News The Batman: Part II The Batman Part II Will Skulk Into Theaters in 2028 After Release Date Delay The delay comes with new footage from Matt Reeves’ “camera test” By Molly Templeton | Published on July 15, 2026 Image: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Warner Bros. You think the break between seasons of Severance is bad? Consider the space between Batmans: Robert Pattinson stalked onto the screen as a moody Bruce Wayne back in 2022. And with a recent shift in the Warner Bros. release schedule, he won’t be returning to theaters until 2028. The shift is part of a domino effect caused by the studio moving J.J. Abrams’ upcoming film The Great Beyond into The Batman Part II’s old slot of October 1, 2027. That punted the Bat all the way into the following year. Director Matt Reeves hopped on social media this morning after the announcement to share a short little video posted to Vimeo. It’s simply labeled “camera test” and shows Pattinson’s Batman turning slowly to face the camera while dramatic music plays. It looks a bit dark. Along with Pattinson, The Batman Part II is set to star returning cast Colin Farrell (Oz Cobb/The Penguin), Jeffrey Wright (Commissioner Gordon), Andy Serkis (Alfred Pennyworth), and Barry Keoghan (The Joker). New cast members include Marvel stars Scarlett Johansson and Sebastian Stan along with Jayme Lawson, Charles Dance, Gil Perez-Abraham, and Sebastian Koch. As Deadline notes, this date change happens “as the pending Paramount acquisition of the 103-year-old Warner Bros. remains held up by myriad antitrust lawsuits including the attorney general of California, New York and ten other states.” The Batman Part II will be in theaters on February 18, 2028, when it will go up against an untitled Disney film and Takashi Yamazaki’s Grandgear.[end-mark] The post <i>The Batman Part II</i> Will Skulk Into Theaters in 2028 After Release Date Delay appeared first on Reactor.

News The Vampire Lestat The Vampire Lestat’s Live Concert Will Stream on AMC+ Please give all these people Emmys already By Molly Templeton | Published on July 15, 2026 Image: AMC+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: AMC+ Back in June, the impossible happened: The vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) played a real-life, sold-out, one-night-only show at New York City’s Beacon Theatre. Well, not exactly “sold out,” since tickets were free, but they were virtually impossible to come by. Clips and photos flooded social media in the lead-up to The Vampire Lestat’s season premiere, but none of it was quite like the experience of being there. I mean, I imagine. I wasn’t there. I was at home on the couch. But now AMC is bringing us all a gift: The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only LIVE is coming to streaming next month. As a sort of goofy teaser, they’re showing highlights as part of the show’s San Diego Comic-Con panel next week. Those of us who won’t be in San Diego will have to wait another month. In this season of The Vampire Lestat—the show formerly known as Interview with the Vampire—the narrative focus shifts from Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) to his rather more flamboyant ex, the vampire Lestat, as he goes on tour with his new rock band, his new rock sound, and his plentiful memories of his long, dramatic, traumatic life. The show is, to put it lightly, an extremely rich text, and it comes complete with meaningful concert sequences. But it’ll be something different entirely to watch Reid and a band (though not the same band from the show) tear through these songs live. The live band includes show composer Daniel Hart along with Matthew Santos, Meg Toohey, Bobak Loftipour, and Nelly Efron. The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only LIVE arrives on AMC+ on Sunday, August 23. Mark your calendars in glitter.[end-mark] The post <i>The Vampire Lestat</i>’s Live Concert Will Stream on AMC+ appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club Westworld: It’s All Fun and Games Until the Robots Start Shooting Saddle up for a deep dive into the making of an iconic sci fi Western and its intriguing cinematic legacy… By Kali Wallace | Published on July 15, 2026 Credit: MGM Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: MGM Studios Westworld (1973) Written and directed by Michael Crichton. Starring Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, and James Brolin. In March of 1974, about nine months after Westworld premiered in theaters, Bantam Books published a paperback of the film’s screenplay. The book opened with a forward by Saul David, former story editor at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and an account of the film’s production by director and screenwriter Michael Crichton. None of this was unusual, but it is notable for just how frank David and Crichton were in their introductions to the book. Normally when I research a film, I have to read through later interviews, cast and crew retrospectives, and critical reassessments to learn all the dirt about the production. It doesn’t usually come from the director himself not even a year after the movie came out. The Bantam version of the Westworld screenplay isn’t terribly hard to find online, and Crichton’s introduction is well worth reading. He’s unapologetically straightforward in his report about how the movie was made and all the problems along the way. For example: “The first problem, to be blunt, was the studio. From the outset, the executives in the Thalberg building were divided on the project: some championed it, others loathed it. The result was something like civil war, and no more pleasant than it sounds. There were arguments every few hours; I threatened to quit every three or four days, after episodes of massive depression.” And that was just during pre-production. This wasn’t a case of a film’s crew trying to shift blame or salvage their reputations. Westworld was both a critical and a commercial success; it made back twice its entire budget in the first week and received generally favorable reviews from critics. It ended up being MGM’s most successful movie of 1973, so the studio certainly wasn’t unhappy with it. (Completely unrelated to Westworld but an interesting note in film history: That linked Variety edition reporting the 25 highest-grossing films of 1973 discusses a couple of entries that might seem curious to modern box office watchers. The Devil in Miss Jones at #6 and Deep Throat [1972] at #11, both directed by Gerard Damiano, are two wildly successful pornographic films sitting right there on the list alongside more typical theater fare. Variety attributes the success to a “porno rampage”—a term which should itself be a porn film title—in which watching porn in theaters became briefly chic among a larger-than-usual audience. Use this to impress friends with random movie trivia: Deep Throat beat Jesus Christ Superstar at the box office.) Back to Westworld. Crichton was not a completely new director at the time, but he wasn’t terribly experienced either. He was, then and now, primarily known as an author. He had written his first novel, the thriller Odds On, while he was attending Harvard Medical School. He published the book in 1966 under the pseudonym John Lange; at that time, he still assumed he would become a doctor in the future and didn’t want to worry about his writing impacting his professional reputation. He wrote several more crime novels over the next few years, as well as a medical thriller under the name Jeffrey Hudson. Then, in 1969, the same year he graduated from medical school, he published a science fiction novel under his own name. The Andromeda Strain was an instant, runaway success, the kind of success that most authors can only dream about. In 1971 it was made into a film directed by Robert Wise, the director behind The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). (Don’t worry, The Andromeda Strain is on my to-watch list.) The book’s success meant Crichton didn’t have to worry about being a doctor—something he had already decided he didn’t want to do—and could instead focus entirely on writing. He also got into directing; he directed the made-for-television film Pursuit (1972), which is based on one of his Lange thrillers. Because he apparently never stopped working for even a single second, 1972 was also when Crichton wrote the screenplay for Westworld. The story is well known and fairly simple, so I’ll just summarize it briefly: We follow two men, Peter and John (played by Richard Benjamin and James Brolin), who visit a high-tech adult theme park where life-like robots allow guests to experience versions of the American Old West, the courtly Middle Ages, or debauched ancient Rome. The experiences costs them $1000 per day, which is roughly equivalent to $7500 per day in today’s money, which puts it on par with chartering a medium-sized fancy yacht in the Mediterranean or going on a private luxury safari in the Okavango Delta. (I had to research to find those comparisons. I promise I do not know how much those things cost off the top of my head.) We don’t see much of the Roman park in the film but everything we learn about it makes it sound like a big ol’ orgy. The Delos Corporation designers did not consult Mary Beard during development. The two men spend their time in the Old West, having gunfights and trysts with (robotic) sex workers. The madam of the brothel should look familiar to you: She’s played by Majel Barrett of Star Trek fame. (I already checked and there is no Westworld/Star Trek crossover on AO3 featuring Lwaxana Troi masquerading among androids, so feel free to write it yourselves.) While the men are having a grand bachelor weekend, the robots begin to malfunction and disregard programming that prevents them from harming guests. Despite warnings from the robot’s head supervisor (played by Alan Oppenheimer) that the malfunction seems to be spreading, the park operators don’t want the bad press and loss of revenue that will come from shutting the park down to address the problem. So they let it play out, and by the time the Gunslinger robot (Yul Brynner) kills John, it’s too late. The robots go on a rampage, killing all of the guests except Peter. This includes a long, tense, and really quite fantastic sequence of the Gunslinger hunting Peter through all the parks and into the facility’s operations tunnels. In the end, Peter is the only survivor, although the movie ends before we find out if he actually escapes the park. Crichton began shopping his screenplay around to studios. As he wrote in the Bantam introduction, “Every one turned it down, except for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. That immediately presented a problem…. Nobody who had a choice made a picture at Metro, but then we didn’t have a choice.” Crichton does go on to say that MGM head of production Dan Melnick did everything he could to minimize the meddling in Westworld, but it was still a project fraught with problems from the start. The studio gave the film an initial budget of $1 million, then grudgingly increased it by $250,000, but that was still a very thin margin for a major studio sci fi film, especially one starring a few well-known actors. In a 2014 interview, producer Paul Lazarus talked a bit about the casting. I’ve seen some articles assume that the film sought out Yul Brynner as the Gunslinger because of his fame from The Magnificent Seven (1960), John Sturges’ Old West remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954). But it sounds like it actually happened the other way around: Brynner’s agent called up Lazarus and said Brynner very much needed money, so he wanted to be in the movie. Lazarus was surprised; he clarified with the agent that the Gunslinger role had almost no dialogue and was therefore a strange role for a major star to want. The agent insisted: his actor needed the money. Brynner’s payment would be $75,000. In spite of that bit of serendipity, neither the cast nor the script were settled until one or two days before filming began. Crichton also mentions art director Herman Blumenthal in his production account; he states that Blumenthal, who had previously worked on Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s outrageously expensive Cleopatra (1963), was able to work wonders within a very restrictive budget, mostly by reusing rooms, hallways, and staircases multiple times, and filming one location (the hovercraft interior) twice and flipping the film to create a mirrored perspective and make the room seem twice as large. They also used real rattlesnakes (with their venom milked out) for the scene where Brolin’s character is bitten. And Brolin was actually bitten during one take. That’s not important to the discussion of this movie. I just wanted to share it because filmmaking in the ’70s was wild and actors just got bitten by real rattlesnakes on set sometimes. But none of that is what the Westworld production is known for, right? The production is famous in film history for being the first movie in the world to use digital special effects. When he wrote the screenplay, Crichton included some scenes to be shown from the Gunslinger’s point of view. He wanted the Gunslinger’s vision to show “a bizarre, computerized image of the world” but wasn’t quite sure how to go about achieving it. At the time, the main cinematic reference for a computer’s-eye view was HAL 9000’s wide-angle lens in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). That distortion works extremely well in 2001, but it wasn’t technological enough for what Crichton wanted. He wrote, “We reviewed standard special-effects techniques and rejected them all; they were too familiar, and shared a ‘filmic’ quality—no matter how strange, they still looked like photographic images. I didn’t want that.” Crichton knew that computers could generate images, so he first approached the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to see what they could do. They replied that the two minutes of footage he wanted would take nine months and cost $200,000, so that was out of the question. He turned to experimental filmmaker John Whitney for ideas; Whitney in turn introduced Crichton to his computer-savvy son John Whitney Jr. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen his work before; he worked with Information International Inc. when they were doing effects work on Tron (1982) before spinning off to co-found Digital Productions and working on The Last Starfighter (1984). Whitney Jr. is the one who came up with the pixelated version of the Gunslinger’s point of view that appears in the film. Until I read the The New Yorker article about Westworld’s digital effects, it had honestly never occurred to me to wonder where pixelated images came from. They’ve been commonplace in media for my entire life—use to obscure faces or body parts, for example—that I never thought about how somebody had to do it first. Well, that somebody was John Whitney Jr., who approached his future employer Information International Inc. to find the necessary equipment and expertise. Even then, it took months of trial and error to come up with images that looked right. It took so long that Crichton and Lazarus were screening versions of Westworld for MGM executives with missing scene placeholders right up until the finish line. There is another notable experience from those post-production days that’s worth talking about: Crichton realized that he hated his own movie. He said, “Two weeks after shooting, I saw the assembled film for the first time. It was horrible. It was boring, contrived, self-indulgent and slack.” Editor David Bretherton told him not to lose heart. Even though they didn’t have a lot of footage—a cheap production meant they filmed as little as they could get away with—they were able to cut the film into something Crichton thought was passable. Based on his own words in 1973, it sounds like he remained pretty ambivalent about the film even after it was released and well-received. He wrote, “Westworld was not intended to be profound. Neither was it intended to be stupid, but our clear goal was entertainment.” I think that’s an important framework for understanding the film. It’s a film with a lot of interesting parts, but it isn’t trying to be bigger and deeper than it is. It also has some weak elements that keep it from working quite as well as it should, but I don’t think any of them are fatal flaws. And, in my opinion, the technological stuff is not one of those weak elements. I love that we never find out what caused the malfunction, only that it spreads on its own through programming the computers wrote themselves. The park experts describe a computer virus without actually calling it a virus, because while the idea of self-replicating computer programs had been around since John von Neumann proposed it in the ’40s, the term was first used in sci fi novels around about the same time Westworld was being made. (David Gerrold’s When HARLIE Was One [1972] and John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider [1975] are generally acknowledged as the first books to feature computer viruses, but the rigorous technical definition of “computer virus” came from the work of Fred Cohen and Len Adlemen in the ’80s.) So it’s not the computer stuff that feels flimsy to me in Westworld. It’s a couple other things. One problem, I think, is that Westworld and the other two parks just seem so boring to visit. Some of this is a problem of portrayal: If we are to believe that the primary draws of these parks are consequence-free fighting and fucking, but the movie only shows us the fighting in any detail, and that fighting is all from the clichéd fantasies of mediocre men, the movie has to balance making those fantasies both mundane and engaging. I’m not sure it manages that, although I do think Benjamin and Brolin do a great job as ordinary men getting into the spirit of the park, right up until it turns on them. But I also think the film could do more with its central critique of corporate profit-chasing. If you have ever gone down the grim internet rabbit hole exploring the history of amusement park deaths (it’s okay, we’ve all been there, usually at 3 a.m. and filled with regret), you know that parks, in the real world, will sometimes put up with a rather alarming number of fatalities before shutting down. I think a bit more focus on the corporate callousness would have gone a long way toward emphasizing that point. Most people don’t get many do-overs in life, but Crichton managed to wrangle himself the best do-over of all time in this matter. He would go on to direct a few more movies, starting with Coma (1978), an adaptation of the Robin Cook novel. But his heart was always in writing novels, and in 1990 he would publish Jurassic Park, which takes the same basic premise as Westworld and fixes both of those problems in truly glorious style. What makes the park seem irresistibly appealing? Dinosaurs! What makes the corporate negligence more enraging? When the attractions eat people! (We’ll watch Jurassic Park [1993] soon, I promise.) Crichton concludes the paperback introduction by saying, “I like to think that audiences have fun with this film. We had fun making it.” He needn’t have worried. Even though some parts of it don’t feel as strong as they could be, it is overall a fun, entertaining film. It’s also a neat example of how a single captivating character performance can have a powerful impact on future films. Brynner’s Gunslinger was the inspiration for both Michael Meyers in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and for the Terminator in James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984). Which means, by extension, that the Gunslinger is the shadow behind just about every cinematic instance of a silent, persistent, implacable, black-clad villain hunting down the protagonists. Maybe it became a cliché, but I can’t find it in myself to care, because it’s such a cool image. What do you think of Westworld? How do you think it holds up today? How much money would you pay to visit one of those parks? One final note: You notice that I have not said a single word about the HBO series Westworld that ran from 2016 to 2022. That’s because I haven’t seen it. At all. I’ve never seen a single minute of it. I gather that it’s about the park robots becoming sentient in some way? Please chime in below with your thoughts on how the television reboot compares! Next week: I know absolutely nothing about John Boorman’s Zardoz except the existence of that outfit. You know the one. Oh, and there’s a computer that controls people, which is my excuse for indulging my curiosity and finally watching it. Find it online.[end-mark] The post <i>Westworld</i>: It’s All Fun and Games Until the Robots Start Shooting appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Five SFF Works Based Around Sleep or Sleeplessness Be it a supernatural curse or ennui-driven insomnia, messing with someone’s ability to sleep can have dire consequences… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on July 15, 2026 Sleepwalker’s World cover art by Frank Kelly Freas Comment 0 Share New Share Sleepwalker’s World cover art by Frank Kelly Freas Nothing builds appreciation for sleep quite like a life-long sleep disorder… or so I thought until my bed frame spontaneously reconfigured itself into what we up here in Canada like to call “a death trap”1. It turns out beds have a tremendous impact on the quality of sleep. Who knew?2 Science fiction and fantasy authors have long been aware of sleep’s potential where plots are concerned—not simply as a means of transporting people from one era to another, as useful as that is. Sleep can figure in so many ways, as these books demonstrate. Sleepwalker’s World by Gordon R. Dickson (1971) Core Taps combined with broadcast power solved the terrestrial energy crisis3. No person on Earth needs ever lack for energy again. True, broadcast power came with an unforeseen complication—most humans within range of it fall into a deep sleep—but it is a small price to pay for prosperity. Rafe Harald, one of the few immune to the induced slumber, returns from the Moon to discover that his friend Ab Leesing is missing. Rafe sets out to find Ab. What he finds are secrets… and a monster. Traditionally, every SF author is allowed one impossible assumption. In this case, it is that humans would be so desperate for energy that they would completely ignore their chosen energy generation system’s appalling externality. Obviously, a straightforward cost-benefit analysis would compel the adoption of alternative systems. Lincoln’s Dreams by Connie Willis (1987) Richard is convinced that his girlfriend Annie’s vivid Civil War dreams are a symptom to be cured. Annie wonders if the dreams have some deeper significance. As the dreams involve the American Civil War, Annie appeals to Richard’s old college roommate, who is researching that period, for help. Do her dreams reflect reality, or are they simply fantasies from her subconscious? Jeff, the historical researcher, establishes that the dreams do indeed seem to originate from an American Civil War figure… although not Abraham Lincoln, but Robert E. Lee. However, unless Jeff can work out why Annie is being singled out for these dreams, Annie may well be doomed. One of the many questions for which professional historical researcher Jeff appears to lack answers is how it was two stalwarts like Lincoln and Lee ended up on opposite sides of a seeming causeless conflict. On an unrelated note, the following words do not appear in this American Civil War-centered novel: “slave,” “slavery,” “black” (save as a color of blisters, objects, and animals), African (save in reference to violets), “Negro,” or “abolition.” Harriet the Invincible by Ursula Vernon (2015) Princess Harriet receives delightful news on her tenth birthday. The wicked fairy Nightshade had cursed Harriet. When Harriet turns twelve, she will prick her finger and fall into a deep, magical sleep. So it is written. So shall it be. Harriet reasons that she can only suffer her doom if she is still alive at twelve. Therefore, the curse will protect her until then… and therefore, Harriet is functionally indestructible. There is no reason why Harriet cannot spend the next two years vanquishing evil. When her curse does arrive? Well, by that time Harriet will be an experienced adventurer. Who knows what could happen? There is a lot of ground between “must be alive, and retain sufficient cognitive ability that sleep and wake can be distinguished” and “invincible.” Horribly injured people can sleep. Badly brain-damaged people can sleep. Luckily for Harriet, this novel appeared under the author’s Ursula Vernon byline and not her T. Kingfisher horror-oriented persona, or Harriet’s fate might have been much darker. Insomniacs After School by Makoto Ojiro (2019–2023) Grumpy highschooler Ganta Nakami cannot sleep because pessimistic Ganta believes the future can hold only increasing disappointment. Cheerful highschooler Isaki Magari cannot sleep because her potentially fatal heart condition means she might never wake up. Insomnia seems inescapable. Salvation comes in the form of their school’s abandoned astronomy club observatory. Both Ganta and Isaki have no problem sleeping there. However, access to the observatory is contingent on there being an astronomy club. It’s up to Ganta and Isaki to bring the club back from the dead. This romance manga is far more upbeat than “two teens united by paralysing existential dread” would suggest4. It’s also almost entirely mundane, except for one detail. School legend has it that a heartbroken schoolgirl cursed the observatory. However, this is a barefaced lie put about by Isaki, who does not want other people to intrude into her refuge. The Sleepless by Jen Williams (2025) Artair is one of the Sleepless. Not in the sense that Artair cannot sleep. Rather, Artair needs to be careful when he sleeps. Artair shares his body with monstrous Lucian. Whenever Artair sleeps, Lucian is free to run riot. This is why the Brothers and Sisters of Perpetual Morning restrain Sleepless like Artair while he sleeps. Mother Maura of the Bloody Claw blackmails Artair into running a little errand for her. Artair must kidnap a keltraxia cub from the Jih forest, and deliver it to Mother Maura. Why does Mother Maura not do this herself? In part, because the Jih forest has guardians. One such, Elver, wastes no time in confronting Artair… and teaming up with him. Readers should be aware that this is part one of a duology, which is to say it introduces the setting, asks existential questions, increases the stakes and leaves matters such that you will want to buy the second book. Readers will also want to know that second book, The Dreamless, was published in May 2026. Obviously, there are far more than five novels driven by sleep or its lack. There could six or seven, and I’ve even heard tell that numbers go up as high as eight. I may have overlooked, forgotten, or deliberately snubbed your favourites. If so, please mention them in the comments.[end-mark] The frame has three lengthwise supports. The one in the middle is quite solid. It turns out Ikea in its wisdom provided long screws for the two side runners but positioned the rail screw hole such that only the last millimetre of screw engages. This means the two on either side will fail and when they do, the mattress will suddenly tilt to one side and roll the occupant out of bed. The frame could still be used as long as I, a bad sleeper who thrashes continually, remain perfectly still over the center rail. Nevertheless, I am getting a new frame… and not from Ikea. ︎Aside from judgemental legume-conscious princesses, I mean. ︎I ran the numbers for geothermal energy and I’m not sure it is quite as useful as Dickson needs it to be. ︎At least as of volume 10. If the final volume pulls an Anders Loves Maria, I will be so mad. ︎ The post Five SFF Works Based Around Sleep or Sleeplessness appeared first on Reactor.

News The Odyssey Christopher Nolan Says The Odyssey Addresses a Fantasy Movie Gap “That Hadn’t Been Filled” The director explains how his version of The Odyssey finally helps bring the story to life By Matthew Byrd | Published on July 14, 2026 Credit: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Universal Pictures In an extensive interview with Vulture, director Christopher Nolan spoke about… well, pretty much everything you wanted to know about The Odyssey but were too afraid to ask or never had the chance. And while the entire piece is a fascinating read filled with valuable information, the most notable takeaway may just be this line that serves as both the soft premise of the piece and the film itself. “The genre of Greek mythology doesn’t really exist in movies,” Nolan says. “What I saw with The Odyssey is a gap that hadn’t been filled.” To be fair, Christopher Nolan doesn’t believe there is a total absence of Greek mythology movies. He even references movies like Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans as inspirations. He also certainly doesn’t believe that the story of The Odyssey is not well-known. He describes the challenges of “the Ur-text” problem, which is his phrase for a foundational story that has become so popular that it can feel stale. Instead, Nolan is seemingly pointing to a relative lack of entries in that genre as well as a relative lack of substantial entries. More specifically, he shares his belief that the relative lack of notable Greek mythology movies can be partially attributed to a lack of both the appropriate technology and the necessary vision to make such stories come to life. “Hollywood made all these incredible movies about the classical period of antiquity, but it was left to geniuses like Ray Harryhausen to visualize the more mythical aspects,” Nolan explains. “For a long time, it wasn’t technically viable to make this kind of film and give as much weight and validity to a fantastical story as you did to a non-fantastical story.” Nolan notes that The Lord of the Rings movies were a game-changer in terms of both the technology required to make such fantasy films and the vision to make those movies feel like proper blockbusters. But for The Odyssey, Nolan wanted to take things further by making a Greek mythology movie that feels a little more true to the spirit of the original narrative. The more mystical elements of the story are presented in a way that feels like a part of the world that the characters live in. That approach extends to the gods, which Nolan downplayed in terms of their actual on-screen appearances. “For me, having these remote gods with chess pieces or whatever, all the things you’ve seen in the past, felt alienating,” Nolan says of his decision to only show one god, Athena, in the movie. “It’s not so much about trying to be realistic; it’s just trying to see the gods the way these characters would have seen them.” Ultimately, you could certainly argue that Nolan is right to say there is, at least, a shortage of movies that properly explore the eternal legacy of Greek myths and treat such stories as true epics. We’ll find out if The Odyssey joins that elite group of films when the movie releases on July 17.[end-mark] The post Christopher Nolan Says <i>The Odyssey</i> Addresses a Fantasy Movie Gap “That Hadn’t Been Filled” appeared first on Reactor.