UPDATE July 10: The dislike campaign kept accelerating well past the triumphant reactions — the counter has since blown past 700K as Nolan addresses the revolt for the first time.
The first reactions to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey are in out of the London premiere and press screenings, and the verdict from the people who have actually seen the film is close to unanimous: it’s a triumph.
Variety’s reaction calls it “an astonishing achievement,” with the cast delivering what it describes as career-best work from several of its stars.
The Independent declares it “Nolan’s biggest film to date,” crediting it with triple the set pieces of any previous Nolan film.
Time Out praises “a dizzying mix of craft and spectacle” and says to see it twice.
Collider reports it “gets better on the second viewing” and pushes IMAX 70mm as the way in.
DigitalSpy calls the final act as good as anything Nolan has done.
Critic Eric Davis says “Robert Pattinson absolutely stole the show,” and THR’s Aaron Couch flags a Nolan first: a fully fleshed-out horror sequence, 25 years into his career.
The one measured note comes from IndieWire, which finds it “too clunky to be S-tier Nolan” while still saying the last act rewards the journey.
Two details in the raves are worth pulling out for anyone who has followed the last six months. Lupita Nyong’o, the center of the casting firestorm, is named in Variety’s reaction among the performances of a career.
And DigitalSpy offers the single most loaded sentence of the wave: “purists might baulk at the adaptation changes.” The reactions are glowing, and the fidelity question the backlash is built on didn’t disappear. It just moved inside the theater. More reactions below.
The Counter Didn’t Blink
Here’s the collision. While the raves rolled out, the countdown trailer’s dislikes kept climbing.
The counter now reads 566,000 dislikes against 65,000 likes, meaning the trailer added another 66,000 dislikes on premiere day alone, after crossing the half-million mark this morning.
That’s the live test of the question this entire week has been building toward. The raves are real. The counter is real.
For six months the two audiences have been talking past each other, and as of tonight they’re doing it in real time: critics calling it a masterpiece while the dislike counter ticks up underneath them, a day after Elon Musk called Nolan “a worm” and hours after Nyong’o’s Homer comments gave the backlash a fresh front.
The Screening Strategy, Explained
THR’s roundup also confirms how Universal actually handled the first-look rollout, and it validates what we reported: the studio skipped the dedicated influencer word-of-mouth screenings that normally produce the first reaction wave.
Instead, professional journalists from the premiere and press screenings led the reactions, with junket influencers folded into the same wave rather than getting their usual head start.
Two of the reactions mention having already seen the film twice, which means press screenings have been running quietly for a while.
Universal didn’t starve the buzz machine. It rebuilt it so critics went first, and judging by tonight, that bet paid off with the strongest possible opening statement.
Eleven Days to the Real Verdict
The raves give Universal its first unambiguous win in weeks, and history says Nolan raves convert.
But this is also the exact scenario the last six months have been arguing about: whether praise for the film can outrun rejection of the campaign, or whether the general audience that tracking says checked out stays checked out no matter what critics say.
The $80 million to $100 million opening range leaves room for both endings. The reviews land July 15. The box office answers July 17. As of premiere night, the film has the critics, the backlash has the counter, and eleven days will settle which one the public was listening to.
For everything confirmed and still rumored about the film, see our full guide to Nolan’s The Odyssey.
