# Nolan says Star Wars inspired The Odyssey’s opening text

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/christopher-nolan-reveals-how-one-of-his-earliest-movie-experiences-watching-star-wars-influenced-the-odysseys-first-20-seconds/
- Published: 2026-08-11T12:02:48+00:00
- Updated: 2026-08-11T18:13:17+00:00
- Original publisher: GamesRadar+
- Original article: https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/action-movies/christopher-nolan-reveals-how-one-of-his-earliest-movie-experiences-watching-star-wars-influenced-the-odysseys-first-20-seconds/
- Topics: Celebrity, Entertainment, Film

## Key points

- Nolan credits Star Wars for The Odyssey's opening text
- Star Wars crawl taught him how text primes audiences
- He used the same trick previously in Oppenheimer

## Summary

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.

## Coverage

- [GamesRadar+: Nolan says Star Wars inspired The Odyssey’s opening text](https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/action-movies/christopher-nolan-reveals-how-one-of-his-earliest-movie-experiences-watching-star-wars-influenced-the-odysseys-first-20-seconds/)
- [Polygon: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Opens With a Surpising Star Wars Reference](https://www.polygon.com/christopher-nolan-the-odyssey-star-wars/)

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.