Two hundred kilograms and three minutes

The technological breakthrough did not eliminate the practical challenges. Encased within The Blimp, the Keighley camera weighs almost 200 kilograms. It required a team of six people simply to move it, and the crew even had to devise a system of mirrors so that the actors could maintain eye contact without the enormous camera rig getting in the way.

Each film magazine also allowed for only around three minutes of footage before the negative had to be replaced.

Focus puller Keith Davis became so adept at reloading the cameras that interruptions barely affected the actors’ concentration. In total, the production used 640,080 metres of film stock—a distance greater than that between New York and Toronto.

Here, technology is not employed as a marketing gimmick but as a way of seeing.

Troy lit by fire

The film’s first major sequence presented another formidable challenge: how do you shoot the sack of Troy at night, with thousands of extras and IMAX cameras, without filling a Bronze Age city with modern lighting equipment?

Hoyte van Hoytema wanted to illuminate the entire set using fire. Yet relying solely on real flames would have been both dangerous and impractical. Instead, his team created thousands of specially designed structures made from triangular panels fitted with LED lights, known as polyhedrons, capable of recreating the irregular, flickering glow of torchlight.

Troy itself was constructed at Aït Benhaddou in Morocco on a set covering more than 10,000 square metres. More than sixty structures were built, including the city’s walls, monumental gates and a temple dedicated to Athena standing almost twelve metres high. The set was capable of accommodating around two thousand extras.

No digital extensions were used to enlarge the environment. The city had to exist physically in front of the camera.

Nolan also reimagined the Trojan Horse. Rather than presenting it as the familiar wheeled structure, he transformed it into an offering to Poseidon left abandoned beside the sea. The Trojans discover it half-buried in the sand and battered by the waves before dragging it, with enormous effort, inside the city walls.

Several ten-metre-high versions of the Horse were constructed. Water, sand and repeated takes gradually damaged them, forcing the crew into constant repairs on a structure that, much like Odysseus himself, seemed determined to survive.

Dressing a world in ruins

The costume design does far more than recreate a historical period. Ellen Mirojnick, Academy Award nominee for Oppenheimer, conceived the costumes as an extension of the characters’ psychological state and of the collapse of the civilisation surrounding them.

Her starting point was a powerful idea: Odysseus is not an untarnished hero but the survivor of a world exhausted by war. After Troy, everything is wounded, weathered and spiritually fractured. The costumes, weapons and silhouettes had to reflect that erosion.

For the film, more than 5,300 individual garments were designed and produced. In Los Angeles alone, a team of 175 specialists worked exclusively on the principal cast’s costumes and armour. Altogether, Mirojnick coordinated more than 500 craftspeople across the United States, Morocco, Italy, Greece, Iceland, Scotland, Spain and England.

The research was exhaustive but never intended to become an archaeological exercise. The team studied frescoes, burial artefacts, textile fragments, jewellery, natural dyes, ancient looms, reconstructed armour and garments designed for long sea voyages.

The goal was never to produce a museum-like reconstruction. Every costume had to appear worn, repaired and lived in. Sunlight fades the fabrics, salt water corrodes the metal, and years at sea transform every material. The costumes themselves become part of the narrative—they travel, they age and they survive.

Even the bronze departs from the gleaming golden finish so often seen in historical epics. Here it appears dark, heavy and scarred by dents and scratches. The armour looks as though it has genuinely been forged, worn and damaged by real bodies.

The visual language emerges from the meeting point of archaeology, mythology and psychology. It does not attempt to recreate an idealised image of Ancient Greece, but rather to invent a coherent world that genuinely feels as though it once existed.

Six countries in search of Ithaca

Production travelled across Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland and the United States during a 91-day shoot spread over six months.

Nolan and production designer Ruth De Jong deliberately avoided the visual conventions traditionally associated with the “sword-and-sandal” genre. Instead, they sought extreme climates, violent seas and landscapes capable of conveying the feeling that Odysseus was venturing into territories beyond the known world.

The island of Favignana, off the coast of Sicily, became Ithaca. Perched on top of a 310-metre hill, the Castle of Santa Caterina offered breathtaking panoramic views across the Mediterranean, but it had no road access.

The production installed a funicular railway and relied on helicopters to transport equipment. Even so, much of the cast and crew—including Nolan and producer Emma Thomas—chose to make the climb on foot for three weeks.

Nestor‘s Cave in Greece served as the setting for Odysseus‘ encounter with the Cyclops, while the Underworld of Hades was filmed in Iceland beneath the eerie glow of the midnight sun, surrounded by wind, rain and desolate volcanic landscapes.

Every location was chosen to feel like an extension of the unpredictable nature of the gods themselves.

Sailing for real

The ships were far more than elaborate set pieces. The production located the Draken in Norway, a vessel built using traditional Nordic shipbuilding techniques and fully capable of sailing on the open sea.

Half of its crew consisted of professional sailors; the other half was made up of actors who had to learn how to row, raise the mast and handle the sails. The sequences were filmed under genuine conditions, facing rough seas, freezing temperatures and storms.

A poorly positioned oar can break ribs or throw someone overboard. Rather than concealing that danger, Nolan chose to embrace it as part of the film’s physical reality.

The ships travelled thousands of miles during production. What ultimately appears on screen is not the illusion of a voyage but the genuine physical experience of people struggling against the sea itself.

The sound of a lost world

Ludwig Göransson reunites with Nolan for the third time following Tenet and Oppenheimer. To create the sonic landscape of The Odyssey, the composer combined synthesisers, guitars, harps, voices and instruments associated with the ancient world, including the aulos and the lyre.

Odysseus‘ musical theme grows from a haunting three-note lament inspired by the sound of the string of his bow. Göransson also worked with thirty-five gongs and even devised an original notation system based on drawings to indicate precisely where and how each instrument should be struck.

Archaeomusicologist Rosa Fragorapti performs the lyre passages in a score that seeks to evoke echoes of antiquity without becoming an academic reconstruction.

During production, Göransson sent Nolan an initial 42-minute musical demo. By the end of the process, he had composed almost four hours of original music over the course of nine months.

The score becomes another journey within the journey itself—a rich blend of metal, wind, memory and voices emerging from a world long since vanished.

What ultimately appears on screen is not the illusion of a voyage but the genuine physical experience of people struggling against the sea itself.

The big screen as its true destination

The Odyssey is dedicated to David Keighley, IMAX‘s long-serving Chief Quality Officer and one of the key figures behind the development of the new camera system used throughout the production. His work enabled the format to overcome its previous technical limitations and enter dramatic territory that had once seemed almost impossible to capture. That evolution perfectly reflects the spirit of the film.

Everything has been designed so that audiences do not merely observe the myth from a distance but experience the salt spray, the fire, the cold, the weight of bronze and the exhaustion of the journey.

Nolan does not use technology to distance cinema from reality, but to bring it closer. He built cities, sent his actors out to sea, commissioned thousands of handcrafted costumes, constructed monumental sets and placed 200-kilogram IMAX cameras in front of the most intimate conversations. Every creative decision serves a single purpose: allowing the audience to experience Homer‘s epic rather than simply watch it unfold.

Every creative decision serves a single purpose: allowing the audience to experience Homer’s epic rather than simply watch it unfold.

Beyond its extraordinary technical achievements, The Odyssey proves that epic filmmaking can still be deeply handcrafted. Christopher Nolan has delivered an adaptation that is ambitious, emotionally engaging and visually breathtaking, reminding audiences of the unique pleasure of surrendering to a truly great adventure. This is a film designed to be experienced in the darkness of a cinema, and if any contemporary production truly justifies the IMAX format, this is undoubtedly it.

(*) Images courtesy of UPI Media.