Christopher Nolan‘s movies may appear to be methodically mapped out from the get-go, but that wasn’t the case with The Odyssey, according to Matt Damon. In a recent interview, the Good Will Hunting star revealed that Nolan surprisingly had no idea about how a crucial scene in his upcoming fantasy epic would pan out and only figured out the specifics while filming.
Christopher Nolan didn’t crack The Odyssey’s Trojan horse scene until last minute
While speaking with GamesRadar+, Damon noted that Christopher Nolan didn’t have any plans for the suffocating Trojan horse sequence in The Odyssey prior to filming.
“It was the question I had the day before we shot,” he disclosed. “I said, ‘We’re doing the Trojan Horse tomorrow. How are you going to do that?’ And Chris [Nolan] just goes, ‘I don’t know.’ It was a real lesson: he goes, ‘We’re just going to cram in there and figure it out.'”
Notably, in Greek mythology, the Greeks made use of a massive, hollow wooden horse to smuggle a massive force of soldiers inside the walls of Troy in an attempt to conquer the ancient city. According to The Odyssey’s trailer, Nolan’s movie will feature a similar sequence to depict the Greeks’ infamous military maneuver.
Damon continued, “We literally got in there, me and the guys jammed in, and Chris jammed in with [cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema] – Hoyt had the camera – and we figured it out. That feeling of claustrophobia, that was all just developing organically…Hoyte was looking through the lens, and Chris was right next to him. They just built that in real time. It was so cool to see. If we had planned it out, I don’t think it would have had that same energy.”
The Oscar winner concluded that Christopher Nolan’s last-minute improvisation made him realize an important trait of the acclaimed filmmaker. “There’s this thing that he does that is so incredible, which is he understands all of these elements that he’s going to need, but he’s not prescriptive about it. You still feel like you’re shooting on an independent movie,” he remarked.
Originally reported by Apoorv Rastogi on ComingSoon.
