Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Opening Scene Beats ‘The Dark Knight’

SPOILERS for ‘The Odyssey’ prologue are below!

The prologue for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is screening before IMAX re-releases of Sinners and One Battle After Another. Nolan’s The Odyssey is the first film shot 100% in IMAX, with the awards-season theatrical re-releases of other movies that have also embraced the format helping to promote the director’s upcoming summer epic. The sequence also leaked online, where copyright strikes quickly removed it, but it’s not how the opening was intended to be experienced.

For those who experienced the prologue of The Odyssey in an IMAX theater, Nolan has crafted another scene that demands a trip to the cinema, with praise for the music, action, and acting, showing a master at work. The Odyssey‘s opening sequence is so impressive that it has officially dethroned the director’s best film opening of all time, The Dark Knight‘s bank heist.

Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Outshines ‘The Dark Knight’s Opening Sequence

Warner Bros. Pictures

It may sound like sacrilege to Nolan purists, but it may well be true that The Odyssey presents a superior opening scene than 2008’s Batman film, The Dark Knight. Even with Inception starting deep in a dream and The Dark Knight Rises dropping a plane from the sky, The Dark Knight has long stood as one of Nolan’s most beloved opening scenes, featuring a bank heist full of clown mask-clad goons, one of whom proves to be Heath Ledger’s Joker. It combines impressive IMAX sequences, like the thieves zip-lining high across the street, with a twisty setup in which each baddie betrays the next, seeing the Joker as the architect of it all.

The short five-minute opening scene of The Odyssey follows Matt Damon’s Odysseus and the infamous Trojan horse infiltration of Troy. The impressive horse is pulled into Troy, with Nolan building tension as the safety of the “gift” is tested by stabbing a sword through it, injuring a soldier inside. When nightfall comes, Odysseus and the others sneak out of the Trojan horse and proceed to dispatch guards in an effort to open the gate. Their attack sparks a battle, which then teases other elements of Nolan’s film, including a look at the mythological cyclops.

From the description alone, it may not sound like The Dark Knight has been put to shame by The Odyssey, but that’s the kind of poppycock wielded by someone who wasn’t there to experience it. The Odyssey delivers visuals that are the culmination of every ounce of filmmaking talent Nolan has ever gleaned from his years behind the camera. The Dark Knight walked so that The Odyssey could run an ultramarathon.

As Nolan has done before, the director turned The Odyssey into an experience. When the sound builds and the IMAX speakers thump to life, the audience can feel it, rattling their seats, bringing them into the intensity of the story. The way Dunkirk elevated sound to put viewers right next to the soldiers or how Interstellar locked audiences into intense sequences of deathly peril with music, The Odyssey is a masterful amalgam of the director’s talent.

The Odyssey demands attention from the opening frame, offering a truly next-level viewing experience, and it proves it with five minutes of footage. The Dark Knight offers a fantastic sequence, and while it introduces a memorable villain, Nolan’s next epic delivers visually unparalleled storytelling and artistry that is hard to shake. It may divide fans, but The Odyssey has a better opening sequence than The Dark Knight.