If you didn't know any better, you would think the cast of The Odyssey risked life and limb to bring Homer's epic to life on the big screen. Waves crash around its actors, armor is lugged up hilltops, and – for one final sting in the tail – they were some ferocious cameos during the movie's feted Cyclops sequence.
For Himesh Patel, who plays Odysseus' second-in-command Eurylochus, that sense of peril only enhanced his performance – aided by the trust of director Christopher Nolan.
"I mean it adds a sort of visceral quality to it, which you see on screen that you don't really see that often," Patel recounts to GamesRadar+. "He's a rare filmmaker, in that he trusts we have a certain level of common sense to keep ourselves safe, but also that he's got the best stunt teams around, the best marine teams around, that kept us safe and kept us from ever being in any real danger."
Patel adds, "That allows him to capture that sort of visceral reality of what it was like to be on the boat or be in the cave, that sort of thing. And then you have things like that swarm of bees outside the Cyclops cave, that was just real."
Ah, yes, the bees. While your eyes may have been focused on Bill Irwin's lumbering, titanic Cyclops as Odysseus and his men bid to escape the cave it calls home, you may have noticed the low buzz of bees that soundtrack much of their entry into the precarious situation.
Far from being something added in post-production, their presence was something that occurred naturally in a moment of serendipity that wouldn't look out of place in one of the Greek myths' many godly interjections.
"When we broke for lunch and they were like, 'Just wait five minutes.' The sound team captured the sound of the bees. Sometimes you have these beautiful accidents."
Patel also reveals that the set-piece was filmed in Nestor's Cave in Greece, otherwise known as the "birthplace of Zeus."
On his arrival to 'set', Patel was taken aback by how the setting of perhaps the audience's most-anticipated moments was transformed for The Odyssey.
"The first day we got there, we basically turned it into a soundstage," Patel recalls. "They'd found a tiny gap at the top where they could run some cables in, and basically harness a rig of lighting. It was just kind of amazing to be going there and reminding ourselves that we're in an actual cave, we look outside and there's actually the Mediterranean around us."
The Odyssey opens in cinemas on July 17.
For more, check out more of 2026's big movie release dates and our beginner's guide to The Odyssey. Then relive some of Nolan's classics with our ranking of the best Christopher Nolan movies.
