Movies Like
Movies Like The Odyssey: Epics Worth the Big Screen
By Jordan A. · · 5 min read
Four weeks into its run, The Odyssey had passed $1.1 billion worldwide and become Christopher Nolan's highest-grossing film ever, plus the biggest IMAX release of all time at around $289 million from those screens alone. A three-thousand-year-old poem, shot entirely on IMAX film, outgrossing most superheroes. Good.
It's still in theaters as of mid-August, which means the "what do I watch next" problem is happening now, before any streaming date exists. Matt Damon's Odysseus, Tom Holland's Telemachus, Anne Hathaway's Penelope, Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Calypso. The film is enormous and it's also, oddly, about a man who is very tired. Here's what to watch next depending on which half of that you responded to.
Myth on screen, done properly
The Return (2024) is the essential companion piece and almost nobody saw it. Uberto Pasolini strips the Odyssey down to the last act: Ralph Fiennes as a starved, scarred Odysseus washing up on Ithaca, Juliette Binoche as Penelope, no gods, no monsters, just two people who have been apart for twenty years. Watch it after Nolan's version and the contrast is the best film-school lesson you'll get this year.
The Northman is Robert Eggers doing Norse revenge with total commitment: mud, chanting, a Björk cameo, Alexander Skarsgård screaming into a volcano. It takes the same idea that ancient stories should feel alien rather than cozy.
Troy (2004) is not a good adaptation of the Iliad and it is a very entertaining movie. Brad Pitt's Achilles is a sulk with a sword, Peter O'Toole's Priam gets one scene that flattens you, and the Hector duel still plays. Watch the director's cut.
Jason and the Argonauts (1963) is the deep cut worth your time. Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion skeletons are past sixty now and still more tactile than most CGI. If you have a kid, this is the one that turns them into a Greek myth obsessive.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is the Coen brothers relocating the whole poem to Depression-era Mississippi, sirens and Cyclops included. It's a comedy, it's a musical, and it's more faithful to the structure than films that spend a fortune on togas.
The long way home
Cold Mountain is the Odyssey with a Confederate deserter walking back to Nicole Kidman, and Anthony Minghella structures it as a series of encounters that keep testing whether the traveler is still a decent man. Renée Zellweger won an Oscar for it. The Philip Seymour Hoffman sequence is the one you'll remember.
Cast Away earns its place because it understands the actual cost of the trip. Tom Hanks alone for an hour of screen time, then the ending, which is the most honest thing any movie has said about coming home to a life that moved on without you.
Apocalypse Now flips the shape: a journey upriver instead of home, episodes strung along a route, each stranger than the last. Coppola's film is the reason so many modern epics feel like a series of encounters rather than a plot.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is the most rewatchable sea movie ever made. Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, a ship, a rival, and an unbelievable amount of texture. Peter Weir treats competence as its own kind of thrill, and the Galapagos detour is a quiet marvel.
More Nolan, ranked by how close it feels
Interstellar is the nearest cousin. Same devotion to physical scale, same obsession with time as the thing that costs you the most, same father trying to get back to a child who has aged in his absence. It landed on Prime Video on August 1, so it's free to watch tonight if you have that subscription.
Dunkirk is the structural experiment: three timelines, almost no dialogue, an hour and forty-six minutes of pure tension. It's the Nolan film that most resembles the sensation of watching The Odyssey in IMAX rather than the story of it.
Oppenheimer shares the "great man is also a catastrophe" reading, and if that's the layer of Odysseus you found interesting (the lying, the cost to everyone around him) it's your next stop. Our Oppenheimer follow-ups go deeper there.
Inception and The Prestige are the puzzle-box end of his work. Less relevant to the myth, still the best entry points if someone in your house has never seen a Nolan film. We've got a whole list of films that scratch the Inception itch.
Big swings from the last decade
Dune: Part Two is the other recent film that made scale mean something, and Denis Villeneuve's sandworm sequence is the closest anything has come to the awe The Odyssey generates. Start with our Dune recommendations if that's your axis.
Mad Max: Fury Road is two hours of chase filmed with practical vehicles and real desert, and it's the purest argument that spectacle can be an act of craft rather than a rendering budget.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is the standard everything here is measured against. Four hours, an intermission, and the single best cut in film history. If you have access to a 70mm screening, cancel your plans.
The Revenant covers the survival end: Leonardo DiCaprio crawling across a frozen wilderness, shot in natural light by Emmanuel Lubezki. Punishing, gorgeous, and much better on a big screen than a laptop.
Where to stream, and what to watch with someone who hasn't seen it
The Odyssey is still theatrical, and it's holding screens deep into August, so if a 70mm or IMAX film print is anywhere near you, that's the version to see. Interstellar is on Prime Video. Dunkirk, Inception and The Prestige rotate across HBO Max and rental. The Return, The Northman and Cold Mountain are rentals in most regions. O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cast Away turn up regularly on the Disney-owned services, and Lawrence of Arabia is worth buying rather than renting.
For a double feature that works on anyone: The Return first, at home, then Nolan's version on the biggest screen you can find. One is a chamber piece about a marriage. The other is a cathedral. Same story.
Or skip the list-keeping. Tell BingeNext's movie recommendation engine that The Odyssey worked on you, add one more film you love, and it'll rank what's actually streaming for you right now. The iPhone app does the same thing in about thirty seconds while the credits roll.
Topics covered: the odyssey, christopher nolan, epic, movies like, 2026 movies
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.