Video · 2026-07-12 · 17m · 6 moments

Friend of the Show: Tom Holland Meets Tom Holland to Chat All Things The Odyssey

✦ AI generated

GUEST Tom Holland (actor)GUEST Tom Holland (host)

timeline · colored by role

Claim◆

Christopher Nolan's script manages to tell the vast, five-films-worth story of the Odyssey in just 130 pages while preserving the heart, soul, excitement, and emotional relevance of the original.

Actor Tom Holland says the script impressed him because Nolan condensed the sprawling Odyssey into 130 pages without losing its emotional core, calling it the best script he's ever read.

transcript

Tom Holland (actor): But Chris's ability to to tell that story in 130 pages while maintaining the heart and the soul of what makes the story so exciting, so emotional, so relevant today, I think it's just such a feat.

Claim

IMAX's high resolution leaves nowhere for an actor to hide, so performing for IMAX requires a more subtle, restrained acting style than stage or ordinary screen acting.

Tom Holland explains that IMAX's unforgiving resolution forced him to find a more subtle register of performance than stage or standard screen acting.

transcript

Tom Holland (actor): You just can't hide anything in IMAX. It's so The resolution is so good and and there's no secrets. There's nowhere to hide. It really promotes a sort of more subtle version of performance because it can very quickly become too much.

Claim◆

Telemachus and Penelope's storyline represents the grounded reality of the Odyssey, while Odysseus's adventures represent the myth as it was distorted through centuries of oral retelling, like a giant game of telephone.

Tom Holland offers his own interpretation that the film splits into a 'reality' thread (Telemachus and Penelope) and a 'myth' thread (Odysseus), the latter shaped by a centuries-long game of telephone before being written down.

transcript

Tom Holland (actor): To me, the way I see the film is that Telemachus and Penelope represent the reality of the story... And Odysseus' side of the story, Matt's side of the story, represents the myth. And this humongous game of telephone that has been played with this text, you know, it wasn't written down for hundreds of years.

Context

Homer's own narrative progressively moves from historically plausible events, like sacking a city, through legends the Greeks located in real places like Sicily (the Cyclops), to increasingly strange, otherworldly territory culminating in the land of the dead.

Historian Tom Holland notes that Homer's own story escalates from plausible historical raiding to legendary places the Greeks pinned to real geography, then into frankly fantastical realms, mirroring the film's ambiguity about what's real.

transcript

Tom Holland (host): he his first adventure he sacks a city and that's the kind of thing that that people did... And then he moves on to the the Cyclops story, which the Greeks said, well, that is set in Sicily... And then he starts going to really strange places that are clearly outside the order of the mortal, and he ends up in the land of the dead.

Claim◆

Anne Hathaway's Penelope only performs the traditional image of modest, patient passivity for the suitors as a calculated front to protect her son and Ithaca while waiting for Odysseus, showing resilience that matches his own journey.

Tom Holland describes how Anne Hathaway reframed Penelope's famed patience and modesty as a deliberate front to protect her son and hold off the suitors, matching Odysseus's own resilience.

transcript

Tom Holland (actor): what Anne has discovered is that she's displaying that to the people because if she doesn't, she will lose the war and the suitors will take over. She's really putting up this front to try and protect her son, to protect Ithaca and hopefully to wait for Odysseus to come home.

Claim

The film's invented threat of the 'sea peoples' works as a powerful vehicle for mounting dread, and mirrors how the Odyssey myth itself grew and changed through generations of word-of-mouth retelling before writing existed.

Tom Holland explains that the film's ominous 'sea peoples' subplot builds dread throughout the story and echoes how the Odyssey myth itself mutated over generations of oral transmission before it was ever written down.

transcript

Tom Holland (actor): It almost kind of shows how the Odyssey has grown over time because they didn't have the means to communicate... Everything was word of mouth and every story changes with every time it's told. And this myth of the people of the sea is such an amazing vehicle for tension throughout the film.

Highlight slides

Nolan's Odyssey Script Impresses Holland✦ from: Christopher Nolan's script manages to tell the vast, five-films-worth story of the Odyssey in just 130 pages while preserving the heart, soul, excitement, and emotional relevance of the original.Why It's a Feat✦ from: Christopher Nolan's script manages to tell the vast, five-films-worth story of the Odyssey in just 130 pages while preserving the heart, soul, excitement, and emotional relevance of the original.Two Threads of the Odyssey✦ from: Telemachus and Penelope's storyline represents the grounded reality of the Odyssey, while Odysseus's adventures represent the myth as it was distorted through centuries of oral retelling, like a giant game of telephone.A Centuries-Long Game of Telephone✦ from: Telemachus and Penelope's storyline represents the grounded reality of the Odyssey, while Odysseus's adventures represent the myth as it was distorted through centuries of oral retelling, like a giant game of telephone.Penelope's Patience Is a Performance✦ from: Anne Hathaway's Penelope only performs the traditional image of modest, patient passivity for the suitors as a calculated front to protect her son and Ithaca while waiting for Odysseus, showing resilience that matches his own journey.A Mirrored Resilience✦ from: Anne Hathaway's Penelope only performs the traditional image of modest, patient passivity for the suitors as a calculated front to protect her son and Ithaca while waiting for Odysseus, showing resilience that matches his own journey.

Related episodes

Audio · Lex Fridman

#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking

→

Video · Syntax

I Built an LLM From Scratch

→

Video · The Compound

Is IMAX a Screaming Buy? | LFTC

→