Why You Should Watch Troy Before The Odyssey

Forget Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three, the one movie I am most seated for in 2026 is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. 

The master filmmaker quite literally never misses despite continually raising his game with each new project – and it looks like The Odyssey will be his most ambitious to date.

While the star power of Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Anne Hathaway will no doubt get bums in seats for this historical epic, there is a good chance that this will be Nolan’s least accessible film so far. It’s based on the poems of Ancient Greek writer Homer, and ‘Odyssey’ is steeped in mythology and stories of the gods, so to say it’ll be complex is an understatement.

Reading the fairly chunky book will help, of course. But there are other ways to gain some valuable context ahead of the release of The Odyssey, like watching the 2004 film Troy.

‘Troy’ Will Help You Understand The Trojan War

We know that The Odyssey starts pretty much immediately after the conclusion of the Trojan War, with Matt Damon’s Odysseus embarking on a tumultuous ten-year journey across land and sea to get back home after the conflict.

Now, Troy, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, is a loose adaptation of Homer’s ‘The Iliad’, and recounts the events of the Trojan War. The story there begins in 1250 B.C. but while the war itself spans roughly ten years in the source material, it lasts weeks in the movie, instead.

It involves an armada of 1,000 ships and 50,000 Greek soldiers, who fight by the side of Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus against Paris, the Trojan prince. Needless to say, it’s a monumental battle, and while the film has been criticised for some sub-par acting (looking at you, Brad Pitt) and a disappointing romantic subplot, there’s a lot of important crossover here.

Not only does the timeline make Troy a prequel of sorts for The Odyssey, but there are also characters that appear in both films. In Troy, Sean Bean plays Odysseus, Brendan Gleeson plays Menelaus, and Brian Cox plays Agamemnon. All three of those characters will be in The Odyssey, played by Damon, Jon Bernthal, and Benny Safdie, respectively.

Obviously, there is no official link between the two movies, but clearly there’s no harm in watching Troy before you head to the cinema to see The Odyssey.

‘The Odyssey’ Embraces Fantastical Elements Of Homer’s Epic Poems

Another major criticism of Troy was the fact Petersen and co. removed all of the mythological, fantastical elements of the original story. If it had been faithful to Homer’s source material, we’d have seen intervention from the gods, including a plague sent by Apollo, as well as creatures like centaurs and the Gorgon, and even magical armour created by Hephaestus.

Thankfully, we’ll see Nolan go all-in on the mythology of his version of the story. For a start, we know that Athena (played by Lupita Nyong’o) will guide Odysseus on his gruelling mission, while the sorceress Circe (played by Charlize Theron) will play a key part as Odysseus finds himself on her island where time and reality are distorted.

Meanwhile, we catch a very brief glimpse of Polyphemus, the Cyclops, in the trailer for The Odyssey. It’s thought Nolan has employed huge animatronics to bring this beast to life for the film.

We might even see Scylla, a man-eating sea beast, in this iteration of the legendary story. Either way, it’s clear that there will be a very different tone and feel to The Odyssey compared to what we got with Troy, even if the two films are so closely linked in terms of their narrative.

What Else Could You Watch Before ‘The Odyssey’?

If you really want to sink your teeth into the historical context of this magnificent tale, there are plenty of other movies and TV shows you could watch.

Over on Netflix, there’s an eight-part limited series called Troy: Fall of a City, which focuses more on the complex relationship between Paris and Helen. There’s less of the actual war in this one, with more attention paid to the intimate moments among the Trojan royal family amid the siege on the city.

Just a year before the release of Troy, there was another movie called Helen of Troy. It got a lot less attention, but there are still a couple of decent actors involved including Rufus Sewell and Sienna Guillory. As you may have guessed, Helen is the focus of this one.

There’s also a 1971 film called The Trojan Women. It’s pretty hard to track down as it’s not on any streaming services in the UK at the moment, but if you can find it it’s a pretty interesting look at the fallout of the Trojan War, as Queen Hecuba (played by Katharine Hepburn) attempts to rebuild her broken empire.

I wouldn’t say any of those three titles are as useful to your preparation for The Odyssey as Troy would be, but the more knowledge you can take into that theatre in July, the better.