Christopher Nolan took cues from “Star Wars” when he crafted the opening of “The Odyssey.”
The epic new film in the director’s filmography opens with the words “A time of apparent magic” which was born out of a hook the director found in “Star Wars.” He wanted the sword and sandals epic based on Homer’s poem to evoke the feeling of the sci-fi classic’s opening crawl – and was specific about wording because he wanted his story that has real magic to feel as grounded as possible.
“One of my earliest movie experiences, a very profound one, was seeing George Lucas’s first ‘Star Wars.’ He began that film with a title that said ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.’ That immediately told me how to watch the films,” Nolan said in an interview with a Chinese media show promoting the film’s Asia release. “It put me in the right frame of mind to receive the imagery. I felt with this film, I was chasing that kind of experience where you want to create a world that the audience loses themselves in and takes on its own terms. So I was looking for that as an example, as a way of giving a phrase that would help the audience understand the terms of the story, and the word ‘apparent’ in particular to me, was very much about acknowledging the idea that yes, if we tell the story realistically, to some extent, we have to explain why there’s magic in a way. “
You can watch his explanation in the video below.
He added: “And I was very interested in the idea that a person living in the Bronze Age, there’s magic all around you. There are things that you cannot explain, and so there are fanciful and sometimes correct and incorrect explanations for the things you’re seeing, the things you’re experiencing, the mysteries of life in a way. I wanted to put that in people’s heads as they start watching the film.”
Despite some negative thoughts from “The Odyssey” translator Emily Wilson, the latest Nolan film has proven to be a massive success at the box office. In its fourth weekend, “The Odyssey” added an impressive $52 million from Imax screenings. All that while competing against the second weekend of Marvel’s massive “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
“The Odyssey” has become the highest grossing movie in Imax history, passing the lifetime $256 million gross of James Cameron’s “Avatar” with releases in China and Japan still to come. In total “The Odyssey” has grossed $289 million from Imax screens with an overall global total of $1.1 billion and counting.
