Christopher Nolan delivers the long-awaited sequel to the Iliad in this fantasy epic they should have called Troy Story 2.

It takes a beat to get used to The Odyssey‘s American accents and modern vernacular (Charlize Theron as Calypso looks like she’s just come back from a photoshoot for Vogueygia), but after the initial bemusement of seeing Spider-Man in Ancient Greece, this film quickly has you under its spell. And the modernity helps in making the three-hour movie accessible, demonstrating Nolan’s great strength of hiding cinematic depth inside the Trojan horse of crowd-pleasing entertainment.

This makes it the opposite of Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, which Nolan was once attached to direct. Where the 2004 film was a shallow retelling of Homer, Nolan uses the text to probe man’s relationship to god, like Oppenheimer but with more gods. And also more women who actually get to do something for once in a Nolan film, including Samantha Morton’s standout turn as Circe, and Anne Hathaway’s Penelope who spends the movie besieged by suitors like an Ithacan version of The Bachelorette – while her husband has accidentally wound up on Temptation Island.

Matt Damon’s Odysseus anchors the action perfectly, depicting the war hero as a slightly bumbling everyman who keeps wandering into stupid situations, making it closer to Homer Simpson’s Odyssey. They should have released it alongside the Malibu Stacy movie. Every encounter is thrilling and visually striking (especially in IMAX), to the point that you can watch the movie once and play it all in your head, while the non-linear narrative keeps the Homer-heads on their besandalled toes.

The combination of epic storytelling, grotesque moments and well-placed humour recalls Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, without getting bogged down in the dour sand-politics of Dune. As a result The Odyssey flies by with barely time to marvel at quite how insane this was to conceive, let alone shoot, and proves a worthy addition to the other Spider-Man films about homecoming.