The Odyssey cast’s Christopher Nolan picks skip the usual suspects
Forget the usual suspects: The Odyssey cast just named the Christopher Nolan films they’d preserve for future generations—and the snubs are as surprising as the picks. In a new interview, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and their costars crowned their keepers while leaving a few canon favorites on the cutting room floor.
If you ever fancied knowing which Christopher Nolan film a group of major Hollywood stars would bury in a time capsule for future generations, here we are. The cast of The Odyssey—a line-up so packed it feels like Avengers: Ancient Greece—were quizzed on which Nolan flick they’d preserve for posterity. And, to be honest, their choices are a bit of a curveball. There’s no Interstellar, no Oppenheimer, and bafflingly, not a peep from the Batcave either.
The Unexpected Nolan Favourites
These picks popped up in a chat with Rachel Leishman from Comic Book Resources. Anne Hathaway, who’s taking a swing at Penelope in The Odyssey (and yes, she’s ex of Gotham herself from The Dark Knight Rises), went straight back to Nolan’s 1998 debut:
'I’m going to go with Following. Something about it just reminds me of what we were trying to do: looking back to a text that’s so old, and gleaning all the ways that we’ve been formed because of it, and all the ways that the ideas have expanded and are still true. So that’s what came to mind for me.'
No glossy blockbusters for Hathaway—just proper indie vibes and black-and-white labyrinth nonsense.
Matt Damon’s running the show as Odysseus himself, and when pressed, he pointed to Leishman’s Prestige-inspired top for inspiration, but with a fair reason behind it:
'Because you’re wearing the shirt, I’ll go with The Prestige, and I’ll use a different reason. It’s because I remember watching that movie, and I think I watched it three days in a row. And very much like The Odyssey, people return to it, and every time they watch it, they get something else out of it. I felt that way about that movie.'
Makes sense, actually—any film you can’t figure out after three back-to-back watches probably deserves a place in the vault.
The Others Didn’t Overthink It
- Jon Bernthal, never one to mess about, simply picked 'all of them'. That’s what you call hedging your bets.
- Lupita Nyong'o, meanwhile, just said The Odyssey—can’t fault her loyalty to the project that presumably pays the bills this month.
A Cast List Almost As Long As the Credits
For those keeping score, The Odyssey isn’t just about Damon and Hathaway. The film’s out in UK cinemas on 17 July and also brings in Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Charlize Theron and Benny Safdie. Basically, everyone who wasn’t already busy making Dune 3, apparently.