We’re now less than one week away from the release of what promises to be one of 2026′s most talked-about films, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
The whole world has been waiting for the British filmmaker’s take on the Ancient Greek epic since it was first announced in 2024 – and our patience is about be rewarded.
Excitingly, even this close to release, lots about The Odyssey is still shrouded in mystery, but here is everything we do know about one of this year’s most talked-about movies…
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What is The Odyssey about?
The Odyssey is based on an epic poem by the ancient Greek writer Homer, which follows the King of Ithaca, Odysseus, on his harrowing 10-year journey home after the Trojan War.
Over the course of his voyage, Odysseus battles numerous mythical monsters, including a cyclops, as well as sirens and deadly sorceresses, before finally making it back to his homeland and family.
The story predominantly explores the drive to protect one’s family, loyalty and the use of brain over brawn to succeed.
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Matt Damon takes on the lead role of Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s new film
Which stars are in the cast of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey?
It’s no great surprise that A-listers are queuing up to work with Christopher Nolan, and the cast of The Odyssey is a real who’s who of Hollywood.
Matt Damon is taking on the lead role as Odysseus, with Anne Hathaway playing his wife Penelope and Tom Holland appearing as his son Telemachus.
Robert Pattinson will play Odysseus’ rival Antinous, a suitor for Penelope, and is joined by his Dune and The Drama co-star Zendaya, who will be playing the Greek goddess Athena.
Zendaya is set to play Athena in The Odyssey
Also playing pivotal characters are Charlize Theron as the sea witch Calypso, and Lupita Nyong’o, who is also set to play both Helen of Troy and her sister, Clytemnestra.
Rapper Travis Scott also appears in the film, playing a poet figure, with Mia Goth portraying the maidservant Melantho, John Leguizamo appearing as Odysseus’ friend Eumaeus, The Bear’s Jon Bernthal playing Spartan king Menelaus and The Smashing Machine director Benny Safdie taking on the role of Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon.
Christopher Nolan fans will know the director has a penchant for working with the same actors across different projects, and many of his The Odyssey actors have appeared in his past movies.
Anne Hathaway starred in both The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, while Matt Damon also appeared in Interstellar, as well as Oppenheimer.
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Robert Pattinson and Himesh Patel both appeared in Tenet, while Elliot Page worked with the filmmaker back in 2010’s Inception and Benny Safdie had a minor role in Oppenheimer.
Anne Hathaway will play a key role in The Odyssey, which marks her third time working with Christopher Nolan
What has Christopher Nolan said about The Odyssey?
Compared to many of his peers, Christopher Nolan is known for his love of practical effects and shooting out in the real world, rather than relying on CGI and green-screen technology.
The Odyssey will be no different, with the cast shooting in locations as varied as Scotland, Morocco, Italy and Iceland.
“By embracing the physicality of the real world in the making of the film, you do inform the telling of the story in interesting ways,” the Dunkirk filmmaker told Empire in November last year. “Because you’re confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.”
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During a recent appearance on The Late Show back in May, Christopher told Stephen Colbert that he considered The Odyssey to be the original Marvel movie.
He claimed: “Even comic book culture, whether you’re talking about Marvel or D.C. or all the rest, a lot of it comes directly from the Homeric Epics.
“The thing about Homer is, nobody knows if that was a person. Homer, in a way, is the sort of George Lucas of his time.”
Christopher Nolan’s last film, Oppenheimer, earned him the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director
When asked what made him want to adapt The Odyssey for the big screen, he admitted that a subplot involving Odysseus’ dog Argos had really stood out to him.
He explained: “I’m a new dog owner. I’d never had a dog growing up. I didn’t have a dog when my kids were young. We denied that, and then as soon as they left for college, we got a dog.
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“They love the dog, too, when they get to visit. I decided to do The Odyssey because it’s the ultimate dog story.”
What has the cast of The Odyssey said about the new movie?
Lead actor Matt Damon teased to Empire back in November that The Odyssey is “exactly what you want [from] a summer movie”, describing shooting it as “the best experience of my career”.
In a more recent interview with GQ, he shared how the film felt more like the big-budget films he made in the early years of his career.
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He explained: “It was a really weird movie for me personally in the sense that I had almost a nostalgic feeling the entire time I was making it, because it felt like the movies when I started working. And I know that that’s going away.”
Matt theorised that, because of the way that the industry is headed, The Odyssey could well be the last of its kind.
“I knew that this was the last chance I was going to have to do something like this,” he claimed, adding: “I don’t think people are going to be given the resources to shoot movies that way for much longer.”
Tom Holland also called The Odyssey his “proudest achievement” in an April interview with GQ.
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Spider-Man actor Tom Holland will play Telemachus in The Odyssey
“I can tell you that it is an absolute masterpiece, and I’m taking myself out of that equation. Chris Nolan’s movie is fantastic,” the Spider-Man actor said. “It’s unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before.”
Tom promised fans they are going to be “blown away by the set pieces and sequences,” thanks to the scale of Nolan’s film.
“I was absolutely blown away by the scale, the scope, his ability to navigate such an intricate and heartfelt story in the middle of this insane kind of action movie,” he enthused.
Charlize Theron also backed up Matt and Tom’s comment about the filming experience.
The Oscar winner told Elle that making the Greek epic was “one of the best experiences that I’ve ever had”, stating: “All of us had a certain personality of wanting to push harder. And when you put a group of those kinds of people together, it’s pretty amazing what they can accomplish.”
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And rewarding though the experience might have been, the stars have made no secret of the fact that the shoot was an especially tough one.
Matt admitted to GQ in June: “Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer’.
“I’ve never seen people look so exhausted,” Robert Pattinson added about the experience in the same GQ article. “And this was only a third of the way.”
He continued: “I started a third of the way through the movie, and they’d already been to [two] countries by that point and people just looked like… I mean, at the end of every day people were broken.”
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Some critics have already taken issue with The Odyssey’s historical accuracy
Costumes in The Odyssey were certainly a talking point long before the film’s release
In a Time interview from May, the director responded to his detractors, insisting that his research was thorough when putting together The Odyssey, and pointing out that our knowledge of the Bronze Age is based on “very fragmentary archaeological records”.
He said of the cynics: “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar. But you just don’t want people to think that you took it on frivolously.”
Matt Damon and Zendaya were reported to be filming a sequence in Dakhla, a city in the Western Sahara that has been under Moroccan occupation for the last 50 years.
María Carrión, the executive director of Western Sahara International Film Festival, accused the director, his actors and his crew – whether knowingly or unknowingly – of “contributing to Morocco’s repression of the Sahrawi people and to the Moroccan regime’s efforts to normalise its occupation of Western Sahara” by filming in the region.
While the filmmaker has not directly responded to these comments, The Guardian has claimed that The Odyssey’s shoot in Dakhla was completed in around four days, and was already over by the time the festival organisers raised their concerns.
Although some were concerned with the costume and location choices of The Odyssey, there’s also been a separate backlash centred on its casting.
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Some online commentators have questioned why a movie based on Homer’s Greek epic appears to have no Greek actors confirmed in the principal cast.
Greek City Times even published an open letter which argues that Greek people are being ignored in a story so deeply rooted in Greek culture, history and identity.
Unfortunately, The Odyssey has also been met with racist backlash over its casting
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Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o will play two characters in The Odyssey
Meanwhile, certain right-wing parts of the internet regrettably exploded when it was revealed that Lupita Nyong’o would playing Helen of Troy, described in mythology as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.
“Casting a Black woman to play a White woman in a foundational work of European literature is no more right than casting a White man to play Shaka Zulu!” the X owner claimed, referring to the South African king, while also Elon branding Nolan “an anti-White racist”.
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh claimed in another X post that “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’” despite the star being named People’s Most Beautiful Woman after first rising to fame.
“Our cast is representative of the world. I’m not spending my time thinking of a defence,” she told Elle in May 2026. “The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”
She added: “It spans worlds. So that’s why the cast is what it is. We’re occupying the epic narrative of our time.”
Nolan praised the Oscar-winning actor during the same article, enthusing: “The strength and the poise were so important to the character of Helen. And Lupita makes it look effortless.
“I’m sure there’s a tremendous amount of discipline and training that goes into projecting that kind of poise and feeling the emotion bubbling beneath the character, the layers of the character right there underneath.”
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Has The Odyssey been adapted for the screen before?
While Christopher Nolan’s take isn’t the first adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, it looks to be the biggest and most epic adaptation to date.
Kirk Douglas previously starred in an Italian version of the story in 1954 called Ulysses, while the Coen brothers’ 2000 musical-comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou? turned Odysseus into an escaped prisoner in the American South.
The most recent adaptation of The Odyssey came in 2024, with the film The Return.
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Starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, the movie covered only the last act of the story, depicting Odysseus pretending to be a suitor to win his wife back – and killing the men trying to pursue her.
What are the reviews for The Odyssey like?
At the time of writing, official reviews are still under embargo, but those who’ve seen the film at advanced screenings have been sharing their abridged takes on social media. And we’re happy to say, the response has been pretty glowing so far.
Words like “staggering”, “colossal” and “spectacular” have already being thrown around, and while the jury’s still out on where The Odyssey will stand in the wider pantheon of Nolan’s filmography, it sounds as though it’s going to be pretty near the top.
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How long is The Odyssey?
There’s good news and bad news on this front.
What we’re happy to report is that The Odyssey is shorter than Nolan’s last film, Oppenheimer. The bad news? There’s not much in it.
Oppenheimer clocked in at three hours exactly, while The Odyssey’s runtime is the slightly shorter 172 minutes.
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When will The Odyssey release in cinemas?
Mark your calendars – Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey will hit theatres on July 17 2026.
Is there trailer for The Odyssey?
There certainly is. Give it a watch for yourself below:
The last time I was at the dentist (four fillings ― I blame my baking problem), I remember thinking to myself, “how was I bored while people were drilling into my teeth?”
Local anaesthesia (the type that numbers your gums during dental work) binds to sodium channels in your nerve cells which stops them from transmitting impulses, I later learned through amazed online searches.
But to be honest, I’d always thought of general anaesthesia ― “going to sleep” ― as local anaesthesia’s cruder cousin. It simply knocked you out, I reasoned.
That was until I saw a video from anesthesiologist Dr Anthony Kaveh.
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In a recent YouTube Short, he explained: “Anaesthesia is NOT sleep.”
What happens instead?
According to Dr Kaveh, “we give you medication that turns off your brain, making you completely unconscious so you can’t perceive pain.”
He continued, “then we give you some medications that paralyze your body if needed; then we also give some medications to wipe your memory so that you’re less anxious, and so that we minimise the risk of PTSD under anaesthesia.”
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Healthcare providers and researchers at the Mayo Clinic confirm on their site that general anaesthesia is not a medication, but rather a few medications.
Though it brings on a “sleep-like state,” they say, “your brain doesn’t respond to pain signals or reflexes” under those conditions.
As for the memory-wiping element, the University of Illinois Chicago says that some medications in general anaesthetic prevent your brain from forming new memories while affected.
They point to research published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia which found that you can even separate the other effects of anaesthesia from its amnesic therapies in mice.
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“Many people thought the loss of memory [associated with anaesthesia] was due to the fact that you were asleep, or de-aroused,” Dr Fettiplace, lead author on the study, told the university. “But this is not the case.”
Some scientists even think anaesthesia could have a potential use in helping to “wipe” or lessen bad memories or associations for people with PTSD and phobias.
People were pretty surprised
Plenty of commenters under Dr Kaveh’s video wrote that they found the information a little scary.
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“This is actually more horrifying,” one commenter wrote; “sounds so much more scary when you describe it that way, another said.
But as yet another YouTube user pointed out, “People say ’omg that sounds horrifying’; but I’ve been under anaesthesia multiple times, it’s fantastic.”
However here’s another rabbit hole for you to go down: “It’s not clear exactly how [general anaesthetic] works, but it’s known that all anaesthetics stop the nerves from passing signals to the brain,” they add.
Pressure on the government to ban the importation of foie gras is intensifying. Activists from animal protection organisation Animal Equality have unfurled a giant banner on Victoria Embankment.
It says “KEEP YOUR PROMISE: BAN FOIE GRAS IMPORTS”, in direct view of parliament. The action follows the launch of 150 billboards and ads running across south east England sharing the same message. These are likely to reach 30 million passers-by.
Foie gras is produced by force-feeding ducks and geese via a metal pipe inserted down the throat, multiple times a day. This cause their livers to swell up to ten times their natural size.
The practice is so cruel that it has been illegal to produce in the UK for 20 years. Yet the UK continues to import the product. This allows restaurants to profit from suffering that would be a criminal offence if it took place on UK soil.
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Just days before the last General Election, the government promised to ban foie gras imports. A senior Labour Party representative watching an Animal Equality investigation into a French foie gras farm reacted:
…great big pipes down those animals’ throats, and they’re just forcing that food in. Oh, they’re terrified. Disgusting. Look at the tiny little cages they’re in as well. That is just shocking. It is beyond disgusting. They’re force-feeding these terrified animals to fatten their livers.
Continuing, he added:
Vote for change. A vote for Labour is a vote for animals.
Foie gras ban at risk
Years on, that promise remains unfulfilled, and campaigners now fear the ban is at risk due to ongoing EU-UK Sanitary and Phytosanitary trade negotiations which aim to ease trade.
The government made a promise to the British public and we have not forgotten. Every day this ban is delayed is another day that ducks and geese are violently force-fed – a practice that deliberately induces organ failure and is so cruel it is a crime to carry out in the UK.
The government’s negotiators must not trade away animal welfare commitments. Ministers would do well to remember who they represent; with nearly nine in ten Brits in favour of a ban, they have a clear mandate. The government must keep its word.
Public opinion is overwhelmingly behind a ban. The latest YouGov polling shows that almost nine in ten (87%) of the UK public support banning foie gras imports. This makes it one of the most widely supported animal welfare reforms across the UK. Animal Equality’s petition calling for a ban has surpassed 329,000 signatures.
At a recent parliamentary roundtable, hosted by Labour MP Irene Campbell, Dr Huw Golledge, chief executive and scientific director of Science for Animal Welfare, said:
The disease is not a side effect. Causing the disease is the purpose of the production system. Anyone looking objectively at the evidence would conclude that this is something that should not continue.
The French national team arrived in Dallas on Sunday aboard an Airbus A320 jet. The day before, the same jet had been used for an ICE deportation flight to Nicaragua.
The French team has traveled on GlobalX charter flights to travel during the World Cup, as The Guardian first reported Thursday. GlobalX, a Miami-based charter airline, has maintained its traditional business while also operating a growing number of deportation flights since the Trump administration launched its mass deportation campaign.
This dual use has created a stark contrast, with planes used to carry deportees shackled to their seats soon returning to routine charter service. Although many Americans back deporting unauthorized immigrants, U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign has drawn extensive backlash over its forceful tactics and violent clashes with protesters.
POLITICO tracked the jet that carried Les Bleus to Dallas and asked researchers with ICE Flight Monitor, which tracks deportation flights, whether it had been used for Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations. The team posted Monday a video of players deboarding in Dallas from a jet with a “Global Crossing Airlines” insignia, the legal name of GlobalX.
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“Under the second Trump administration, this particular plane conducted 323 ICE flights,” said Savi Arvey, director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First, which oversees ICE Flight Monitor.
After departing Nicaragua on Saturday, the GlobalX jet flew on to Harlingen, Texas, an ICE deportation hub, and then Boston, the French team’s training base, according to data provided by ICE Flight Monitor. About 15 hours after landing in Boston, it departed for Dallas with the team aboard.
Representatives for the French football federation and GlobalX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Less than an hour after landing in Dallas, the GlobalX jet flew to Harlingen to conduct another deportation flight to Mexico.
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Meanwhile, the Spanish national team arrived in Dallas aboard an American Airlines jet. The airline has not operated any ICE deportation flights.
There are few things more taken for granted in my humble kitchen than my seemingly never-ending supply of black pepper.
Ideal as a topper for salads, scrambled eggs or even just a plate of chips, black pepper is present in most of the meals I prepare. However, I’d never once considered where it actually comes from.
In fact, much like pasta and tea bags, I assumed it just came as part of having a kitchen, tbh.
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Where black pepper actually comes from
According to McCormick Science Institute: ”Black pepper is native to Malabar, a tropical region on the Western Coast of Southern India (part of the Indian state of Kerala).
“The pepper vine is a perennial ivy-like climber which adheres itself to a support tree or man-made structure.”
Schwartz explained: “The black peppercorn is a small berry picked just as it ripens from green to red: the centre is a white seed which contains more piperine and gives the pepper its heat and bite, while the black husk is the flesh of the fruit and gives the fruity, floral aromatic character.”
However, the spice experts added that while black pepper is best when it’s been crushed by pestle and mortar or a peppermill, you need to act quickly to maintain that punchy flavour.
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They said: “Once crushed, the punchy, volatile oils concealed inside each corn soon evaporate.
“Be sure to add towards the end of cooking, or at the table – which can add a certain amount of finesse when serving. A natural companion to steak in particular, its natural flavour is enhanced by heat, and its distinct, woody aroma is instantly recognisable to many.”
I’ll never take my trusty black pepper for granted again.
Green Space is taking its “party with purpose” model to Bristol this month, as the community and culture project builds what organisers describe as a repeatable, transparent and people-powered fundraising model for Green politics.
The Bristol event, taking place at Sawmills on Sunday 26 July 2026, will be the fourth Green Space party in the series, following two events in London and one in Leeds.
Putting the party into Green Party
Together, the first three events have raised around £37,000 for campaigning:
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Approximately £13,000 for London Greens at Heaven.
£17,000 for Leeds Green Party.
£7,000 for the national Green Party of England and Wales at The Cause in London.
The Bristol edition marks the next stage in proving the model can be built out beyond one-off city events, with locally rooted events raising money for local Green Parties while also supporting the wider national movement across the country.
The format offers a sharp contrast to traditional political fundraising, which is often a world of private dinners, big donors and closed-door access. Green Space events are publicly ticketed, culturally led and help people connect to politics through music, community and joy rather than formal party meetings or high-cost donor events.
The Bristol party will raise money for Bristol Green Party, with tickets accessibly priced at £10 – £15. Confirmed speakers include Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and climate justice activist Dominique “Domi” Palmer, with more speakers to be announced.
The event will also feature a large DJ line-up spanning drum and bass, jungle, techno, hardcore, and bass – sounds long associated with Bristol’s pioneering music scene.
Confirmed DJ line-up:
Anna Prank b2b Junction 17.
Amen4Tekno.
Euphonique.
DJ Hybrid.
DJ Gurl Power.
El-Ze b2b Josie Bee.
Gucci Libre.
Hardcore Energy.
Hypershé b2b Mousai.
IffyHype.
Origin8a & Propa b2b Buckfast Boys Club.
REVRT.
Tommy Leng (My Nu Leng).
Visla.
Lobsta B.
Daunder.
Das Ist Vas x Engineer.
More artists TBA.
Polanski said:
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Politics shouldn’t be funded in private rooms – and only by people who can afford expensive dinners. What Green Space is showing is that there is another way that is open, transparent, joyful and rooted in community.
These events are more than just about raising money – they are changing who politics feels like it belongs to. A ticket to a day party should never be dismissed as less serious than a private donor dinner.
In many ways, it is more democratic. It brings people together. It is transparent about what it is raising money for. And it gives people a way into politics that feels alive rather than alienating.
It’s great to see events supporting local Green Parties and helping build a national movement powered by people, culture and hope.
Niall Moore, co-founder of Green Space, said:
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Bristol is the beating heart of what we’re trying to build. This is a city with deep roots in club culture, climate justice, community organising and Green politics. It represents the spirit and the sound of the movement we are building.
Whilst this event is about raising money for the local Bristol Green Party, it’s also about making politics feel social, creative and open again. We want people to leave Sawmills feeling like they’ve been part of something joyful, local and politically meaningful.
British politics is being pulled apart by hate and division. We’re putting it back together with love and community.
Green Space aims to widen political participation by reaching people who may care about issues ranging from climate, housing, inequality and public services, but may feel alienated by traditional routes into politics.
Organisers hope the Bristol edition will show how the model can be adapted city by city, connecting national politics with local music scenes, venues and communities.
Filmmaker Christopher Nolan has claimed that the cast and crew of The Odyssey had “been through it” when the decision was made to stop filming ahead of schedule.
Earlier this week, the Oscar winner paid a visit to The Daily Show to discuss his new movie, where host Jon Stewart asked if it was true that the film was completed “ahead of schedule” and “under budget”.
“Yes,” the filmmaker confirmed, pointing out that this “never happens” in Hollywood. “The reality is, we [scheduled for] 100 days. And by day 91, we couldn’t have taken another step. So we finished.”
“We finished at the right time,” he claimed, pointing out that “everybody was done”.
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“I mean, people were just exhausted,” Nolan continued. “They’d been through it. So, it took the right time to make the film. We had enough time to make it.”
Meanwhile, cast members Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson have both shared their experiences of their gruelling time on set.
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Last month, Matt told GQ: “The joke on the crew was we didn’t have a single easy location. Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer’.”
He also admitted that even when the shoot moved from perilous locations to a soundstage in Los Angeles, this came with its own problems.
“Sure enough, we showed up [to the set in LA] and Chris has two jet engines blowing so much water at us,” he explained. “So it was kind of a fitting end. Even the controlled environment was cold, wet, and a little bit miserable.”
Robert then agreed that he had “never seen people look so exhausted” before beginning his work on The Odyssey.
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The Odyssey will be released in cinemas worldwide on Friday 17 July.
Reform and its backers are on something of a tear right now. With the scandals mounting, they’re doing everything they can to deflect and distract. And it seems ‘everything they can’ includes literally calling the police:
Retweeted by Isabel Oakeshott.
Very obvious that if Reform come to power, they will lock people up for criticising them. pic.twitter.com/6Vtf4f5HYq
The relevance of Isabel Oakeshott is that she’s the partner of Reform deputy Richard Tice. She’s also a self-proclaimed free speech warrior. And that’s not surprising, of course, because she’s far from the first such person to call for the oppression of speech they don’t like.
Now, Reform’s backers have gone full Karen by literally calling the police. As you can see above, an account has referred Dan Hodges of the Daily Mail to the police. According to them, scrutinising the far-right Farage qualifies as “harassment” that could “incite others against him and the party”.
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Here are some of tweets that the boys in blue may soon be scrolling over:
Think it's worth repeating. Zia Yusuf claimed no state support was being offered to Reform MPs for protection. In reality, Nigel Farage was offered a car, a trained driver, a bodyguard, and security on a similar level to that offered Kemi Badenoch. That's quite the deception.
"Your party has been spewing reckless hate for Reform. Starmer said Reform are not fit to be in government". So saying Reform are not fit to form a government now represents "reckless hate". As I said, this is all part of a coordinated effort to prevent legitimate scrutiny. https://t.co/5ekoOZph3s
Oh, that. No, you guys are deliberately trying to deflect from the £5m donation. That's self-evident. I'm not going to be apologising for that. I'm going to keep repeating it. https://t.co/dQQrfiy364
If you’re unfamiliar with Hodges, he’s someone who pisses everyone off (for us, his atrocious takes on Palestine). We’ve never called for his arrest, though, and we’re part of the ‘censorious left’, apparently! Reform UK, meanwhile, sells itself as a bastion of free speech.
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Here’s what Tice said about us last month in response to an article from 2020:
Is this you Canary? Do you now accept cancel culture exists? Would you like some help from us who are Right? Even though you have been utterly foul to us ? https://t.co/bIVrULwQwk
He’s lucky we didn’t call the police on him, honestly; apparently you can do that when your feelings get hurt now.
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The article above did draw a distinction between actual oppression (e.g. the state arresting a journalist for doing their job) and irrelevant oppression (e.g. people calling you names online). So it’s not like we ever denied the existence of authoritarianism. We know it exists, and we know we’re looking at would-be authoritarians in Reform UK.
Inscrutable
Needless to say, all politicians face scrutiny. The billionaire-funded Reform is facing a lot of scrutiny right now, and the signs are that it’s eroding the party’s support. In response, Reform and Reform-linked journalists are lashing out.
Farage and the far-right may not like the heat directed at them, but they’ve had no problem directing it at others. On 13 July, we covered that Reform’s Zia Yusuf was complaining about the criticism his party faces. As Willem Moore noted:
If you’re going to label people ‘traitors’ — as Zia Yusuf has — then people are going to get angry. If you’re going to claim successive governments have overseen an ‘invasion’ — as he has — then tensions are going to rise.
Politicians who stoke fear and division think they can ride the wave, but hatred is more like a fire than a sea. And people who play with fire get burned.
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As Owen Jones said, it seems clear that Reform and its politicians will pursue authoritarian politics should they take power. This is despite their insistence that they will defend free speech; an example of that being the following response from Reform’s Matt Goodwin to Jones:
Unlikely given Reform is the only party completely committed to the restoration of free speech. What some of your Green party colleagues would do to you if the Islamo-Greens ever come to power is a far more interesting question, Owen.
The ‘Islamo-Greens’, he says, because he’s a racist, little gobsh*te.
‘Free speech for me but not for thee‘ as they say.
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Reform UK’s authoritarian streak
Reform is a party run by would-be fascists, so none of this surprises us. The casual calls for arrests should come as a stark warning to the British people, though; especially the ones who care about their democratic rights and freedoms.
Oh, and before we go, we should note that Oakeshott lives in Dubai — a country where modern slavery is rife, as well as restrictions on free speech. The alleged human trafficker Tristan Tate spends a lot of time in Dubai too, and Richard Tice was reposting him just the other day. Again, this is no surprise, because these people don’t believe in anything besides money and getting their own way. And if they need to use state violence to guarantee their rights to either, they will do.
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If you’re anything like me, you’ll have been rocking skirts all summer.
I love having my legs loose and knowing that, even when the sweat gets unbearable, the air can reach my chafing thighs.
But even I know that there are some moments when you have to switch out your skirt for trousers.
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Public transport isn’t exactly short skirt friendly, and when it’s windy outside, you don’t want to have to think about being upskirted by the wind.
Or maybe, you’re just a trousers person! But not all trousers are created equal for summertime. We all know the allure of a linen or wide-legged pair come summer, and this year cropped trousers are trending.
To make sure you stay bang on forecast, we’ve dug through our favourite sites to find 13 of the very best wide legged and cropped trousers to keep you breezing through the heatwave.
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