WARNING: Spoilers for “The Odyssey,” “Disclosure Day,” and “Project Hail Mary”
Two straight hit weekends for “The Odyssey” that exceeded all expectations at the box office have proved audiences want to keep taking Christopher Nolan’s journey over and over again. However, they may not exactly be taking the journey because they want to feel good at the end of it, unlike most mega blockbusters – and unlike a few hits this year already.
The likes of “Project Hail Mary” and “Disclosure Day” helped further popularize the term “hopecore” by showing stories that express hope for humanity coming together and saving its future. But in the year 2026, that kind of message is either regarded as especially refreshing or naively idiotic, if not both. In fact, to the minority of “Project Hail Mary” viewers who nitpicked the idea of modern-day mankind trusting scientists of all nations to save Earth – moreso than the idea of one scientist and one rock-like alien joining forces in space – and to a greater number of viewers who rolled their eyes at “Disclosure Day” showing mankind averting nuclear war by watching and believing a news report of unverified alien footage, “hopecore” has become a dirty word on and off screen.
To viewers like that, something like “The Odyssey” might be easier to buy, and celebrate, as a more “realistic” kind of message if not a nihilistic one – and if not one found in Homer’s original poem. Instead of being a blockbuster that shows mankind is capable of saving itself after all in the future, “The Odyssey” goes the exact opposite route in the very distant past. In a final act that recontextualizes the “trick to break the walls of Troy” into an act that shattered the foundation of “Zeus’s law” and civilization as a whole, it also recontextualizes the entire movie to show all of Odysseus’s misfortunes, decisions, and delays in getting home were a reflection, or direct side effect, of the world he broke at Troy.
Even Odysseus’s otherwise crowd-pleasing slaughter of the suitors in his house is darkened as one final violation, desecration, and concession that “Zeus’s law” is truly over, and all that’s left afterward is the long wait for civilization to rise again. But even then, it may end up just repeating a cycle where the mistakes that brought the old world down will “once again be forgotten” in any new world – and 3,000 years of history have largely proven that correct.
That is a rather down note for a future billion-dollar blockbuster to end on, and the kind of note that films seeking to be billion-dollar blockbusters would rarely ever consider. Yet Nolan is an exception, as he is in most every other aspect, given that “Oppenheimer” ended with virtually the same note foretelling mankind’s downfall – from the eyes and regret of the very man credited for starting it – and still made off with nearly a billion dollars and seven Oscars anyway. And of course, the likes of “The Dark Knight” – and “Inception,” depending on what viewers believe happened with the spinning top – didn’t exactly end on feel-good notes either, yet kept audiences coming back anyway.
Blockbusters have gone back and forth, depending on the years and eras, from being “dark” and “gritty” in the form of Nolan and imitators like Zack Snyder, to periods of being lighter and hopeful in the form of the MCU and films like “Project Hail Mary.” Considering how much of a shadow both reality and the darkest films reflecting it have cast over the years, it makes the likes of “Project Hail Mary,” “Barbie,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and even “F1: The Movie” get treated like welcome old school throwbacks to the “good old days.”
This is something Steven Spielberg tried to do just last month with “Disclosure Day,” as a throwback to his old alien movies, and to a time where the prospect of alien life inspired true wonder. Yet instead, it tested how much viewers were willing to believe, or not believe, in a way that even “Project Hail Mary” didn’t earlier this spring.
Although not all “Project Hail Mary” viewers believed humanity would get behind a Project Hail Mary to save Earth to begin with – at least not in 2026 or in that movie’s further future – keeping the action mostly centered on just one human and one alien coming together in unlikely fashion made it easier to brush aside greater skepticism that the whole human race could do it. While there was brief acknowledgment that countries wouldn’t work together to ration food for very long once the crisis got worse, the premise of their cooperation lasting that long may have still been a stretch – hence the movie not lingering on it too long.
Yet in “Disclosure Day,” the entire finale hinged on a human race on the brink of nuclear war to not only stop in the face of alien “disclosure,” but to instantly believe the found footage was real, be shaken enough to not go back to waging war moments later, be awed enough to not instantly attack the aliens anyway, and to all be willing to “listen” to the alien’s ultimate, unseen final message – leaving aside whatever psychic trickery Emily Blunt’s Margaret made them see too.
In an age where movies like “Bugonia” and “Don’t Look Up” are more willing to show the end of humanity, rather than do the much harder work of making it convincing that it would save itself, Spielberg was accused of being a relic in multiple ways by those who couldn’t buy “Disclosure Day’s” ending. While he’s never been a “let humanity die” kind of filmmaker, cynics probably would have settled for his old “Raiders of the Lost Ark” self returning to at least let the aliens wipe out the world leaders, billionaires and conspirators who sanctioned their torture on Earth and nearly pushed the nuclear button, so mankind could “listen” without them in the way anymore.
Viewers looking for that kind of message may be the exact ones most willing to buy the final act of “The Odyssey” instead, and its brutal – if not hopeless – depiction of a civilization sealing its doom by violating its most sacred principles. At the very least, according to the relatively modest grosses of “Disclosure Day” and the thus-far stratospheric box office for “The Odyssey,” it seems to be what audiences this summer buy into most as well.
That doesn’t discount the huge grosses and Oscar buzz for the “hopecore” of “Project Hail Mary” – or maybe even the larger billion-dollar grosses this spring for “Michael,” and its deliberate retconning of Michael Jackson’s darker legacy. In addition, the big business for “The Odyssey” may be most due to Nolan’s star power and his gigantic IMAX scale, as much as any audience appetite for misery and woe, just like for “Oppenheimer.”
However, these results reflect what audiences want to see from blockbusters, and what hope or lack thereof they want to take from them; what kind of feeling will Oscar voters prefer down the line?
Right now, between “Project Hail Mary” being labeled a certain Best Picture nominee but not a win-competitive one, “Disclosure Day” being counted out of major Oscar nominations unless it surges with industry voters like “F1: The Movie” did, and “The Odyssey” being instantly considered the Best Picture favorite right now and perhaps beyond, it seems most expect Oscar voters to prefer films with an ominous, bleaker takeaway this year. At the least, they will from someone with the scale and power of Nolan, like they did when “Oppenheimer” blew out the much more optimistic “Barbie,” “Poor Things,” and “The Holdovers,” while holding off fellow downbeat movies like “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “The Zone of Interest,” and the purposefully ambiguous “Anatomy of a Fall.”
It might also say something that the fall films given the best shot at challenging “The Odyssey” look to be on the less hopeful side as well. “Dune: Part Three” is the end of a franchise that has already gone a darker route, in showing how a presumed savior of the oppressed became a galactic oppressor himself, and the final chapter seems very unlikely to have Paul Atreides forgiven “for all I’ve done.” In addition, “Digger” has Tom Cruise’s rich oil man trying to save the world from an apocalyptic crisis he created, but most urgently trying to spin “the story” to drown out those facts. And while “Wild Horse Nine” is set up as a comedic story of CIA agents interfering in a foreign country, Martin McDonagh’s history of bleak punchlines and lost souls doesn’t suggest a very optimistic takeaway about politics or humanity.
If the story of blockbusters this season is a battle between “hopecore” and “doomcore,” it stands to repeat itself on a larger level at the Oscars this year. Usually “doomcore” is taken most seriously by the Academy, as it was with “Oppenheimer” in 2023, and with how “Anora” needed a tear-jerking final act after two acts of flashy and broad comedy to clinch its win in 2024. But “One Battle After Another” was technically the hopeful and brighter option that won in 2025 compared to the darker, doomed narrative and vampire horror of “Sinners” in 2025, while the heartfelt family-based stories of “CODA” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” had back-to-back wins in 2021 and 2022.
The Academy’s mood can change on a case-by-case and year-by-year basis, much like audiences for big-budget blockbusters. Sometimes audiences can juggle hope and bleakness at the same time, as they did during the “Barbenheimer” summer in a greater way than Oscar voters did that year. Or they can make a clear choice to one extreme or the other, as they seem to have done with “The Odyssey” over “Disclosure Day” this summer, after going the other way with “Project Hail Mary” and “Michael” this spring.
If “hopecore” further falls out of fashion later this year, as “Dune: Part Three” might prove, does that point the way for Oscar voters to share the same dark mood next spring? For anyone trying to topple “The Odyssey,” they may need to keep hope alive in more ways than one.
Have you seen “The Odyssey” yet? What do you think about its box office performance and what it says about industry trends? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, and check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
