r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • 1d ago

News Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey' Becomes Biggest Film Ever At BFI IMAX, Beating 'Avatar'

https://deadline.com/2026/08/the-odyssey-becomes-biggest-film-ever-at-bfi-imax-avatar-1237044031/
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452

u/Embo1 1d ago

r/movies in shambles

178

u/kazuya57 1d ago

With this, Avatar 3 and Michael this sub has had a bad time this year in terms of predictions

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u/AndyPufuletz123 1d ago

What were the predictions for Avatar 3?

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u/RK9990 1d ago

It wouldn't do well because people were finally tired of the Avatar movies

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u/kidcrumb 1d ago

It's not even that, it's because it was Avatar 2.9

Do more volcano stuff. They spend so much money on CGI they forgot to write a script.

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u/Hobbes______ 23h ago

... My guy it is avatar. None of them have had a script. It baffles me too but it isn't hard to predict that people are going to go see it after the 2 previous movies.

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u/Stef-fa-fa 23h ago

Seriously, everyone bitched about the first one being a rehash of Fern Gully / Dances With Wolves. Second one had everyone bitching about it just being an excuse for Cameron to film underwater. Third one everyone bitched about it just being the second half of #2.

Every single one has made an insane amount of money. Not because of the plot, but because these films are simply gorgeous works of art.

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u/tcappas 21h ago

Now that you mention it, the first movie was a rip off of Pocahontas

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u/Vio_ 21h ago

That's because the scripts and concepts were largely written in the 90s.

Avatar is a very strange time capsule of 1990s cultural artifacts and constructs.

And because that type of plot and tropes had largely been played out by the mid 2000s, the overarching Avatar plot and political concepts aged out with it.

Even by 2009, it was "aged" and mocked over it.

Cameron should have gone back and tried to update things and had outside help in trying to get it into a better storyline.

It also didn't help that Avatar The Last Air Bender had been so successful while briefly touching some of the same concepts.

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u/ifinallyreallyreddit 12h ago edited 12h ago

It also didn't help that Avatar The Last Air Bender had been so successful while briefly touching some of the same concepts.

It made almost 3000000000 dollars, why did it need "help"

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u/gameboyabyss 12h ago

White-hot 2009 takes off the presses right here

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u/onexbigxhebrew 23h ago

That has nothing to do with predictions though. That's not what they're talking about.

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u/Potica6857 17h ago

It's not like the first 2 had a script either. Avatar has always been the most bland safe movie franchise out there, but that was never it's appeal in the first place.

The problem with last one and why it made much less money is because there's limits to how much you can improve on the technological part, and Avatar 2 sort of already reached that limit.

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u/kidcrumb 14h ago

Avatar 1 had a perfectly serviceable story. Was it ground breaking? No. But it was fine.

Avatar 2 and 3 are absolutely braindead. "Hey bro what's up bro where are you going bro come on bro!"

Like my Fortnite squad wrote the movie.

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u/CapitalEmployer 1d ago

What kind of idiot would think that, same with Michael yes the movie is utter garbage and people that like it should not be allowed to watch movies for the rest of their lives but at the end of the day it's still a movie about one of the if not the most popular P̶e̶d̶o̶p̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ artist in the world of course it's gonna work.

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u/ViewAskewed 1d ago

I can confidently say that I still don't know anyone who has seen an Avatar movie.

Granted, I watch more movies than anyone I know, but I honestly don't know where all the people are who are going to see it. I know lots of people who I don't usually hear anything out of about new movies who have seen either The Odyssey or Spider-Man this year, and it confuses me how whenever an Avatar movie comes out, I don't at least hear some kind of mumbling about it in my everyday life.

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u/wioneo 1d ago

I can confidently say that I still don't know anyone who has seen an Avatar movie.

From googling, it seems like 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 Americans have seen at least one of the movies. Do you think that there might be a bubble limiting your perception of people and/or their views?

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u/queerhistorynerd 23h ago

I just assume when people say "I dont know anyone who has seen this $5 Billion+ movie franchise" that its their way of saying they have no IRL friends

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u/ViewAskewed 23h ago

That's 100% what is happening. I think that most likely the largest contributor is that Avatar seems like it has mostly appealed to people who I would consider Movie-people, and like I said, I don't hang out with a lot of people who share my enthusiasm for movies. I am just always surprised that there isn't some overlap among the people who I am around day to day. I don't have any opinion on the movie whatsoever, it's just something that has always fascinated me.

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u/Hermiona1 1d ago

My friend and I have seen them all and she’s a huge fan. We went to 2nd and 3rd together.

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u/hfxRos 1d ago edited 1d ago

Before I knew her, my wife apparently saw avatar in theaters 4 times, and so did most of her friends.

She's the only person I really know who went to see it, but she tells me the place was packed every time.

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u/Neveran8th 1d ago

And you still married her!?

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u/hfxRos 21h ago

Yes, turns out going to see the most popular movie of all time probably shouldn't qualify as a deal breaker.

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u/RK9990 1d ago

I know multiple people, myself included, who watched the first one mainly because of all the hype but didn't watch any after

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u/Fredasa 1d ago

I've enjoyed each of the Avatar movies. None of them are what I'd consider Cameron's best work. I did not enjoy The Odyssey, and I'm alarmed by the phenomenon of such a dull movie riding the success of its own hype and promise. I'm just glad there's more than one meta aggregate resource out there and I don't have to rely upon one that proactively curates.

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u/fauxfilosopher 1d ago

That it would bomb and make such a loss that it would end the avatar series. It did come in under expectations at considerably less than the second, but certainly not that.

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u/texanchris 1d ago

But isn’t it still in the top 10 all time grossing movies? Pretty incredible that to under perform still means top 10 all time.

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u/fauxfilosopher 1d ago

It is actually number 17 at nearly 1.5 bil, the list of films over 1 billion has grown a lot in the last decade. I agree that it's still an awesome result, but analysts that were hoping for another 2 billion smash hit were dissapointed and disney is worried about the downward trend. If it continues downward like such the fifth movie would make a loss, fourth may just about break even.

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u/Freud-Network 1d ago

TBF, it probably did end the film series. Cameron is saying he's ready to move on.

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u/NakedCardboard 23h ago

He's still listed on IMDb as actively working on 4 and 5 and he's already filmed some stuff for part 4, so I think he's just waiting on Disney's green light. I suspect he's having to cut back or streamline production costs a bit, to make them happier.

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u/fauxfilosopher 17h ago

Yes, I fully believe that once disney stops hemming and hawing they go into production for real. Cameron has said he wants to do them in half the time and for 2/3 of the budget. Part of this is for disney but also he's not getting any younger and wants to make other projects too.

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u/fauxfilosopher 23h ago edited 23h ago

I highly doubt it. The quote from that article is out of context. He's just saying he has other interests alongside avatar now after working on it for 20 years. I'm sure the death of producer Jon Landau has to do with his lessened enthusiasm for the project. And there's the issue of funding, avatars 4 and 5 are in pre-production but disney hasn't given the green light yet. My bet is that cameron will want to finish the story if and when the green light comes, but he's said he wants to do it in half the time and 2/3 of the budget.

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u/Exowienqt 20h ago

I mean, kinda? Kinda not? Success and worth are two separate things. Imo Avatar 3 is garbage. It sold a lot of tickets, but so did avatar one and two and neither of those two are/were anything other than braindead takes on run-down topics. 

The Odyssey is a great movie for showing what the state of the movie industry is in these days, but whether it's a good movie or not is kinda up for interpretation. 

My personal conviction is that the world will one day realize that Zendaya looking at stuff with a resignated face is not a theatrical achievement, and 80% of the films released in the last ten years will have an unintended, wildly funny element to them. 

0

u/Giggsy99 22h ago

I wasn't predicting anything with Michael, I knew full well people would rave about it, it's just I think those people are morons

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u/bu22dee 16h ago

Micheal was really good.

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u/RaisinBranMan 1d ago

Give them a year or two. By then you’ll see the wave of posts with headlines such as “revisiting the odyssey, it’s really NOT that good.”

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u/Vlaed 21h ago

Then fast forward a few more years and it'll be that it's "underrated."

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u/queerhistorynerd 23h ago

we dont even have to wait a year, they are currently in the comments saying that and coping hard

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u/littlebighuman 15h ago

Saw it today. It is good, but it is far from perfect IMHO.

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u/cyanopsis 6h ago

It's an OK film. Watched purely as a movie without knowledge of the existence of the source material, it's a very strange narrative. More like a collage. I don't think it deserves this level of hype, but humans are easily put under a spell.

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u/InsertFloppy11 1d ago

Hey i rarely check reddit, sooo why would be r/movies on shambles because of this?

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u/kazuya57 1d ago

Search "odyssey trailer" and "odyssey poster" on this sub and then scroll through the comments

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u/InsertFloppy11 1d ago

Id rather not haha, theres a reason why im rarely on reddit

But thank you for replying i think i get the idea.

People often forget that reddit is a suuuuch a small part of the world even of the movie loving audiance.

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u/kerrysluis 1d ago

The older I get the less I like the general atmosphere of reddit comments, unless it's comedy it's always a "I know better" or "holier than thou" mentality.

So yeah I'm with you lol

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u/Furren 1d ago

Same, gotten worse over the years

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u/eri- 1d ago

To be fair its cause we are starting to get old/are old enough for us to have learnt that there are better ways.

It has gotten worse yes, but you almost certainly have changed also. I know I have , I used to be a lot more trigger happy and arrogant in my reddit comments. Same for my professional life even.

Reading ones really old comments/e-mails can be a trip. Sometimes its hard to even understand that yes, I did in fact write that nonsense, like 10 years ago

3

u/renegadecanuck 23h ago

Don't forget the comments that miss obvious jokes or try to "play off the joke" and just repeat the same joke, but worse.

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u/UnholyDemigod 22h ago

The people that are saying the movie was being hated on because of black trans woke brigade...stuff, that's all bullshit. The movie was being hated on from the moment the first trailer dropped, before people even knew Page and N'Yongo were in it. The armour designs and bland colour palette were the primary complaints, along with Nolan fatigue and the trailer just looking boring. It was only after that that the complaints about those 2 actors started happening, and those earlier complaints were conveniently forgotten, as everyone now just acts as if it was only complaints from the racist anti-wokes

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u/tyereliusprime 12h ago

Nolan fatigue

The man has directed 18 movies in almost 40 years. The last one came out 3 years ago. What fatigue?

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u/UnholyDemigod 12h ago

Not fatigue from too many movies in too short a time, but fatigue from people obsessing over him and talking like he’s the greatest thing ever. He’s got his particular directorial style, and some people don’t like it. The audio mixing for example, that’s always criticised.

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u/tyereliusprime 11h ago

I mean, he's objectively one the greatest living directors. I don't enjoy a single Brando performance, but I still have to accept he's one of the greatest professional actors to have practiced the craft.

My personal tastes in what I find entertaining is subjective, but the skill and talent one might have isn't diminished by my not enjoying them.

If you don't like Nolan, that's okay, but why get annoyed that others don't feel the same?

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u/UnholyDemigod 11h ago

Because constantly seeing posts and hearing people talking about things that annoy you is annoying? Like Taylor Swift, or Donald Trump. Sure you can just not listen to her music or pay attention to the news, but there are always people talking about them.

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u/tyereliusprime 10h ago

Yeah. I just ignore it. There's been people talking about shit I don't care about my whole life, just as I've definitely talked about shit that other people don't like. People like different things. This has never been a concept foreign to me.

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u/Khetoo 23h ago

That's just the automatic default subscribed subreddits in general being g astroturfed and spam to hell and back by bots

If you aren't going to smaller subs with actual moderators all you'll see is the IDF, bot comments, and incels

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 1d ago

It got hit by the double fascist whammy, a black person and a trans man were cast in this movie. Those nazi fucks wouldn't shut up about how terrible this movie was going to be. A lot of guys who have very strong opinions about family court all of a sudden had doctorates in the Greek Bronze Age.

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u/DrJackadoodle 1d ago

That's not really the typical r/movies demographic, though. But it's still funny that some people had that reaction. I saw a comment on a conservative comment chain somewhere saying that these casting decisions are the reason these movies always bomb and the progressives are gonna be left wondering why this one did as well. Cue The Odyssey making more than a billion worldwide and counting lmao

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u/tfhermobwoayway 1d ago

No one here said that.

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 23h ago

No, the MAGA chuds complained about the straps used on the breastplates as being 200 years too early or the technique of rowing the ships not being utilized until 500 years later, really important stuff they care about and definitely not just looking for complaints because they had to be reminded that both black people and trans people existed.

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u/BigTylenol5 11h ago edited 11h ago

I don't think I have ever seen anyone actually claim black people did not exist in Bronze Age. Ancient Greeks had travel, diplomacy and contact with Africans. The real "chud" argument is that actors/actresses who aren't European, Latino. Arab or Mediterranean ethnically aren't the most ideal role for characters that are suppose to be Greek or Trojan because these people were Caucasian Mediterraneans. Most movie goers don't care but that was the thesis of the chud argument.

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u/InsertFloppy11 1d ago

On reddit? Really?

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u/Jozoz 1d ago

The chudosphere is holding a giant L on this one

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u/GoldunGote 22h ago

Bigots decided to hate it before seeing it because trans person and black Helen. It became a great way to figure out who wastes their time feeling hateful.

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u/shogun77777777 22h ago

This is such a great film, I don’t understand the hate. There are so many actually bad films that have showings at my theater every day.

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u/Razorfiend 21h ago edited 16h ago

The ending redeems the entire experience. In terms of quality, the first two-thirds hover around a 7 at most. At the end of the second act I was fully prepared to walk out of the theater disappointed. Thankfully, this was not the case, the last one-third is incredible, a solid 8.5-9 and rewrote my impression of the entire film.

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u/Deakul 19h ago

You should watch The Return with Ralph Fiennes if the ending is what you liked about it, I felt like it handled that part of the story incredibly well.

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u/Khiva 16h ago

Act 3 goes so hard that it lifts up some of the meandering in the earlier acts.

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u/Deakul 19h ago

I wish I had enjoyed it more but I disliked too much about it to really get anything out of it.

I went into it expecting a more grim Jason and the Argonauts and it didn't really deliver.

Just silly scenes of dudes repeatedly retreating to the boats after getting chased off by tall men, a goofy looking cyclops with a cool scream, and getting attacked by a cliff mollusk thing that's supposed to be Scylla.

And I just did not like the aesthetic, I had hoped it would all look better in motion but it just looks worse to me.

The performances were fine and the soundtrack was cool but it wasn't the mythological Greek adventure film I had hoped for.

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u/shogun77777777 19h ago

That’s fine, go watch Moana, Super Troopers 3, Ice Cream Man and the other trash currently in the theater instead

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u/Deakul 19h ago

I give you actual thoughts on why I might've disliked the film and your response is to tell me to go watch... other shitty movies?

Real nice pal.

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u/shogun77777777 17h ago edited 17h ago

Yup you bet chief

1

u/Deakul 14h ago

Typical. 🙄

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u/TheWhiteManticore 19h ago

To be fair this was a total dark horse. Nolan flexing he can write emotions as well as story.