‘The Odyssey’ retains its epic essence in new, reworked version by Christopher Nolan

Matt Damon stars in “The Odyssey,” which will be released on July 17.

Epic.

It’s a genre whose ingredients include a larger-than-life hero, a perilous journey, and a near-impossible goal. Its basic structure has inspired everything from Viking sagas to “The Count of Monte Cristo,” Arthurian legends to “Star Wars.”

And now, Christopher Nolan goes back to one of its ancient classics with “The Odyssey,” opening July 17.

There have been attempts to film Homer’s masterpiece before — an Italian production from 1954 with Kirk Douglas, a 1997 American miniseries with Armand Assante — but none has been so ambitious as Nolan’s, with its international cast of stars, reported $250 million budget, and 173 minutes of 70mm spectacle.

Epic was the original form, and epic is the modern result.

Here is the giant cyclopean Polyphemus, with his monstrous face and taste for human flesh. Here is the sorcerous Circe, who transforms piggish men into literal swine, and the nymph Calypso, who turns them into passive dreamers. Here are hurricanes and shipwrecks and The Trojan War, a siege that eventually becomes a slaughter.

And at the center of it is Odysseus, a warrior king now in middle age, who has spent a decade in battle — and now, uncertain of what exactly he has finally won, must spend another decade simply trying to get home to his wife.

Anne Hathaway with Mia Goth, left, in “The Odyssey.”

Although the casting of Boston boy Matt Damon as Odysseus — and Millburn’s Anne Hathaway, as his queen — drew some raised eyebrows at first, they are both perfect in their roles, if not perhaps perfectly fitting our narrow idea of Greeks from millennia past.

Actually, their modern personalities make them immediately, recognizably human. Although he is godlike in battle, when swords are sheathed Damon is often overcome with doubt and guilt. While she is a calm and regal beauty in court, in her private chambers Hathaway rails bitterly against a system that treats her as pretty property.

That jolt of feminism is one of Nolan’s ways of updating this ancient tale; another is the inclusive casting, in which a range of performers — including Latinos, Asians and Blacks — take on parts typically reserved for white Europeans. (There’s a trans actor, Elliot Page, on hand as well.) Predictably, this has kindled outrage amongst some.

Just as predictably, it’s absurd. Homer devoted far more words to describing the color of the dawn than the appearance of his characters (the most we get, about a few noblewomen, is that they were “white-armed”). He was also writing about a far-flung Hellenic civilization that touched three continents. Why shouldn’t there be a few dark faces here? (In fact, at least one portrayal of Circe in The Archaeological Museum of Thebes, on a fifth-century BCE vase, seems to depict her as Black.)

Lupita Nyong’o in “The Odyssey.”

Yet while race should be a non-issue (after all, several of these actors, like Zendaya, are playing mythical gods), Nolan’s color-blind casting isn’t a pro forma nod to political correctness; in fact, color is a conscious element of his version. In Nolan’s telling, Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra are fully realized, anguished characters who suffer objectification, exploitation and abuse; having them both portrayed by a beautiful Black actress, Lupita Nyong’o, only adds another sting to their victimization.

These aren’t the only changes Nolan’s intelligent adaptation has made to the ancient story. Odysseus’ time with King Alcinous and his daughter Nausicaa has been excised. The character of the soldier Sinon isn’t from Homer at all (he has been imported from Virgil’s “Aeneid”), and The Trojan War — over before the original “Odyssey” begins — plays a central part.

It’s not a flawless reworking. Nolan’s dialogue is sometimes too modern, too common. We don’t need the stilted style of some sword-and-sandal B-movie, with a pompadoured Tony Curtis wrestling with faux-classical language. But do we really have to suffer Tom Holland, as the beardless youth Telemachus, calling Penelope and Odysseus “Mom” and “Dad”? You half expect him to ask if he can borrow the chariot on Saturday.

Charlize Theron in “The Odyssey.”

And yes, admitted, the story can be confusing, with some relationships and motivations left unclear. I read a standard English translation of the epic before seeing the film; when even mediocre Marvel movies demand an audience arrive fully prepped, it felt like a small task. But I don’t expect many moviegoers to do the same, and at times they may feel as at sea as those beleaguered Greeks. (Nolan is also, typically, in thrall to the idea of separate timelines, with the film cutting among at least three narrative threads.)

But then the movie — with its astounding practical effects, pounding percussive score, awe-inspiring seascapes and frenetic editing — brings us back into the world of ancient Greece. And into the heart of this flawed hero, a warrior who eventually begins, with existential pain, to wonder if he is also a war criminal. Nolan is nothing if not ambitious, but his latest is reminiscent of the epic grandeur of David Lean, creating a living landscape across which stumbles an often self-involved, sometimes self-loathing, and fully recognizable human being.

Although, after more than 2500 years, spoiler alerts may be unnecessary, here is one: After all his pain and suffering, Odysseus eventually finds a happy ending. In fact, the finale oddly echoes — aided by Hathaway’s casting — the dénouement of Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” in which, having completed his mission, Bruce Wayne and his love are finally able to quietly slip away and leave the field of battle.

Perhaps, after the years of painstaking labor that went into this, Christopher Nolan can finally do the same.

Just not, dear gods, for long.

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