The first weekend of “The Odyssey” is over; all the reviews have been tallied on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and over $124.5 million in box office in America alone has been cashed in. All told, “The Odyssey” did exactly what it needed to cement itself as Christopher Nolan’s latest Oscar contender, if not outright frontrunner going into fall and maybe further.
As such, now that it might actually win another major Oscar or two for Nolan, it’s time to compare “The Odyssey” to a few other recent Best Picture winners and contenders, how they were rated, and what their paths are.
One obvious comparison for “The Odyssey” is “Oppenheimer,” since it was Nolan’s last film and last Oscar winner. Another is “One Battle After Another,” last year’s Oscar winner for a beloved auteur in Paul Thomas Anderson. One more is “The Revenant,” which was the last time someone who won Best Picture and Best Director got remotely close to winning a second Best Picture in a row with his next movie.
REVIEWS:
“The Odyssey”: 95%/8.7 average critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 89 on Metacritic
“Oppenheimer”: 93%/8.6 average critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 90 on Metacritic
“One Battle After Another”: 94%/8.9 average critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 95 on Metacritic
“The Revenant”: 78%/7.9 average critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 76 on Metacritic
The side-by-side stats comparing “The Odyssey” to “Oppenheimer” are nearly unprecedented, since almost no director in the expanded era, if not in a longer time, has made a Best Picture winner and then gotten equal if not even better reviews for their very next film. It is one thing for “The Odyssey” to top “Oppenheimer” on both major Rotten Tomatoes aggregates, but to nearly match it on the far more selective Metacritic is far more telling.
Arguably, no film has received reviews like this since the last Best Picture winner, making “One Battle After Another” a fitting comparison as well. In that pairing, “The Odyssey” once more has a slightly higher Tomatometer score but a slightly lower average critic rating, and is lower by a somewhat wider margin on Metacritic. In terms of films adapted from famed authors by famed writers/directors, with episodic, action based and fairly political odysseys about a father’s long quest to see his child again, and with a headlining actor who starred in “The Departed,” “The Odyssey” may not be regarded on the level of “One Battle After Another” yet, but is nearing the doorstep already.
“The Revenant” would appear to be the outlier of this group, with decidedly lower scores by a wide margin. But despite those low ratings, this is still the movie that almost made Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu the first director of the modern era to make two Best Picture winners in a row, and did make him the first in modern times to win Best Director twice in a row. In that regard, it is a notable point for “The Odyssey” and Nolan that they already have bigger raves than “The Revenant” ever had – and maybe that gives them an edge to do more than just match it for a Best Director repeat.
BOX OFFICE:
“The Odyssey” – $124.5 million domestic opening
“Oppenheimer” – $330 million domestic total
“The Revenant” – $183.6 million domestic total
“One Battle After Another” – $72.9 million domestic total
“The Odyssey” did two things “Oppenheimer” never did at the box office, in opening with over $100 million and finishing No. 1 for the weekend. Leaving aside that “The Odyssey” didn’t open against something like “Barbie,” and won’t face another box office juggernaut until “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” – and its three cast members from “The Odyssey” – for another two weeks, this is seemingly on pace already to outgross “Oppenheimer,” at least in America, despite or because of those asterisks.
Topping the likes of fellow 2026 contenders “Project Hail Mary” and “Michael” too would also go a long way, making “The Odyssey” the number one blockbuster in this Oscar race pending whatever “Dune: Part Three” does this winter. Though of course, “Oppenheimer” didn’t need to outgross “Barbie” to beat it everywhere else in 2023.
Either way, “The Odyssey” will certainly outgross “The Revenant” as well within the next week, although “The Revenant” might have still had a more impressive box office run in another way. It opened in the dead of winter instead of summer, had an Oscar winning director in Iñárritu who still wasn’t the box office draw Nolan is, had to rely on Leonardo DiCaprio and his own Oscar campaign to drive up such high word of mouth, had an odyssey across an ancient land where the biggest action scene involved a bear instead of cyclops, giant soldiers, the siege of Troy or sea monsters, and was based on a story much less well known than “The Odyssey.” All told, something like that making over $180 million domestically is just as impressive as anything Nolan has done or is about to do.
Whatever the conversation is about box office and the Oscars this year, it comes a year after “One Battle After Another” seemingly broke any standard for it. It made almost $73 million domestic but might have actually lost more than that thanks to its high budget. Yet, it still beat one of the biggest money makers of 2025 in “Sinners” anyway – whether enough voters really didn’t care how much it made, or enough voters just made excuses for it.
As such, now that “One Battle After Another’s” win seemingly made box office and profitability irrelevant for the Oscars from now on – at least if there’s any real consistency – how much can “The Odyssey” truly use its box office for any extra edge and talking points? “Oppenheimer” had the coattails of “Barbenheimer” and being a rare nearly billion-dollar R-rated, post-pandemic movie as extra selling points, but what will “The Odyssey’s” final box office narrative end up being – and how much will it count?
OSCAR WIN PACKAGE:
When “Oppenheimer” won, it coasted by not only sweeping techs like Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Score, but by getting Nolan’s long awaited Best Director win along with two acting Oscars for Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. At the moment, all those raving about “The Odyssey” certainly believe it can repeat for Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Score and Best Director again at minimum – but acting win prospects are trickier.
For all the raves regarding “The Odyssey’s” all-star cast, and early pushes for lesser-billed cast members like Samantha Morton, John Leguizamo and Himesh Patel to get as much recognition as Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland, it doesn’t seem like anyone is being talked about as a slam-dunk winner like Murphy and Downey were.
Hathaway is the one who comes closest, due in part to her massive overall 2026 resume, her 14-year wait to be nominated again after her “Les Misérables” win, and the fact that Best Supporting Actress still lacks a clear favorite – perhaps pending whether Inde Navarrette goes in Lead or Supporting. And while Damon will get a big push for a Best Actor nomination, a win seems rather unlikely to bank on until the likes of Tom Cruise, John Malkovich, Pedro Pascal, Andrew Scott and maybe Pattinson for “Primetime” actually show themselves. Also, all the various supporting actors seem more likely to cancel and crowd themselves out of a nomination than to push preseason favorites like Paul Giamatti, John Goodman and Sam Rockwell for a win.
Can “The Odyssey” take Best Picture without an acting win, which only “Parasite” and “The Shape of Water” have done since “Birdman” and “Spotlight” did it back-to-back in 2014 and 2015? All these films, except for “Spotlight,” helped overcome that by winning Best Director, and all but “The Shape of Water” also won a Screenplay Oscar. Given how Nolan lost Best Adapted Screenplay for “Oppenheimer,” it is hard to picture “The Odyssey” giving him that along with Best Director if “Oppenheimer” couldn’t – and hard to imagine that Best Director won’t once again be his safest bet this time.
“One Battle After Another” needed Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, Best Editing and the inaugural Best Casting to clinch Best Picture last year. Even if “The Odyssey” doesn’t get a Screenplay win, could it have an otherwise similar package for Best Director, Best Editing, Best Casting, and its own supporting win for a previous Oscar winner in Hathaway – and could that alone be enough?
On paper, “The Revenant” had a good enough win package above the line, with another Best Director for Iñárritu and a Best Actor win for DiCaprio. It also won Best Cinematography as its only below-the-line Oscar, which “The Odyssey” can certainly match if not surpass. Could an extra tech or two, along with a repeat Best Director win and just one acting win – for Hathaway or anyone else – be enough for “The Odyssey” to finish the job in a way “The Revenant” couldn’t?
“The Revenant” was an anomaly in losing to a film like “Spotlight” that won Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay only – a slim win package that hasn’t been repeated since and most likely won’t this year. However, “Spotlight” was also elevated as the critics’ favorite of 2015 in a way “The Revenant” certainly wasn’t, which is a problem “The Odyssey” just ensured it won’t have to deal with.
With raves equal to “Oppenheimer,” box office on a much higher level than “One Battle After Another,” and more win and nomination prospects than “The Revenant,” all the early comparisons to “The Odyssey’s” closest peers appear very favorable right now. Then again, how it and the overall race look right now, compared to how they might look five months from now, will be very different in some way.
Can “The Odyssey” endure being the presumed favorite for months like “Oppenheimer” and “One Battle After Another” did, and make repeat history in an even bigger way for Nolan than “The Revenant” did for Iñárritu? Although it spent its first week perfectly following and surpassing these paths, it must continue to do so for many more weeks. How many Oscars do you think “The Odyssey” can win? 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.
