Roman name for Odysseus) trying to get home to his wife, encountering sirens (washerwomen) and a cyclops (a one-eyed Bible salesman) along the way.
5. 300 (2006)
The Pitch: Pure, stylized Greek combat.
Zack Snyder's hyper-stylized adaptation of the Battle of Thermopylae defined the look of ancient warfare for a decade. It is the least historically careful film on this list and makes no attempt to be otherwise — it is a comic-book frieze in motion — but it remains the reference point for depicting the terrifying might of phalanx combat.
Which One Should You Actually Watch?
These five are not interchangeable, and picking by mood beats working down the list in order.
For the direct narrative setup — the war Odysseus is sailing home from — watch Troy. For the emotional engine of a homecoming denied, watch Gladiator. For a sense of how a serious modern director stages myth, prophecy, and violence without winking at the audience, watch The Northman. For the structure of the poem itself, rendered as comedy, watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? — it follows the episodes more faithfully than any straight-faced epic on this list. And for spectacle with no interest in realism, watch 300.
One honest caveat: how Nolan handles the fantastical elements — the Cyclops, the Sirens, the gods — is not something anyone outside the production can predict. Treat these as companion viewing for the material, not as previews of a style.