As Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey continues to dominate the big screen, we continue to be amazed by how the director pulled off some of the scenes in the mythical adaptation without using CGI or green screens, including the conquering of Troy.
Anyone who has read Homer's The Odyssey, or The Iliad for that matter, knows how huge the Trojan War really was. After Spartan Melaneus' wife Helen ran off with Paris, Prince of Troy, Melaneus' brother and king of Greece, Agamemnon, used this as an excuse to capture Troy and sent 1000 ships to take the city. However, after 10 years of fighting on the beach outside of Troy's impenetrable walls, it was Odysseus who thought up the Trojan Horse, which would carry Greek men into the city to take over Troy and murder its inhabitants.
So, with that in mind, you would think that Nolan would have to use some kind of green screen to replicate Agamemnon's army, which after 10 years would still be anywhere between 100 and 1,000 men strong. But Nolan didn't break his no CGI rule. The team built the city of Troy we see on screen, using hundreds of extras to recreate the siege, as you can see in the behind-the-scenes video below, which has since been posted on Twitter.
The fall of Troy in The Odyssey was filmed with zero green screen. pic.twitter.com/y7BY4w835kJuly 22, 2026
Even Odysseus star Matt Damon was surprised by the number of people on set that day. "We didn't know that Agamemnon and an army of 750 people were on the other side. We just thought we were taking it to the opening of the door," said Damon to Entertainment Weekly. "And we opened the door...I will never forget seeing Benny in that costume standing in the middle. And it looked like it was Benny and 20 guys because it was dark behind them. And then this roar, and 500 people came running. It was something."
But that's just Agamemnon's army, as in an interview with CBS Mornings, Damon confirmed that some scenes in Troy included between 1000 and 1500 extras.
Although it is Homer's The Iliad, which takes place before The Odyssey, that focuses on the fictional Trojan War, the battle is vital to Odysseus' arc. So showing what happened up until his journey home makes his tumultuous travels make a little more sense. Odysseus frequently thinks back to what happened in Troy, and feels guilty about how his invention of the horse broke Zeus' rule and cost thousands of Trojan lives. But his actions inside Troy ultimately cost him safe passage home.
The Odyssey is out in cinemas now. For more, check out our The Odyssey review and The Odyssey ending explained, and find out where the new movie places in our ranking of the best Christopher Nolan movies.
