Matt Damon on The Odyssey: ‘Movies like this are not getting made any more’
By Lauren Del Fabbro, Press Association Entertainment Reporter
Hollywood star Matt Damon has said films like The Odyssey are not “getting made any more”.
The 55-year old stars in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming blockbuster adaptation of the Homer epic as Odysseus, the Greek hero behind the Trojan Horse as he makes his 10-year journey home from war.
Speaking to Time magazine, Damon praised Nolan for his commitment, the thought that goes into every shot, and his ability to create something as real as possible.
He said: “Movies like this are not getting made any more.
“To do this without a green screen, the way that (Lawrence Of Arabia filmmaker) David Lean would have done it, I don’t know anybody, with the exception of Chris, that’s even trying to do that.
“There aren’t a lot of people in their mid-50s as protagonists in these epics. I looked at this like the last movie I’d ever do.”
The Odyssey co-stars Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong’o as well as US rapper Travis Scott, who appears in the film as a bard.
Nolan told the magazine he cast the rapper because he wanted to “nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap”.
Despite some of the idyllic filming locations, the conditions were often “relentless”, according to Damon, who endured being soaked in the rain in Iceland, daily hikes to the Castle of Santa Caterina in Sicily, and gusts of sand “ripping into” his eyes on a beach in Morocco.
Rain or shine, Nolan remained close to the cast and crew.
Damon said: “There’s something really nice about being a soldier in the foxhole and looking over and the general is right next to you.
“When you’re uncomfortable — and you are most of the time, physically, just by nature of what’s required to get these shots — if you turn and look over your shoulder, he’s no more than five feet away and doing the same thing without complaint.
“The joke was, at each location you’d think, well, the next location is going to be easier because normally on every movie there’s a moment where it lets up. It just didn’t. It was relentless.”
Damon had supporting roles in Nolan's 2014 space film Interstellar and 2023’s Oppenheimer.
It will be Nolan's first film since he picked up his first Academy Awards – for best director and best picture – for Oppenheimer, about the US theoretical physicist who helped to develop the nuclear bomb during the Second World War.
Nolan is also known for Batman film trilogy The Dark Knight, 2010’s Inception, and 2017’s Dunkirk.