Nolan says Star Wars inspired The Odyssey’s opening text
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Christopher Nolan has explained that one of his earliest cinematic memories, watching George Lucas' original Star Wars, directly shaped the opening moments of his new film The Odyssey. He recalled how the film's famous opening crawl, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", taught him how written text before a story begins can prime an audience's mindset and expectations, a lesson he says he has carried into his own directing.
Nolan deliberately used a similar technique in The Odyssey, opening the film with evocative text in its first 20 seconds, having previously applied the same approach in Oppenheimer. He described such textual preambles as forming a kind of contract between filmmaker and viewer, establishing how the audience should engage with what follows and giving them a shared framework for interpreting the imagery, rather than simply opening on spectacle alone.
- Nolan says Star Wars' opening crawl shaped The Odyssey's start
- He calls text preambles a "contract" between filmmaker and audience
- He used the same technique previously in Oppenheimer
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Christopher Nolan is a British-American film director known for films such as Inception, Interstellar and Oppenheimer, the latter of which won several Academy Awards. He is currently promoting his new film, The Odyssey, an adaptation of the ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, which is due for release and has been one of the most anticipated films of the year.
In recent interviews, Nolan has been discussing the creative choices behind the new film, including how it opens. This has led him to reflect on the influence of earlier films on his own work, particularly George Lucas's original 1977 Star Wars, which is widely remembered for its opening "crawl" of scrolling text that sets the scene before the action begins.
This background matters because it shows how established directors often draw on formative early cinema experiences when shaping their own films, and it gives context to ongoing conversations about how Nolan approaches storytelling techniques, such as using text on screen, across his body of work.
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Originally published by GamesRadar+ as “Christopher Nolan reveals how “one of his earliest movie experiences” watching Star Wars influenced The Odyssey’s first 20 seconds”.