Watching Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey on the big screen for the first time is an experience I wish I could relive over and over again.

It's a testament to Nolan's writing and directing that The Odyssey's nearly three-hour run time feels like it's over in the span of a heartbeat, as you are drawn into a world of bloody battles, ancient monsters, perilous journeys, and a royal family ripped apart.

The Odyssey is based on the Greek poet Homer's classic work of the same name and follows King Odysseus as he attempts to travel home to the Greek isle of Ithaca on a ten-year-journey following the Trojan War.

Matt Damon plays Odysseus, who leaves behind his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) to fight for Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), the Greek king of Mycenae, in the Trojan War. The war lasts for a casual 10 years, after which Odysseus begins the perilous journey by sea home, where he and his men are faced with a series of life-and-death (mostly death, for the majority of his crew) situations, creatures, and curses that plague their journey.

Meanwhile, Queen Penelope and a now-adult Telemachus have waited 20 years for Odysseus' return, and each passing year without him cements their worry that he has died and will never return. Their home is now filled with power-hungry suitors all vying for Penelope's hand in marriage in order to become the new king of Ithaca, including the vicious Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who hatches a secret plot against Penelope and Telemachus.

Along with the incredible practical effects and powerhouse cast, The Odyssey's greatest strength is Nolan's script, pacing, and adept hand at storytelling. The original work is a sprawling story told across multiple decades, flashbacks and locations while also featuring a vast cast of characters and timelines. Yet Nolan has managed to deliver a movie that preserves the original tale while developing it into a captivating new movie that moves at breakneck speed and easily brings the audience along to enjoy the ride.

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Matt Damon's Odysseus anchors this mammoth tale and is fittingly allotted most of the screen time, with the rest of the sprawling cast of Oscar winners and A-Listers only given small handfuls of screen time with which to tell their characters' intricate tales. Yet it all comes together in a way that makes even the smallest story arcs feel like they are being portrayed by fully fleshed-out characters.

During The Odyssey screening, my phone was locked away in a security bag, so I couldn't exactly time how long Lupita Nyong'o appeared in the film, yet I'd wager her screen time clocked in around the five-minute mark, even though she was playing the film's only dual role. Nyong'o stars as sisters Helen of Troy and Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, and her performances in these roles, while brief, are so captivating that she perfectly captures the rage, sorrow, and power of these two women whose lives are intertwined in this epic story.

At the same time, Zendaya offers up a very restrained and other-worldly take on Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, in a performance that infamously received the only 'that was perfect' feedback from Nolan while filming.

Charlize Theron stars as a nymph named Calypso, who waylays Odysseus on her beautiful yet isolated island, and although much of her screen time is centered on delivering backstory and moving Odysseus' own story along, Theron manages to make Calypso a captivating character to watch, especially in the moments where she is sitting still and reacting in silence.

It also has to be said that one of the film's stand-out performances is also one that is very low on screen time yet high on impact. Samantha Morton's performance as Circe, a witch and goddess from the island of Aeaea, is incredibly haunting yet filled with raw emotion. And her scenes incorporate a series of body horror moments that made me smile in delight at the same time as my skin started to crawl.

And now we come to the real reason why The Odyssey is utterly unmissable.

Yes, Nolan has expertly adapted one of the greatest stories ever told.

And yes, he has stacked the cast with powerhouse actors who all turned in nuanced, complex, and emotionally fraught performances in this film.

But the real reason The Odyssey feels like a movie event that cannot be missed is the world Nolan has created on-screen, a world untouched by the growing hazard of soulless A1 film-making and muted CGI slop.

The Odyssey was filmed in multiple locations worldwide, including Greece, Morocco, Iceland, and Sicily and many of the seafaring scenes were filmed aboard the Draken, a reconstruction of a 1,000-year-old Viking ship on which the actors actually learnt to row, and the ship's real crew played extras.

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Practical effects very much take center stage in The Odyssey, including one particularly impressive handful of scenes featuring the Cyclops Polyphemus, with the infamous creature from Homer's tale created using a 60-foot mechanical puppet, animatronics, and performance from actor Bill Irwin (who also puppeteered the robots in Interstellar). The cast filmed with 'Polyphemus' in a real cave in Greece, and the result is a creature so lifelike that I was surprised he wasn't walking the red carpet next to Zendaya in one of her Law Roach-styled goddess gowns.

It's this attention to detail and reliance on practical effects, rather than an excessive budget (although that certainly helped), that makes The Odyssey the triumph that it is.

Along with the large-scale monsters and epic battle scenes, you'll be just as captivated by glimpses through the mist of sirens waiting to lure sailors to their deaths or the nightmarish trek to Circe's cabin, past human-like animals with a warning in their eyes.

Now, I know in this economy and climate that it's not possible for everyone to make a trip to the cinema. But it also has to be said that the best way to enjoy The Odyssey is on the big screen, in IMAX if you can, because this is a larger-than-life story told in excruciatingly careful detail and you need to experience the true scale of it.

The Odyssey is in cinemas now; it is rated M.

Feature Image: Universal Pictures Australia.

There's only one way to enjoy The Odyssey, the biggest movie of the year.

Laura Brodnik