A Face... A Fleet... A War... A Sports Movie?
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is out, and we have data viz on the film that launched 1,000 memes.
There’s never truly a break in the sports calendar, but this is about as quiet as it gets. The World Cup is over, NFL preseason hasn’t started yet, and tennis is in its post-Wimbledon lull. LeBron finally made his decision, meaning the biggest moves of the NBA offseason are now behind us. The WNBA is in its All-Star break.
The last time we did a non-sports issue of Club Sportico was the papal conclave in 2025, which actually turned out to have a stronger sports connection than we realized at the time, but The Odyssey has dominated the cultural conversation in the past two weeks. Its memes have been posted by some of the biggest sports social media accounts (my two favorites). Its director, Christopher Nolan, has been on every late night show and YouTube channel. So without further ado…
Here are six things we’re discussing about Christopher Nolan …
Frequent Collaborators 🤝: Nolan likes to work with the same actors across multiple films, famously casting Michael Caine in eight consecutive movies. Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway, the stars of The Odyssey, are each appearing in their third collaborations with Nolan, but those are actually the only members of the cast who previously appeared in multiple Nolan movies.
There are a lot of two-time Nolan actors in The Odyssey, however, including Robert Pattinson, Himesh Patel, Elliot Page, Benny Safdie, James Remar, and Andrew Howard. Travis Scott has also now written songs for Tenet and The Odyssey. It’ll be interesting to see who he brings back for future projects.
Runtimes ⏰: With the exception of Dunkirk, which came in at a tight hour and 46 minutes, Nolan’s movies have generally gotten longer over time. The Odyssey is 2 hours and 52 minutes, which is slightly shorter than Oppenheimer’s 3 hours, but still his second-longest film.
Before the MLB instituted the pitch clock in 2023, the average baseball game was longer than Oppenheimer. Now it’s only as long as The Dark Knight Rises!
Ratings 📊: The Odyssey currently has a 4.4 rating on Letterboxd and an 8.5 on IMDB, which would make it Nolan’s third highest-rated movie behind The Dark Knight and Interstellar, using a blended average of the two scores
People need to go watch Inception again, because that’s the best movie of all-time. Also #JusticeForTenet1
Box Office 🎟️: The Odyssey is on track to make well over $1 billion worldwide… not bad for an adaptation of a book that we all complained about reading in high school. But even more impressive to me is what Nolan was able to accomplish at the box office with his original stories during an era when sequels, franchises, spin-offs, and pre-existing IP prevailed.
By my count, there are four live-action, English-language films since 2010 that were:
Not part of a movie franchise
Not based on a book, existing IP, or real people
Sold at least $500 million in tickets worldwide
Nolan made three of those four!
Inception (2010) - $828 million
Gravity (2013) - $723 million
Interstellar (2014) - $681 million
Dunkirk (2017) - $526 million
Connective Tissue 🔗: Nolan revisits many of the same tropes and concepts throughout his filmography. The dead wife story device that he frequently uses has been discussed extensively, but we really need to talk about his obsession with characters falling into bodies of water.
Without giving away any specifics, The Odyssey has 9 out of the 11 Nolan elements that I identified above, and some very strong thematic ties to Inception and Oppenheimer (spoilers).
Nolan’s next movie 🏈: There aren’t a ton of sports scenes in Nolan’s filmography, but there are some. A key set piece in The Dark Knight Rises sparked thousands of arguments in fictional fantasy football league group chats over whether Hines Ward owners should get six fantasy points for a kickoff return TD even though the field exploded during the runback. Interstellar has two baseball scenes, one towards the beginning and one towards the end, which Nolan contrasts to highlight the progress of human civilization through the sport. The Odyssey has archery!
Could Nolan tackle the sports genre next?
A few weeks ago, we asked Hollywood screenwriters where LeBron should have gone in free agency to make the best movie script. Perhaps Nolan is the man for the job. His story is one of a man returning home and then later reuniting with a child. Plus, Nolan could pretty easily incorporate “Falling Into a Body of Water” if he wanted to.
What real-life sports story could work best as a Christopher Nolan movie? We want to hear your ideas.
Eben here: Just popping in to say, #NoJusticeForTenet