It’s great, a star-studded triumph that is at once overwhelming and accessible.

The interplay of chance and fate is a through-line of this 172-minute IMAX epic, which feels shorter, thanks mainly to the impressive ability of Nolan and his regular editor Jennifer Lame (who won an Oscar for cutting "Oppenheimer") to make time seem elastic.

Though some sequences seem to fly by, The Odyssey isn't one of those three-hour movies you'd swear was half its length. It takes its time, and you feel it. But rather than signaling any issues with pacing – editor Jennifer Lame, an Oscar-winner for Oppenheimer, has once again done exquisite work – this is one of the film's greatest strengths. Cutting out the middleman of Homer's oral narrator, Nolan has brought us very close to these characters, immersing us as much as possible in their experience. In doing so, he has managed to capture the story's full scope. Odysseus' journey conveys the weight of its arduous years. The film's conclusion, told with a steady, patient hand, feels like a payoff 20 years in the making.

Peak Nolan involves a mix of popcorn delights and intellectual contemplation, and he has rarely brought those two notions together as skillfully as he as in The Odyssey. It’s an epic saga of an epic saga, worthy of its source.

If Oppenheimer was Nolan shedding the trappings of genre to reach new heights with a science-heavy biopic, then in The Odyssey, Nolan puts away his trusty tools to shape cinematic history with his bare hands.