I went into The Odyssey feeling optimistic about Christopher Nolan‘s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. Having only just read the story within the past year, I won’t pretend I marched into the 2026 movie with a list of things that absolutely needed to be done to my scholarly satisfaction, but my fingers were crossed for something special. Overall I loved the movie, and it definitely helped to deepen my appreciation for the story. Amidst its three-hour runtime, we got fascinating characters, incredible (and sometimes terrifying) imagery and a thoughtful approach to depicting the impact of war. There was also one sequence that completely blew my mind, and I doubt I’m alone.
Seeing how Odysseus and his men carried out his plan to sneak into Troy inside the horse was nothing short of riveting. So you can imagine how floored I was this week, when I learned that the concept of the partially submerged horse was something Nolan had been noodling around with since he was attached to direct a movie more than two decades ago.
When speaking with Jon Stewart about The Odyssey, Nolan spoke about the challenge of presenting the Trojan Horse concept to a modern audience.
We all know when you see a Trojan horse that it’s stuffed with Greeks, you know? So you’re starting from a difficult position. It’s like, how do you sell that concept?
He made a fair point there, then went on to explain that this was a problem he tasked himself with solving back when he was attached to direct 2004’s Troy, the loose Iliad adaptation written by David Benioff, which would ultimately be directed by Wolfgang Peterson. As Nolan noted, the horse isn’t featured in The Iliad, but they put it in the script.
And so I had to sort of figure out, well, what’s my approach to it, and I came up with this idea of the horse half buried in the sand, about to be destroyed or carried away by the waves, so that, as the Trojans find it, the last thing it looks like, you know, there’s no wheels. It doesn’t look like something that’s meant to be carried into the city, and that image stuck with me for decades.
We first glimpse the horse near the start of the movie. Seeing how it’s partially buried in sand on the shore, it really doesn’t look like an obvious attempt to sneak a boatload of soldiers into the fortified city. Rather than the usual depiction of the horse with all four hooves on the ground, this version of the statue is bucking upward, making it kind of impossible to fathom it could be anything other than what it appears to be (and certainly not a structure filled with Greek soldiers).
It isn’t until later in the film that we’re able to see how it all work, and it’s truly brilliant. It’s not like Odysseus and all of his people are securely set up in comfortable positions, snickering at the Trojans who are about to let them through their impassible wall. These Greek soldiers are essentially stacked on top of one another, with some drowning due to the tide flooding the lower part of the horse, and others getting literally crapped on by the people above them. They also have to try to be completely quiet and avoid being stabbed when some of the Trojans poke their swords in. The whole thing seems like a nightmare situation, but one that yields major dividends when they’re ultimately dragged inside the city and able to pull off their attack.
As Nolan explained it to Stewart, making the whole thing believable was his initial goal with the concept he’d been hanging onto all this time:
I really wanted to do that, and flesh out the whole sequence. Because, to me, that was the excitement. It’s like, can we present this to an audience in a way that they can believe it.
Mission accomplished! This is one of those movie scenes that will undoubtedly live rent-free in my mind for as long as I live. The fact that the idea was something that sparked inside Nolan’s imagination more than two decades ago is a great piece of the lore. It also leaves me to wonder what other ideas he has in that mind of his, just waiting for the opportunity for him to bring it to life.