If The Odyssey Left You Wanting More, Watch These 18 Epic Films Next
Three hours of the odyssey wasn’t enough?
Three hours of the odyssey wasn’t enough? Are you not entertained?!
Brain rot’s creeping inevitability in our entertainment diets has been momentarily thwarted by Nolan’s three-hour epic, drawing swarms of people to the cinema. One can only hope it's a tide-turner, because somewhere an exec has definitely floated ninety-minute trailer compilations in lieu of actual films.
Fear not, we’ve 17 films (and one TV show) ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, to slake your thirst for the fantastic, the mythic, the long hero’s journey; all that good stuff.
1. Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) / Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017)
Where Can I Watch It? Netflix
First up, a package deal: because if you enjoyed all three hours of The Odyssey, what’s an extra two-and-a-half? With melodrama and physics-defying action, the duology wrestles subtlety into submission much like mace-wielding villain Bhallaladeva does a charging bull (with his bare hands, naturally).
Watch it for: Pure spectacle. Baahubali 2 was the most expensive Indian film ever made at the time of its release, and it shows.
2. Clash of The Titans (1981)
Where Can I Watch It? Apple TV, Prime Video (Available To Rent)
A Kraken turns up in the Aegean, which makes about as much sense as Loch Ness surfacing in your bathtub, but allow yourself to be taken in by this amalgamate of myth. Perseus is dispatched to save a princess, collecting Medusa's head and cutie pie Pegasus along the way, while the gods meddle from above. Picture Laurence Olivier as Zeus, moving little clay figurines around with the dispassion of a bureaucrat working through his inbox, each signature costing several mortal lives.
Watch it for: Medusa’s introduction; and the pleasure of seeing Laurence Olivier play Zeus like a dispassionate bureaucrat working through a stack of murderous paperwork.
3. Excalibur (1981)
Where Can I Watch It? Apple TV, Prime Video (Available To Rent)
Take the tale of Arthur, run it through some dreamy film (and a fog machine): the sword, the grail and of course, the betrayal, come out with such gorgeous sincerity that disbelief suspends itself. People wear armour to bed.
Watch it for: knights riding through blossom to Carmina Burana.
4. Gladiator (2000)
Where Can I Watch It? Prime Video, Paramount+, Kanopy, BBC iPlayer
Loosely historical and gleefully unfaithful, which is a sweet ratio. A general is betrayed, enslaved and fights his way back up to the one man he wants to kill. The giant of the modern sword-and-sandal revival.
Watch it for: Russell Crowe's relentless charisma.
5. Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Where Can I Watch It? BINGE, Foxtel Now
A young prince goes after the Golden Fleece with a ragtag crew of heroes, a journey punctuated by skirmishes with various monsters; giants, harpies, a hydra, and a gang of very upset skeletons, in a very famous sequence.
Watch it for: the skeletons. Obviously.
6. The Northman (2022)
Where Can I Watch It? Stan, Netflix
An exiled prince returns home to kill his uncle. Here the gods are emphatically real and revenge is a physical labour with a quality so pumiced it’s reduced to grim duty rather than an act of passion. This is a retelling of the Norse legend of Amleth, which Shakespeare later reheated as Hamlet.
Watch it for: the most convincingly ancient world on this list.
7. ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Where Can I Watch It? Apple TV, Prime Video (Available To Rent or Buy)
Homer’s poem gets relocated to Mississippi, 1937. Three convicts break off a chain gang, led by a silver-tongued and pomaded George Clooney, who’s desperately trying to get home to his wife before she remarries.
Watch it for: John Goodman’s turn as a cyclo— correction… one-eyed bible salesman; it’s one of the cooler interpretations of Polyphemus on film.
8. The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Where Can I Watch It? BINGE, Foxtel Now
A retelling of the Exodus, and one of DreamWorks' most under-appreciated films. It’s about two brothers with a terrible destiny: one of them may not survive it. The animation is beautiful, and it takes its own source material seriously enough to hurt, you will absolutely cry.
Watch it for: the soundtrack (Whitney Houston! Mariah Carey!)
9. Princess Mononoke (1997)
Where Can I Watch It? Netflix
A mythological tale that draws on Japanese history, folklore and animist/Shinto-inflected ideas. One of the many things that makes this film unique is that it’s a hero’s journey without a cut-and-dried villain. Sure, Lady Eboshi does raze the forest and shoot at its animal gods, but iconic filmmaker Miyazaki makes things far more complicated than that.
Watch it for: The film’s (extremely cute) interpretation of Japanese tree spirits, Kodama.
10. Ran (1985)
Where Can I Watch It? MUBI, or Available To Rent on YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video
Colour-coded armies, volcanic plains; every single frame of this samurai epic looks like it belongs on the wall of a museum. Plus, it’s perhaps the only time a bloody castle siege could be described as beautiful, with director Akira Kurosawa swapping the sounds of battle for a haunting orchestral score.
Watch it for: Lady Kaede, one of cinema's most terrifyingly composed agents of revenge.
11. The Return (2024)
Where Can I Watch It? SBS On Demand, Paramount+ or Rent or Buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video.
Ralph Fiennes’ gives us the most human Odysseus we’ve had on screen, washing up on Ithaca looking like a piece of gristle and in no hurry to reveal his identity. There are no gods or monsters here, the spectacle is only in the human condition; and the bitter truth that homecomings are a fantasist’s cope.
Watch it for: Penelope. Her twenty years of stasis in this film, unlike in Nolan’s, renders her transformation as astonishing as Odysseus’s.
12. Sia, the Dream of the Python (2001)
Where Can I Watch It? Kanopy
In this Burkinabè film, the titular Sia takes one look at her mythological destiny (being sacrificed to a giant snake) and says, essentially, no thanks. For a 1300-year-old legend associated with the ancient Wagadu/Ghana Empire, the story is remarkably applicable to modern politics.
Watch it for: Kerfa, the supposed village madman's razor-sharp one-liners.
13. The Dead Lands (2014)
Where Can I Watch It? SBS On Demand
A Māori-language coming-of-age film from Aotearoa, set before European contact. Ancestors and the spirit world are ever-present, and the boundaries between the living, the dead and the natural world feel porous. Between the film’s mystical interludes, it doesn't pull its punches when it comes to, well, punches, using taiaha combat (using long, carved wooden weapons) as part of the Māori martial art mau rākau.
Watch it for: Fight choreography that even the action film-averse will appreciate.
14. Troy (2004)
Where Can I Watch It? Prime Video, Stan
The war Odysseus spends twenty years trying to get home from, starts right here in this action epic starring a glistening Brad Pitt, who plays a conspicuously hetero Achilles, camped outside the walls of Troy while Sean Bean’s Odysseus does the thinking to break this war of Attrition. Like Nolan’s film, the gods are either absent or abstractions.
Watch it for: the electrifying duel between Achilles and Hector.
15. Ulysses (1954)
Where Can I Watch It? YouTube
A brisk, gaudy Technicolor canter through the highlights of Homer’s poem. Polyphemus (the cyclops), sirens, slaughter, adventure – and like Nolan’s Odyssey, has an actor playing two roles – Circe and Penelope – temptation and home wearing the same uncanny face is, well, uncanny.
Watch it for: the sequence where Kirk Douglas fights a rubber cyclops.
16. Whale Rider (2002)
Where Can I Watch It: Netflix, Stan, SBS On Demand
Keisha Castle-Hughes plays Pai, the granddaughter of her community’s chief, with such heart that it earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination at just 12 years old. One of the more understated entries, but a heavyweight when it comes to stories of myth and heroic inheritance as the young protagonist attempts to fulfil her destiny as leader.
Watch it for: A complimentary tear-duct cleanse (especially the school speech scene).
17. Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001)
Where Can I Watch It? Apple TV, Amazon Video (Available to Buy)
Here’s a bonus TV recommendation if you’re in the market for a longer-term commitment. A reformed warlord roams ancient Greece and… an ancient world that at various points contains: Caesar, Norse gods, Chinese warlords and a musical episode. It was also one of the most influential queer texts on 90s television, and despite the low-budget-syndicated-TV reputation that usually comes with a label like that, it's well-told, lived-in and an oft-camp riot that deserves a retrospective. If you can't decide which ancient world you want to visit, this one has them all!
Watch it for: Lucy Lawless. IYKYK.
18. Yeelen (1987)
Where Can I Watch It? Kanopy
It’s quite rare that a film stakes a claim to both arthouse and epic cinema. In this Malian mythic adventure film based in Bambara cosmology and oral tradition, a young man with magical powers journeys across Mali while being pursued by his shamanic father. The label of magical realism doesn’t do it justice; in this world, the spiritual and material exist side by side – with little fanfare.
Watch it for: The type of practical effects and old-school camera tricks that will make you pine for a pre-CGI world.
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