The time has come: reviews are in for Christopher Nolan‘s highly anticipated epic The Odyssey.

Following the success of 2023’s Oppenheimer — which earned Nolan his first Academy Awards for best director and best picture — the filmmaker turned his attention to adapting Homer’s ancient Greek epic. The Odyssey also made history as the first feature film shot entirely with Imax 70mm film cameras.

As of midday Wednesday, the film holds a 98 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, currently the highest of Nolan’s career, and is tracking for a massive opening weekend.

Starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, the film follows the legendary Greek king’s long journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War as he attempts to reunite with his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and son, Telemachus (Tom Holland). The ensemble cast also includes Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal, Elliot Page, Travis Scott, Charlize Theron and more.

While anticipation has remained high, the film has also faced online criticism in recent months. Nolan recently brushed off that backlash as “irrelevant,” saying many of those criticizing the movie had yet to see it.

Ahead of the film’s Friday release, here’s what critics are saying about The Odyssey.

The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney is among those praising the cast and impressive production: “While The Odyssey is uneven, and no match for the sure-footedness and intellectual complexity of Oppenheimer, it’s elevated by the blindingly charismatic ensemble,” he wrote. “Damon is superb, going to dark places seldom if ever explored in his previous roles; Hathaway is a model of steely self-possession masking vulnerability … Work on the craft side unsurprisingly is top-notch. Van Hoytema fills the giant frame with imposing images shot in evocative international locations, grand and powerful in scale.”

But he adds: “One of the issues is that the writer-director never finds much balance between the parallel journeys of Odysseus and Telemachus, making the movie feel structurally clumsy. It doesn’t help that Holland, while always an appealing screen presence, is wrong for the role. Like Pattinson, the Brit actor plays his character with an American accent. But he comes across as, well, Peter Parker in a tunic, sapping the gravitas from Telemachus’ path to maturity.”

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, wrote, “This is a film with thrilling ambition, boldness, seriousness, generosity and flair. There are some broad-brush moments in the dialogue, yes, but even these are applied with a muscular flourish. It has gasp-inducing, Imax-sized landscapes of loneliness shot by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema — who, incidentally, avoids the sea’s traditional cliched color — and full-tilt battle sequences and fight scenes accompanied by the throbbing and thrumming of drums.”

IGN’s Scott Collura wrote, “A must-watch cinematic experience, an epic film version of an epic poem that adapts many of the out-there concepts of Homer through a new eye that frequently brings a sense of horror and existential angst to the story — and even a bit of humor too! Matt Damon is fine as the title character if not revelatory, but the extensive supporting cast frequently prop up individual moments, as do some of Nolan’s unique additions to the story. While Odysseus’ emotional journey here can be as choppy as a rough day at sea, and the ‘civilization is eroding’ theme is undercooked, the film’s bigger observations on the effects of war on those who are forced to participate in it are well met. The Odyssey isn’t perfect, but it’s a pretty great moviegoing experience all the same.”

Empire’s John Nugent wrote, “The scale and scope here is, frankly, jaw-detaching. It is filmmaking at a magnitude few modern directors could ever realistically imagine, demand or execute. Yet what is most striking about this film is its quieter moments … Samantha Morton’s Circe, meanwhile, provides the closest Nolan has come to full-on horror, an astonishing sequence full of shocking fury and sadness at the baseness of men.” He added: “It may be set in a mythical universe, but Nolan is again raging at the folly of a humanity we might recognize — on an enormous, IMAX-sized canvas. Nobody does it better.”

The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin wrote, “Nolan and his collaborators have constructed a strange, fearsome and trailblazing machine of a movie — by some distance, the best of the year so far. Its creator is known for playing tricks with time, and this may be his grandest yet: turning one of the oldest stories in literature into a vote of confidence in blockbuster cinema’s future.”