The Odyssey: how a 4ft 6in stuntwoman made Matt Damon's giants tower on screen

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is built on a simple trick of scale: a 4-foot-6-inch stuntwoman stood in for Matt Damon so the film’s giant Laestrygonians would tower even higher. Devyn Dalton, a 35-year-old Canadian stunt double, took Damon’s place during those scenes, and the director credited her with selling the monsters’ size. Damon, for his part, called Dalton’s arms “the greatest arms I’ve ever seen.” The film, written and directed by Nolan and produced by him alongside Emma Thomas, adapts Homer’s ancient Greek epic. Damon stars as Odysseus, with an ensemble that includes Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron. Nolan has called the result a smash hit epic. The movie has already generated widespread discourse, engaging both rightwingers and academics, according to Nolan. That mix of popular and scholarly attention, paired with the production’s unusual visual tricks, makes it a rare blockbuster with something for critics and crowds alike.

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey: a smash hit epic built on Homer

Christopher Nolan’s latest film, an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem the Odyssey, is a smash hit epic, according to the director himself. Nolan wrote and directed the picture and produced it alongside Emma Thomas. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the wandering hero of the poem.

The ensemble cast is unusually deep. Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron all appear in the film. Their specific roles have not been disclosed, and the plot details remain closely guarded.

Nolan has described the film as a smash hit epic, and it has clearly landed with force. The director has also noted that the picture has generated widespread discourse, engaging both rightwingers and academics — an unusual combination that suggests the adaptation is provoking conversation well beyond typical film circles.

The source material is among the most famous stories in Western literature. Homer’s Odyssey follows Odysseus on his long, perilous journey home from the Trojan War, encountering monsters, gods, and temptations along the way. Nolan’s version brings that ancient tale to the screen with a modern blockbuster scale.

The film is a major production from Universal, and Disney is also connected to the project. Beyond that, little has been confirmed about the specifics of the adaptation — how closely it follows the poem, what liberties Nolan has taken, or how the ensemble cast fits into the narrative.

What is clear is that Nolan and Thomas have assembled a formidable team and a marquee cast to bring Homer’s epic to life. The director’s own assessment — that the film is a smash hit epic — sets the tone for how the project is being positioned. With a cast of this calibre and a director of Nolan’s standing, the film arrives with considerable weight behind it.

The 4ft 6in stunt double who made Matt Damon's giants look huge

The smallest person on set may have done the most to sell the film's biggest illusion. Devyn Dalton, a Canadian stuntwoman who stands 4 feet 6 inches tall, doubled for Matt Damon during production of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Her job, as Nolan later explained, was to make the film's giant Laestrygonians appear even bigger than they already were.

Dalton is 35 years old. She has spent her career working in stunts, where her height has often been an asset rather than a limitation. On this production, it became essential. The Laestrygonians, the man-eating giants from Homer's epic, needed to tower over Odysseus and his men. Nolan had already built them large. Dalton's job was to make them feel larger still.

When Damon stood beside the giants, the scale read one way. When Dalton stood in for him, the camera captured a different relationship between human and monster. By substituting a significantly shorter double in specific shots, the filmmakers could exaggerate the height gap without relying entirely on digital effects. The trick is invisible in the finished film, which is exactly the point. The audience sees Odysseus dwarfed by creatures of impossible size, and the practical staging makes the threat feel grounded.

Damon, for his part, came away impressed with more than Dalton's professionalism. He described her arms as "the greatest arms I've ever seen," a compliment that has since followed the stuntwoman through press coverage of the film. The praise is notable not just because it comes from a leading man, but because it speaks to the physical demands of the job. Stunt work requires strength, control, and the ability to sell a moment convincingly, often in uncomfortable conditions. Dalton's arms, by Damon's account, were built for exactly that.

Dalton's contribution is a reminder that the scale of a blockbuster epic is often an illusion assembled from practical choices. The giants are a visual effect, but the sense of their enormity depends on the human figures placed beside them. By putting a 4ft 6in performer in Damon's costume for those shots, Nolan and his team gave the audience a reference point that no amount of CGI could replicate on its own.

The film, an adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek poem, was written and directed by Nolan and produced by Nolan and Emma Thomas. It has been described by Nolan as a smash hit epic. Dalton's role in that success was specific and technical, but it also carried a certain poetry: the smallest person on set helped make the biggest creatures on screen believable.

How a 4ft 6in double sold the scale of the Laestrygonians

Christopher Nolan has confirmed that his adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey includes the Laestrygonians, the race of cannibal giants from the ancient poem. In the film, their scale is not a matter of visual effects alone. A 4ft 6in stuntwoman made them believable.

Devyn Dalton, a 35-year-old Canadian stunt performer, served as Matt Damon’s double on the production. Nolan said Dalton stood in for Damon specifically to make the Laestrygonians appear even bigger on screen. The technique is a classic piece of cinematic trickery: place a smaller performer in the frame, and the giants around them read as genuinely towering. Dalton’s height, combined with Damon’s own stature, gave the filmmakers a physical baseline for the Laestrygonians’ size that no amount of digital scaling could replicate with the same grounding.

Dalton’s work did not go unnoticed by the film’s star. Matt Damon described her arms as “the greatest arms I’ve ever seen,” a compliment that speaks to the physical demands of the role. Doubling for a lead actor in a Nolan production is rarely a matter of standing still; it requires matching movement, timing, and presence. For Dalton, that meant embodying Odysseus in scenes where the giants’ scale had to be sold through composition and performance, not just post-production.

The Laestrygonians are a brief but brutal episode in Homer’s epic. In the poem, Odysseus and his men land on their island and are met with disaster as the giants hurl boulders and feast on the crew. Nolan’s decision to include them — and to build their size around a real performer rather than purely digital trickery — fits the director’s known preference for practical filmmaking wherever possible.

Dalton’s contribution is a reminder that scale in cinema is often an illusion built from tangible elements. A 4ft 6in double, a lead actor’s praise, and a director’s commitment to practical effects: that is how the giants tower on screen.

Why the epic is sparking debate across the political and academic spectrum

Christopher Nolan says the film has generated widespread discourse, engaging both rightwingers and academics. He offered no specifics on the shape of that debate, and none have been confirmed. What is clear is that an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, made with a reported budget and a star-heavy cast, has become a cultural flashpoint rather than a simple blockbuster.

The political dimension is hardly surprising. The Odyssey is a poem about war, homecoming, vengeance, and the proper order of a household. Odysseus lies, cheats, and slaughters his way back to Ithaca, then executes the suitors who courted his wife. That is rich material for arguments about masculinity, tradition, and the value of classical texts. Rightwing commentators have long claimed Homer as a pillar of Western civilisation, a source of timeless lessons about duty and honour. Academics, meanwhile, have spent decades complicating that view, reading the epic for its treatment of women, slaves, and outsiders, or questioning whether Odysseus is a hero at all.

Nolan’s casting and approach have only sharpened the split. Matt Damon as Odysseus, with Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron in the ensemble, suggests a mainstream, big-studio treatment of a text often taught as high culture. That alone invites friction: purists may bristle at a Hollywood epic, while scholars may see a chance to drag a foundational work into contemporary conversation.

The film’s technical ambition adds another layer. Nolan has built giant Laestrygonians, the man-eating cannibals Odysseus encounters, using a 4ft 6in stunt double to sell their scale. It is the kind of practical, in-camera trickery Nolan is known for, and it has already drawn attention from both film buffs and classicists. The discourse, whatever its exact content, appears to be thriving.

Nolan’s own framing is telling. He calls the film a smash hit epic and says it has engaged people who rarely agree on anything. Whether that engagement is substantive or superficial, he has achieved what few directors do: a movie that makes both the right and the academy feel they have a stake in the argument.

A star-studded ensemble: who's in the cast and what we don't know yet

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Odyssey brings together one of the most crowded ensemble casts of his career. Matt Damon leads as Odysseus, and the surrounding roster reads like a studio’s wish list: Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya and Charlize Theron are all attached. That is eight major names, and for now that is nearly all we know.

None of the supporting roles have been confirmed. Whether Holland plays Odysseus’s son Telemachus, whether Hathaway steps in as Penelope, whether Pattinson takes on a god or a mortal — none of that has been announced. The same applies to Nyong’o, Morton, Zendaya and Theron. Their characters, their screen time and even whether they appear opposite Damon or in separate threads of the story remain unspecified. Fans can guess, but the production has not given them anything solid to work with.

The film’s production side is clearer. Nolan wrote and directed, and he produced alongside Emma Thomas, his long-time collaborator. Universal handles distribution. Disney also appears in the credits as a key entity, though its exact role — co-production, financing, international distribution, something else entirely — has not been specified.

The scale of the cast fits the ambition of the project. An adaptation of Homer’s epic poem requires room for gods, monsters, kings and sailors, and Nolan has packed his roster accordingly. But with roles undisclosed, the ensemble remains a list of names rather than a map of the story. That may be deliberate. Nolan has built a reputation for keeping plot details close until release, and this film appears to be following the same pattern.

What is known is that the film has already become a smash hit, according to Nolan, and that it has drawn attention from across the political spectrum and academia alike. The cast is a major part of that draw. For now, audiences know who is in it — just not who they are playing.

Homer's ancient epic: the source material behind Nolan's film

Christopher Nolan’s film takes its name and its bones from one of the oldest stories in Western literature. Homer’s Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic poem, follows the hero Odysseus as he tries to sail home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. The journey takes ten years and throws him against monsters, witches, and gods, while his wife Penelope and son Telemachus hold off a crowd of suitors back home.

The poem is not a simple adventure tale. It is a meditation on cunning over brute strength, on loyalty, and on the long, grinding cost of war. Odysseus is no straightforward hero; he lies, schemes, and weeps. His defining trait is metis, the Greek word for clever, resourceful intelligence, the quality that lets him outwit the Cyclops and resist the Sirens. Penelope, matching him in guile, unravels her weaving each night to delay remarriage. Even the setting is layered: the poem opens in the middle of the action, with Odysseus trapped on an island, and unfolds through flashback and storytelling.

That structure matters. Homer’s epic is as much about memory and narrative as it is about combat. Odysseus tells his own story to the Phaeacians, shaping how we see him. The poem asks what it means to return home after years away, and what kind of man does the returning.

Nolan’s adaptation draws directly from this material. The giants in the film, the Laestrygonians, come straight from Homer’s text: a race of cannibalistic giants who smash Odysseus’s fleet with boulders and spear his men like fish. In the poem they appear in Book Ten, a sudden, brutal stop on the hero’s voyage. Nolan has said the film is an adaptation of Homer’s epic, and the source material supplies both the monsters and the moral weight behind them.

For audiences coming to the film cold, the poem provides the map. Every character, from Odysseus to the suitors to the gods who meddle in his fate, originates in Homer. The film does not invent the story; it reinterprets what is already there. Understanding the epic’s themes, endurance, identity, the pull of home, gives a sharper sense of what Nolan is doing with them on screen.

What happens next: release details still under wraps

The film is already out and, by Christopher Nolan’s own account, a smash hit epic. That much is settled. What remains stubbornly unclear is almost everything else about its release.

No exact release date has been confirmed. No runtime has been published. Box office grosses have not been disclosed, and there is no verifiable critical reception on record. The gap between the film’s commercial success — as asserted by its director — and the absence of hard figures is unusual for a project of this scale, but the available reporting simply does not fill it in.

Nolan has described the picture as an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, written and directed by him and produced alongside Emma Thomas. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus. Beyond that, the logistics of the rollout remain under wraps. It is not known when the film arrived in theatres, how long it runs, or how much it has earned. Reviews, if they exist, have not been aggregated or widely reported.

The secrecy is notable given how much else has leaked into public view. During production, Damon praised his stunt double’s arms. Nolan explained how a 4ft 6in stand-in sold the scale of the giant Laestrygonians. The ensemble cast has been named piece by piece. Yet the commercial specifics have stayed quiet.

That may be deliberate. Nolan has a history of controlling how his films are presented, and the lack of confirmed figures could reflect a studio strategy rather than an oversight. Universal is listed among the entities connected to the project, alongside Disney, but neither company has released official numbers. The exact release date, runtime, box office gross, and critical reception all remain unknown.

What is known is that the film has generated widespread discourse, engaging both rightwingers and academics, according to Nolan. It is a cultural event, even if its commercial dimensions are not yet documented. For now, the release details sit in the same place as the plot and the individual roles of the supporting cast: unconfirmed, unreported, and waiting for someone to put them on the record.

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