The Odyssey follows Odysseus on his long journey home from the Trojan War. Its viewers, however, are heading in the opposite direction…back to Troy.
Christopher Nolan’s epic has quickly become one of the year’s biggest movies. The film opened with $264.1 million worldwide, the largest global debut of Nolan’s career, and earned another $90 million domestically during its second weekend. By its 12th day in theaters, it had generated $727.9 million worldwide.
All that attention has also sent viewers toward a much older, looser interpretation of Homer’s Iliad.
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Clips from Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film have been circulating across social media. Viewers are comparing the movies’ battle scenes, costumes, performances, and versions of the fall of Troy. Some have gone further, arguing that the critically dismissed Brad Pitt blockbuster may actually be the better movie.
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The renewed attention is showing up beyond social media. As of July 23, Troy ranked 12th on IMDb’s list of most popular movies and 23rd on Letterboxd, while The Odyssey held the top position on both. By the end of the month, Troy had also climbed to No. 2 on AMC+ in the United States.
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Suddenly, a movie once remembered primarily for Pitt’s armor and extremely committed workout routine is receiving a full cultural re-evaluation.
Why Troy looks different in 2026
When Troy opened in 2004, Hollywood was still crowded with historical and fantasy epics. Gladiator had arrived 4 years earlier, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy had just demonstrated how emotionally and commercially successful a massive fantasy production could become.
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That competition made Troy feel less remarkable at the time. Petersen removed nearly all the gods and supernatural forces from Homer’s story and condensed years of mythology into one muscular, star-filled blockbuster.
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Critics were divided by the results. Troy currently holds a 53 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus describes it as an entertaining spectacle without enough emotional resonance. Audiences were warmer, giving it a 74 percent score.
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22 years later, some of what once made Troy seem conventional has become the reason viewers are praising it. Compared with The Odyssey, fans say Troy better captures the sheer scale of the war. They have also singled out its radiant colors, weathered costumes, and supporting performances from Eric Bana and Peter O’Toole.
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Most of all, viewers keep returning to its action: the battles clearly show the tactics of two armies, while the duel between Achilles and Hector lets audiences follow every blow. Those qualities stand out even more when placed beside The Odyssey, according to fans.
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Of course, the two movies are trying to accomplish very different things. Troy is a war movie built around Achilles, Hector, and the destruction of a city. The Odyssey follows the exhausted soldier who has to live with what happened afterward.
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Still, watching them so close together has made viewers appreciate a movie has been overlooked for years.
Troy was always more popular than its reviews suggested
Despite its mixed reviews, Troy earned more than $497 million worldwide during its original theatrical run. Nearly three-quarters of that total came from international audiences.
The irony is that viewers now seem more eager to defend Troy than some of the people who made it.
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Pitt said he appeared in the movie because he had withdrawn from another Warner Bros. project and remained obligated to make something for the studio.
“I was put in Troy,” Pitt told The New York Times in 2019. He said the experience convinced him to begin following his instincts when selecting future roles.
Bloom was even less nostalgic about playing Paris. “I think I just blanked that movie out of my brain,” he told Variety in 2024, explaining that he never wanted to play the Trojan prince.
Christopher Nolan nearly made Troy himself
The most unexpected connection between the movies belongs to Nolan, actually. More than two decades before directing The Odyssey, he was originally hired by Warner Bros. to make Troy.
Petersen had begun developing the movie before leaving to work on a planned Batman vs. Superman project. When Warner Bros. abandoned that film, Petersen asked for Troy back. Nolan agreed, although he later told Empire that Homer’s world remained in the back of his mind. He was especially interested in how he would depict the Trojan horse.
Losing Troy worked out reasonably well for him. Nolan instead directed Batman Begins, which screenwriter David S. Goyer later jokingly described as Warner Bros.’ “consolation prize.” The movie launched Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and helped establish the blockbuster career that eventually allowed him to return to Homer on an even larger scale.
That history makes the current comparison feel almost too good to be true. Nolan finally got to create his version of Homer’s world. And though Odysseus needed 10 years to find his way home, Troy needed 22 to get its retrial.
