Christopher Nolan may have made a massive mythological epic with The Odyssey, but one of the film’s stars hopes its impact reaches far beyond ancient Greece.
Himesh Patel, who plays Eurylochus in the film, believes Nolan’s preference for practical filmmaking and in-camera effects could remind Hollywood that not everything needs to be created inside a computer.
With The Odyssey putting real sets, old-school camera techniques, and tangible effects front and center, Patel hopes the movie’s success encourages other filmmakers and studios to rethink how they approach big-budget productions.
Nolan has spent years pushing practical effects as far as he can, and The Odyssey continues that philosophy on an enormous scale. Rather than defaulting to CGI, the director has used techniques such as forced perspective, physical sets, practical effects, and other filmmaking tricks to bring Homer’s world to life.
Patel talked about Nolan’s approach during an appearance on The Romesh Ranganathan Show, explaining: “I know that Chris Nolan has been known for this for a long time, is his practically driven philosophy, doing as little as possible with CGI.
“He does use it in various ways but as little as he can, he tries to create as much as he can in camera and then use CGI to composite things in.”
That doesn’t mean Nolan refuses to use CGI. Instead, the technology becomes another tool rather than the foundation of every shot. Whenever something can be captured physically, Nolan wants to put something real in front of the camera and build from there.
Some pretty wild moments in The Odyssey were reportedly accomplished without relying on CGI, including the Circe sequence in which Odysseus’ men are transformed into pigs.
According to Patel, the crew found themselves reaching back into Hollywood’s bag of filmmaking tricks to accomplish things that modern productions might immediately hand over to visual effects artists.
“We’re using techniques that have been around for 30, 40 years but we just lost them as we got used to CGI,” Patel added.
These techniques aren’t necessarily new inventions. Some have existed for decades, but advancements in digital effects made them less common. The Odyssey gave its cast and crew the opportunity to bring some of those methods back for one of Hollywood’s biggest productions.
Patel hopes audiences responding to that physicality could have a larger effect on the industry. He also pointed to Spider-Man as another recent example of a major movie embracing tangible elements, including Tom Holland actually wearing the Spider-Man costume instead of constantly replacing the actor with a digital double.
“What I really hope is the success of this movie and how much on screen is tangible there and then you know in tandem you’ve got Spider-Man that just came out and I went to see that the other day and there’s so much in that movie that is tangible, real, just Tom [Holland] in his costume rather than a CGI version. I really hope that’s something that the powers that be take notice of and use more often.”
It would be great to see that happen. CGI can accomplish incredible things, and movies certainly shouldn’t abandon it. The more interesting possibility is filmmakers becoming more selective about when they use it.
If a creature, costume, environment, stunt, or effect can actually exist on set, there’s something exciting about letting the actors interact with it and allowing the camera to capture the imperfections that come with something physical.
Patel is hopeful that The Odyssey could help push Hollywood in that direction, but his co-star Matt Damon has a much more sobering perspective.
Damon previously described making the Christopher Nolan epic as an unexpectedly nostalgic experience because the production reminded him of how large movies were made earlier in his career. He worries those opportunities are disappearing as Hollywood changes.
“It was a really weird movie for me personally in the sense that I had almost a nostalgic feeling the entire time I was making it, because it felt like the movies when I started working. And I know that that’s going away. I knew that this was the last chance I was going to have to do something like this.”
Those two perspectives make The Odyssey even more interesting as a filmmaking experiment on a massive scale. Damon fears productions like this are nearing extinction, while Patel hopes Nolan can prove there’s still a future for them.
Hopefully Patel’s version of the future wins out. Hollywood doesn’t need to choose between practical effects and CGI. Some of the coolest movie magic happens when filmmakers understand the strengths of both.
Nolan’s approach is essentially about getting as much reality into the frame as possible before digital artists step in to finish the illusion.
With the massive success of The Odyssey, hopefully studio executives are paying attention, and with audiences walking away talking about how incredible its real sets, practical effects, creatures, costumes, and in-camera trickery look, maybe more filmmakers will get the opportunity to make massive movies this way.
At the very least, it sounds like Nolan is using The Odyssey to show that some of Hollywood’s old tricks still have plenty of magic left in them.
