What did you think of the ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ trailer‘? There is something in it that sounds like “already seen”, and it is not just what is guessed about an argument that seems to be going to follow point by point what ‘Endgame’ already told. There is also something in that aesthetic of pure CGI, where there is not a stage, not a special effect, not even a single suit that is not a digital invention, that does not smell of the past. Because paradoxically, the success of Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ has brought with it a digestive stimulant for CGI fatigue: the future is analog.
140 kilos of camera. Christopher Nolan shot ‘The Odyssey’ with IMAX cameras, something no non-documentary feature film had done before. The camera weighs more than 140 kilos, and is enclosed in a soundproof casing, because without it it makes noise, according to Matt Damon himself“like a mixer stuck to your face.” That casing allowed Nolan to film intimate dialogue with the machine a few centimeters from the actors. The developed roll weighs even more: each 70mm copy exceeds 360 kilos and measures 2.1 million feet. The camera costs between $40,000 and $50,000 to make, and moving it requires a forklift.
The man likes it. The director has been betting on the format since 2008. ‘The Dark Knight’ was the first Hollywood film to use IMAX cameras for action scenes, and ‘Oppenheimer’ premiered the first 65mm black and white IMAX roll. ‘The Odyssey’ comes full circle having been filmed entirely with cameras of this type. Yes indeed: only 41 theaters worldwide can project it in its 1.43:1 IMAX 70mm format, which has generated complaints of “elitism” and also an obvious FOMO effect. Exclusivity, here, sells as much as the technique itself: the more difficult it is to see the film as Nolan wants it to be seen (a phrase that already has meme status), the more it is commented on.
The dust that is noticeable. The analog aesthetic not only affects the format, the celluloid (in this case, as can be seen, very expensive to shoot), but also the visual finish of the film itself. Nolan wantedlayers of real dirt in the costumes and sets that looked like places that resembled those that were really lived in at the time the film portrays. Dirty and tangible realism was sought at all times, not CGI gloss, and that search for physical texture led the team to shoot in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland and Scotland over 91 days, and to upload the actors to authentic boats.
Likewise, Nolan used practical effects whenever he could: he wanted the monsters, gods, and storms of mythology to feel fanciful but believable, and he wanted the crew’s fatigue in the storms to be noticeable because it was real, not simulated in front of a green screen.
The Trojan horse. While promoting the film, Nolan called generative artificial intelligence a “Trojan horse,” in an interview. Days before he had said he felt encouraged by the speed with which the young public rejects the worst visual side of the phenomenon. Nolan described this rejection as “rapid and massive” and said he had never seen anything like it in the face of a supposed fundamental technological leap. As proof, he cites the commercial success among young audiences of low-budget films with practical effects like ‘Obsession’ or ‘Backrooms’ and in the process turns it into the commercial argument for his own film.
The strategy. Nolan is not adopting a traditionalist or old-fashioned stance, quite the contrary: he knows that a vision of ‘The Odyssey’ full of CGI and effects that, aesthetically, will be outdated within a few months, is the least intelligent way to adapt a classic text. Analogue (whether in the medium or in the aesthetics) not only guarantees timelessness but, in these times, is equivalent to a certain ambition and aesthetic luxury: previously only blockbusters could afford CGI. Today it is the opposite: digital is the economic resource, it is the B series that turns to computers to solve any problem.
Nolan has been fortunate that Disney, which has declared that AI is one of the three pillars of its growth strategyhas released a video for ‘Doomsday’ that guarantees more of the same with the usual aesthetic. Paradoxically, Nolan has turned to the classics to suggest that the winds of change are blowing… towards what worked so well long ago.
In Xataka | Christopher Nolan explains why ‘The Odyssey’ does not deviate from the IMAX format for even a single minute
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