Christopher Nolan's Odyssey Sells a $70 Trojan Horse Popcorn Bucket While the Film Wrestles With War and Guilt

Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of Homer's Odyssey has arrived with a physical scale that matches its ambition, and a merchandising tie-in that's drawing its own attention.

According to The Atlantic, moviegoers can buy a $69.99 popcorn bucket shaped like the Trojan horse, the same image Nolan uses in the film to represent moral decline and deception in war. The magazine calls this pairing a contradiction: a symbol of wartime treachery repackaged as a snack container.

The Atlantic's review focuses on the film's central set piece, a practical Trojan horse built for the production. Per the outlet, the horse stands nearly 40 feet tall, took hundreds of people to drag across a beach during filming, and rears upright rather than resting on four legs. This design choice departs sharply from ancient depictions and from the four-legged, wheeled horse used in Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 film Troy.

The Atlantic describes the horse as half-buried in sand when discovered by the Trojans in the film, and says the movie's depiction of people trapped inside it as seawater rises is "brilliantly and terrifyingly evoked."

A Story About Guilt, Not Victims

Where the review gets more pointed is on substance. The Atlantic argues Nolan's film spends more time on "pontificating about values and civilizational decline" than comparable action films, name-checking the Die Hard series as a contrast. The reviewer says that franchise delivers a tighter emotional core with a similar structure: one man's dangerous journey home to his wife.

The magazine's critique is that The Odyssey tells its story mostly from the perspective of the guilty, traumatized warrior, Odysseus, rather than from the perspective of the people he and the Greeks harmed. That's a narrative choice for anyone approaching this as a war story rather than a hero's journey.

The Atlantic goes further, arguing the film wants credit for moral seriousness about violence while also delivering massacre sequences as visual spectacle. In the review's framing: "Verbally, we are told that people matter; visually, we are shown that they do not." A film can say it cares about the human cost of war while its camera lingers on carnage in ways that undercut that message. Audiences and critics hold big-budget spectacle to that standard, whether the director is Nolan or anyone else.

The Mythological Backdrop

The Atlantic also lays out the original myth for context. In the ancient story, Troy's walls were said to have been built by the gods Apollo and Poseidon, making the city seemingly unbreachable. Greek forces were stalled outside Troy for a decade, according to the myth, until Athena inspired Odysseus to have the craftsman Epeius build the hollow wooden horse that let Greek soldiers sneak inside the city.

The Atlantic draws a comparison between Odysseus and Robert Oppenheimer, framing the mythical strategist as the architect of an ultimate weapon. This comparison underscores the film's apparent interest in guilt and the moral weight of decisive, devastating action.

Missing From the Discussion

The Atlantic's review is a piece of film criticism, not a hard-news report, and it doesn't include box office figures, other critics' takes, or comment from Nolan himself on the design choices or the merchandising. There's no confirmation in this account of how the broader critical or audience reception compares, nor any studio response to the specific charge that the film's violence undercuts its stated themes.

That leaves an open question for anyone deciding whether to see the film: does a nearly three-hour meditation on the costs of war justify itself if its own marketing turns the weapon of deception into a $70 snack bucket? The Atlantic's answer, based on this review, is a clear no. Whether other critics or audiences agree once the film reaches wider release remains to be seen.