‘The Odyssey’s Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway Explain Christopher Nolan’s Never-Before-Seen IMAX Trick

Oscar-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan has dedicated his craft to not only creating singular worlds and stories on screen, but doing so in a way that pushes beyond the limitations of what’s being done in film. Befitting of Homer’s enduring epic, The Odyssey, Nolan set out to once again navigate uncharted territory, filming entirely in IMAX and developing innovative ways to adapt the format to fit even the most intimate scenes. Talking with Collider’s Steven Weintraub, Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway and Spider-Man icon Tom Holland discuss the ambitious set and the “truly ingenious” tech Nolan employed to pull it all off.

In the movie, fellow Oscar-winner Matt Damon portrays Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, who embarks on a treacherous 10-year journey home after the Trojan War. Through deadly obstacles and a seven-year layover on Calypso’s (Charlize Theron) mythical island, Odysseus’s one driving force is reuniting with his Queen Penelope (Hathaway) and his son, Telemachus (Holland). This cast of characters also includes Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Zendaya as Athena, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, and more.

During their interview, Hathaway and Holland reveal the technique behind Nolan’s latest IMAX achievement and how it created a moment so private that Holland could have kissed his fellow Spider-Man: Brand New Day co-star, Bernthal. They also share how Nolan’s attitude on set creates an environment completely its own and allows the cast to step outside their minds, and how production designer Ruth De Jong helped facilitate Nolan’s grounded vision of the legendary Ancient Greece of The Odyssey.

How ‘The Odyssey’ Transported Its Cast and Crew Back in Time to Ancient Greece

“It felt like we were making movies how they used to be made.”

COLLIDER: First of all, this movie is incredible, and you’re both so fantastic in it. I wish everyone could see it the way I saw it in IMAX 70mm last night. It’s an experience. But I have to ask the most important question first, which is, can you explain to me exactly how Chris built the time machine that took you back to ancient Greece, to film on location?

ANNE HATHAWAY: Well, it was designed by Ruth De Jong, our production designer, so it was gorgeous.

TOM HOLLAND: On Tenet, right?

HATHAWAY: Yes, exactly. He took a lot of the tech that was developed for Tenet, and then we just climbed aboard.

HOLLAND: It did feel like we went back in a time machine, but a time machine that was both taking us to the future and to the past, which is so Chris Nolan, if you think about it, because the movie felt super nostalgic. It felt like we were making movies how they used to be made, but then also we were breaking barriers and breaking records with shooting an entire movie on IMAX and building this incredibly unique piece of kit to dampen out the cameras. So, it was this kind of weird experience of being nostalgic and futuristic at the same time.

If you could ask Homer one question about The Odyssey, what would you ask?

HOLLAND: “Do you think that I am a good Telemachus?”

Matt said something very similar.

HOLLAND: Oh, he did? [Laughs]

HATHAWAY: I would ask, “Do you think Tom Holland was a good Telemachus?”

HOLLAND: Nice. I like that.

Tom Holland Reveals How Christopher Nolan Uses “British Humor” To Ease Tension During Crucial Scenes

“Stop thinking about it. Just do it.”

Image via Universal Pictures

None of us will ever be on a set with Chris, hearing him direct. Was there a moment on set where Chris directed you in such a way that really helped shape the performance or make you reassess how you were playing the scene? What is it like to actually collaborate with him in that moment?

HOLLAND: I love how he can undercut the tension with almost super British humor. I had this one scene with Matt [Damon], which is arguably one of my most important scenes in the film. I don’t want to talk about it too much because it’s a big spoiler, but Matt and I were discussing the scene a lot, and he basically stuck his head in and went, “Oi, thespians, get on with it! I’m gonna be on the dog.” And I just remember being like, “Oh my God.” He just totally was like, “Stop thinking about it. Just do it,” and it completely alleviated any sense of stress that I had about the importance of the scene, because he had just made light of the situation.

I think what lots of directors would do is send the crew away and give you your time, and we could discuss it for an hour. You actually make yourself feel more pressure because you’re making people wait, whereas he’s like, “Forget about the pressure, bro. You’ll be fine. Just do it.”

HATHAWAY: “You’re not important right now.” [Laughs]

HOLLAND: Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s like, the dog just nailed it. The dog did the most incredible work. There’s not a dry eye on the crew, and I have to follow the dog. But I saw him do it on a few occasions with a few different actors, where he just completely undercut the tension with humor, and it allowed a certain freedom in the following take.

Anne Hathaway Explains Why Most Movies Don’t Film Entirely in IMAX Like ‘The Odyssey’

The Oscar-winner also details the unique camera set up the Greek epic utilized.

Image via Universal Pictures

Anne, you got to do the mirror system very early in the shoot or in the middle of the shoot. There’s a key scene with Matt where you’re using mirrors with this IMAX blimp. Can you tell people about this mirror system and what it was like as an actor to work with something so new and radical, but also intimate?

HATHAWAY: We shot the whole film on IMAX, and the reason that that’s never been done before is related to sound. You could make a silent film on IMAX; however, any film that has dialogue, the IMAX camera, because of the size of the film stock, is so loud when it goes through the shutter that it obliterates any dialogue, so you’d have to loop the entire thing, which is not the best experience.

So, what Chris, Hoyte [van Hoytema], Willie [D. Burton], our sound engineer, and a lot of other geniuses, frankly, worked on was they created a blimp to go around an IMAX camera that was really huge, and I think everybody had their different relationship with it. I thought of it as, like, a big, friendly giant. But the thing about it is, when you’re making movies, you have to be able to get close to the camera for eyelines, and an IMAX blimp surrounds the camera by several feet in all directions, so that makes it very difficult. What Chris and Hoyte and all the geniuses that I mentioned did was they rigged a mirror system, whereby it was a strategy of mirrors. So if Tom needed to see me, he was standing on one side of the lens, and I was behind it, looking into a mirror that reflected into a mirror that Tom could then see, that he would act with.

The thing that’s amazing about it is it was so beautifully designed that none of us actors felt like we were compromising ourselves to engage with a system that made us feel like our performances were outside of ourselves. All of our memories are, “No, I was just acting with you.” It was truly ingenious. It just goes to show that a lot of times when people talk about technology and technology in film, I hear a lot of opinions by people who have never made a movie before about how great tech is for film. I’m not anti anything, so I’m sure it’ll help in certain ways, but the fact that this piece of equipment, this new piece of tech, which is not reliant upon computers, was built by actual filmmakers who understood what it was that they were designing for, where all the form followed the function, it was genuinely a thrill. And if you’re film nerds like us, we couldn’t believe we were there.

HOLLAND: Yeah, it was crazy. I did a scene with Jon Bernthal, the whole thing on the mirror, and it made me forget that the camera was there because his face was floating in front of the camera. Whereas usually, you’re trying to forget that there’s a camera, an operator, a focus puller, and then the actor. It was like I could have kissed him, he was that close.

HATHAWAY: Did you?

HOLLAND: I wish I did. He’s handsome.

HATHAWAY: I mean, you guys are very close.

HOLLAND: We are very close.

The Odyssey opens in theaters and IMAX on July 17.

Release Date

July 17, 2026

Runtime

172 Minutes