While we may never see Christopher Nolan direct a Star Wars film (he has plenty of original projects to keep him busy for the next 40 years) the galaxy far, far away is – as it is with millions of others – a common reference point, and here he compares Matt Damon’s Odysseus with another great hero, Han Solo.
Matt Damon’s Odysseus is more of a Han Solo than a Luke Skywalker, according to Christopher Nolan.
The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus’s long journey home from the Trojan war, which brings him up against fantastical threats like a cyclops, sirens, and a vicious whirlpool in the ocean.
“When I finished the film I was quite struck by that. Every film I do, I like to leave it with questions or unanswered themes that I might carry through to the next film,” Nolan told The New York Times, when asked about parallels between Oppenheimer and Odysseus’s characters. “There’s a lot of ideas of leadership, of mixed motivations, the flaws of people, that idea of where the best of intentions can go horribly wrong. Odysseus is a very complex character – a trickster, somebody who’s smart and wily. In Star Wars terms, it’s Han Solo – but Han Solo is not the hero of Star Wars, it’s Luke Skywalker.”
