Tom Holland can't believe how Christopher Nolan pulled off The Odyssey without CGI

Christopher Nolan does not just make big movies; he builds them. Tom Holland just got a fresh reminder. After a late-night screening of Nolan's new epic The Odyssey, Holland walked out amped and stuck on the same question a lot of us have: how did Nolan pull that off without computers?

Holland saw a finished cut early and left buzzing

The 30-year-old actor says he caught the final cut of The Odyssey ahead of release and immediately wanted a do-over screening. Speaking to Empire, Holland admitted he was floored by the stunt work and the scale of it all, especially given Nolan's well-known allergy to leaning on CGI.

"When the movie finished, it was late at night ... had it been 5 o'clock in the afternoon, I would have said to Chris, 'Do you mind if we just throw it on again?' Your brain is going, 'I don't understand how he's done that without using CGI'"

That tracks. Nolan is famous for favoring the real thing whenever possible, and Holland says that was the one question he was dying to ask the director the second the credits rolled.

Nolan's whole deal: do it for real

If you have seen a Nolan movie, none of this should shock you, but it still kind of does. He will use visual effects when he has to, yet he typically engineers the spectacle in-camera first and asks computers to fill in last. Case in point:

• For Interstellar (2014), he literally grew a massive cornfield and staged those apocalyptic dust storms with practical methods instead of faking it on a green screen.

That philosophy runs through The Odyssey too: meticulous camera setups, miniatures where it makes sense, and a general refusal to make everything ones and zeros unless it absolutely has to be.

Who Holland plays, and how much we have seen

Holland is not just an awestruck viewer here; he is in the movie, playing Telemachus, Odysseus 's son. Early marketing barely gave him away — a Nolan archive account noted back in December 2025 that the first trailer only flashed a tight close-up of Holland in one shot. Classic Nolan move: show less, make you lean in.

Mutual admiration society (with room for a sequel team-up)

Nolan has already gone on record saying he wants to work with Holland again, calling him "an incredible talent" during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Holland has been just as effusive in past interviews, calling the Nolan experience one of the biggest achievements of his career and shouting out Matt Damon for making the shoot even better.

Given Nolan's habit of reuniting with his actors, a round two feels likely. And if that happens, maybe Holland gets a front-row seat to even more of the analog wizardry he cannot stop thinking about — or at least a second late-night screening where they actually do hit play again.