The Odyssey star Himesh Patel thinks that Christopher Nolan's movie could help change moviemaking after its success with practical filmmaking techniques. The director is known for eschewing CGI where possible, using tricks like forced perspective and real sets for his movies.
"I know that Chris Nolan has been known for this for a long time, is his practically driven philosophy, doing as little as possible with CGI," Patel, who plays Eurylochus, told The Romesh Ranganathan Show. "He does use it in various ways but as little as he can, he tries to create as much as he can in camera and then use CGI to composite things in."
Several of the shots in the movie were made without CGI, including the Circe scene where Odysseus' men are turned into pigs. "We're using techniques that have been around for 30, 40 years but we just lost them as we got used to CGI," Patel added.
"What I really hope is the success of this movie and how much on screen is tangible there and then you know in tandem you've got Spider-Man that just came out and I went to see that the other day and there's so much in that movie that is tangible, real, just Tom [Holland] in his costume rather than a CGI version," he continued. "I really hope that's something that the powers that be take notice of and use more often."
Patel's approach is more optimistic than his co-star Matt Damon, who previously spoke about his fears about the future of this kind of filmmaking. "It was a really weird movie for me personally in the sense that I had almost a nostalgic feeling the entire time I was making it, because it felt like the movies when I started working. And I know that that’s going away," Damon told GQ. "I knew that this was the last chance I was going to have to do something like this."
The Odyssey is in theaters now. For more, read our The Odyssey review and our breakdown of all the upcoming movies you need to know about.
