Christopher Nolan has his Odysseus for his movie adaptation of The Odyssey, and it’s Matt Damon. Universal Pictures just confirmed it with a moody Instagram post, because the past is sad and grey and gritty in the movies now.
At 54 years old, Damon is the perfect age to play the Greek hero, who was canonically pushing middle age by the time the Trojan War broke out. Fans of the Homeric epic were initially worried that 28-year-old Tom Holland, who is also attached to the project, would be cast as the lead in keeping with Hollywood’s obsession with youth.
But Damon looks suitably grizzled, as befits the cunning Ithacan king that went AWOL after masterminding the Trojan Horse stunt, but ancient history buffs everywhere are now appalled by something else – his armour.
Obviously this is fiction (an IMAX film from Universal) based on fiction (a 3,000-year-old poem from Ancient Greece stuffed with mythical monsters), but Nolan has a reputation for having a meticulous approach to his films. His previous period pieces such as Dunkirk and Oppenheimer were widely regarded as faithful to the source material.
So why is Damon’s Odysseus dressed up in some random swords-and-sandals helmet and cape? Did the stylist just raid the leftovers from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II?
Mycenaean boar tusk helmet, 17th-10th Century BC.
— ArchaeoHistories (@histories_arch) October 20, 2024
These helmets are known from the Mycenaean world, even Odysseus in Homer's ''Iliad'' is described wearing one of them. The helmet was made through the use of slivers of boar tusks which were attached to a leather base, padded… pic.twitter.com/QUcVyR71vT
Given that Odysseus was fighting in Bronze Age Greece, he’d have fought in Mycenaean-era armour – a series of hammered bronze bands or plates that protected the torso and shoulders.
To the modern laypersons eye, it does look a bit alien in terms of what we imagine historical armour to be, but we know that it wasn’t purely ceremonial.
In 2024, a team of researchers from the University of Thessaly led by Andreas Flouris recreated sets of the 3,500-year-old Dendra armor (the oldest full set of Mycenaean armour ever found) and recruited 13 marines from the Hellenic Armed Forces to test it out in an 11-hour Bronze Age combat simulation. And it worked – the soldiers were able to pretend to fight each other, chariots, and ships without straining themselves.
Somehow I missed this - last month the University of Thessaly tested the Mycenaean Dendra armour for combat by putting it on Greek Marines in an “11-hour simulated Bronze Age combat protocol”!
— L E Jenks-Brown ✏️🏺🖊 (@LEJenksBrown) June 26, 2024
Not only did it prove battle-worthy, we now have THIS IMAGE🤯https://t.co/2nZkiWKGKU pic.twitter.com/qnuGfZmzDb
Unfortunately, it seems like the studio has gone with the safer option of sticking Odysseus in some Hoplite gear, which is technically a bit later in the historical timeline – although has been associated with the Trojan War in art, so it’s not wildly out of pocket. Still, the Hoplites were middle-class citizen-soldiers, and Odysseus was a king. His armour would have been ornate AF to denote his status.
That horse hair bristle helmet isn’t wildly inaccurate, per se, but it is the safe and boring option. Odysseus's nifty headgear gets a shout out in the original poem, where Meriones bestows upon him an heirloom helmet made of felt and leather adorned with boars tusks. There are even some surviving fragments of Mycenaean-era boars tusks helmets in museums, if Nolan wants to take a look.
Of course, the film has barely entered production. Due for a July 2026 release date, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Elliot Page, Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron have all been attached to the project too, but we still don’t know who they’ll be playing.
There’s plenty of time for the costume department to be let loose and give Damon a truly fearsome war fit.
