It was a cloudy July morning, with the extremely hostile weather of the Scottish coast: a lead-colored sky all around, a rough sea and rain falling horizontally. In the middle of the storm, director Christopher Nolan was walking toward the jetty in search of his adviser, thinking that the first day of the six-month shooting schedule for his new film ‘The Odyssey’ might have to be cancelled.
But the 115-foot ship on which they were filming had been built precisely for such adverse weather. The adviser assured Nolan that, however frightening the experience, working would be completely safe. Within an hour the director, actors and crew were afloat on the churning waves, so fierce that several co-actors began vomiting over the ship’s railing.
Over the roar of the storm, Nolan shouted to his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema: “If you don’t mind, can we capture these vomiting scenes on camera?” A year later, sitting in the calm of London’s Corinthia Hotel, the 55-year-old British-American director recalled that day.
Smiling, Nolan said: “You have to give the actors credit, they immediately agreed and took on the challenge. The day was hard, but it gave us some great shots, which later became some of my favorite scenes in the film.”
Based on Homer’s ancient Greek epic, Nolan’s new film (‘The Odyssey’) is already being counted among the best films of 2026. Having stayed up until 4 a.m. watching a football match the night before the premiere, Nolan sipped tea and shared various experiences of making his films.
Born in London in 1970 and raised in the United Kingdom and Chicago, Nolan dreamed of making films from childhood. In 1998 he made his mark with his first low-budget black-and-white crime thriller, ‘Following’. He then made ‘Memento’, based on a short story by his brother Jonathan; that $4.5 million psychological mystery made him an overnight star. He went on to deliver enduring films such as Insomnia, the Batman trilogy, Inception, Interstellar and, in 2023, Oppenheimer, which took nearly $1 billion at the box office and won seven Oscars.
Hollywood studios and producers invest huge sums in him with their eyes closed, because Nolan can effortlessly turn even difficult subjects, such as complex psychology or time shown in reverse, into box-office hits. Nolan said many think ‘The Odyssey’ is the most expensive film of his career, but in fact 2012’s ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is still his highest-budget picture.
The film faced an intense culture war online even before its release. Last May, when it emerged that the Kenyan-Mexican Black actress Lupita Nyong’o would play Helen of Troy, the mythical daughter of Zeus, Elon Musk and a group of YouTubers accused Nolan of surrendering to Hollywood’s “woke agenda.” Many also objected to the casting of transgender actor Elliot Page in another role, which led to about 600,000 dislikes on the film’s trailer on YouTube.
Asked about this, Nolan calmly sipped his tea and said with a smile: “These are actually part of this profession. The controversies people make before even seeing the film are completely meaningless, because they don’t even know what is actually going to appear on screen. I handled this kind of fan frenzy for 10 years while making Batman. When Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker, many were stunned too. My job is to stay honest to the source text and bring my best work to the screen.”
Even amid today’s technological advances, Nolan relies on traditional practical effects and animatronics, and opposes the indiscriminate use of artificial intelligence in scenes. Citing his own four children, he said: “The new generation very quickly catches the artificial things AI creates and rejects them. Cinema is now returning to real, tactile storytelling.”
Nolan’s own aversion to technology is something of a legend in film circles. He has never used a smartphone to this day. Laughing about it, he said: “You have all become pod people, or slaves to your phones, now. If I bought a smartphone I would become very badly addicted to it and constantly search for information online. I get my new film ideas mainly in those moments when ordinary people take their phones out of their pockets and sink into the screen, on a train or while waiting at an airport, or while sitting for someone at a restaurant, that is when I sketch out my next work.”
Because he has no smartphone, he pays no heed to internet rumors and stays away from social-media trolls. He does not believe in the rule of “making 10 films and retiring,” as Quentin Tarantino does; Nolan believes every film should be made as if it were the last work of his life. He is also against the use of phones inside cinemas. He has invited audiences to enjoy his new film ‘The Odyssey’ in theaters worldwide from Friday, July 17.
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