The Odyssey & A Hero's Journey
Long before the modern novel, the superhero movie, or the fantasy franchise, there was The Odyssey!
Emerging from an ancient oral tradition and taking the form of an epic poem more than 2,700 years ago, Homer’s poem became one of the foundational works of Western literature. The story follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he spends ten years attempting to return home after the Trojan War. His journey brings him into conflict with gods, monsters, storms, temptation, and his own pride, while his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, struggle to preserve his household in his absence.
The influence of The Odyssey extends far beyond its individual characters or adventures. It helped establish a storytelling blueprint that audiences still recognize today: a hero leaves the familiar world, enters an unknown realm, encounters allies and enemies, survives a series of trials and returns home transformed. Its themes of exile, identity, temptation, endurance and homecoming can be found throughout epic poetry, fantasy novels, adventure films, superhero stories and countless tales about people trying to find their way back to themselves.
Now, Christopher Nolan is bringing that foundational story back for modern audiences. His 2026 adaptation stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and approaches the poem not as a historical artifact, but as an exciting film riddled with action and adventure. Produced as a $250 million IMAX epic, the film uses modern filmmaking technology to recreate one of humanity’s oldest surviving stories.
The structure now commonly called the hero’s journey was popularized by mythologist Joseph Campbell, who examined recurring patterns in myths, religious stories and folklore. The journey moves through three broad phases: departure, initiation and return.
The hero begins in an ordinary or familiar world. A disruption then presents a call to adventure: a prophecy, threat, war, disappearance, disaster or unanswered question. The hero crosses into unfamiliar territory, where they encounter mentors, allies, enemies and escalating trials. After surviving a decisive ordeal, they must return to the world they left behind, carrying the consequences of everything they have experienced.
The Odyssey follows this pattern, although Odysseus is far from a simple or morally perfect hero. He is clever, deceptive, prideful, courageous, and sometimes reckless. His defining gift is not superhuman strength but metis: cunning intelligence, adaptability, and the ability to survive by understanding both people and situations.
That moral complexity is part of the epic’s lasting appeal. In ancient Greek literature, being a hero did not necessarily mean being altruistic or virtuous. Heroes occupied an exceptional position between ordinary humanity and the world of gods. They could restore order while also creating destruction. Georgetown classics professor Alexander Sens describes the Homeric pattern as one in which the hero withdraws from the community, disorder grows in their absence, and their eventual return restores balance.
The hero’s journey does not belong exclusively to ancient poetry or enormous Hollywood epics. Its structure appears throughout genre cinema, in survival stories, and even in contemporary narratives about creativity.
In Ator: The Fighting Eagle, Ator is born with a birthmark that foretells the destruction of the Spider Cult; he becomes the target of the very forces he is prophesied to defeat. His training with the warrior Griba represents the familiar meeting between hero and mentor, preparing him to cross the threshold between ordinary life and destiny.
In The Lord Protector, Rennick, a fearless protector, enters a world of magic and mystery to solve the Riddle of the Chosen and prevent the destruction of Earth. His quest contains many of the form’s foundational elements: an existential threat, hidden knowledge, supernatural opposition, and a hero whose abilities may not be enough. The central question is not whether Rennick can defeat the darkness, but whether a mortal person can bear the responsibility of confronting forces larger than himself.
In Angel Flight Down, the heroes begin as ordinary professionals aboard a medical aircraft. When the plane crashes in the snowy Rockies, the story’s familiar world disappears in an instant. The surviving pilot and paramedics must contend with injury, isolation, emotional panic, and the worsening condition of a two-year-old patient.
Hero Mode relocates the heroic quest into the world of independent video game development. Facing the possible collapse of her company, Kate Mayfield places her teenage son Troy in charge of creating the game that might save the business. Troy receives what appears to be a dream opportunity, but crossing that threshold brings resentment from the company’s coders, pressure from a rival CEO, and the burden of proving that talent alone is not enough.
What happens when ordinary life is interrupted? Who do we become when we are tested? And what do we learn after the adventure ends? More than 2,700 years after The Odyssey first took shape, storytellers are still following the path it helped establish: sending heroes into the unknown so that they can come back transformed.
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