In late July, outside the AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York, a queue formed not for a new gadget but for a chance to buy cinema tickets in person. The cinema’s app had been crashing, and the screenings—Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in 70mm IMAX—were selling out within moments of release. By mid-September, the film’s run in the format had been extended, yet seats remained scarce, with only 25 theatres in the United States capable of projecting it as the director intended.

The frenzy around the film’s presentation contrasts with a quieter, more puzzling restriction. In the United States, The Odyssey carries an R rating, barring anyone under 17 from seeing it without an adult. The Motion Picture Association’s board, composed of anonymous parents, deemed the film’s violence and language unsuitable for younger viewers. Yet in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, the same film is rated for ages 15 and up; Canada gave it a PG. Much of Latin America and Europe classified it as equivalent to a PG-13. Denmark approved it for ages 11 and up. The decision has baffled some observers, not least because the film, as translator Emily Wilson noted, is a ‘family-friendly audiovisual spectacle’—a quality that has made it a gift to English teachers hoping to bring Homer into classrooms.

The film’s script repeatedly invokes ‘Zeus’ law’, a translation of the Greek concept of xenia, or hospitality to strangers. Bruno Alfonzo, a specialist in classical studies, explained that the principle was central to Greek identity: to reject it was to be a barbarian, like the Cyclops Polyphemus. Nolan himself said he chose the phrase ‘Zeus’ law’ because he thought it would be more comprehensible to modern audiences. Yet Wilson, in a subsequent essay for The Atlantic, argued that the film’s ethical framework collapses under scrutiny. She called it ‘visually stunning, emotionally empty’, and noted that the camera lingers on the logistics of moving the Trojan Horse rather than on the human cost of deception. The production’s choice to film in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, without the consent of the Indigenous Sahrawi people, further complicated its moral posture, she wrote.

Away from the critical debate, the film has set off quieter ripples. In Malmö, Sweden, library copies of Homer’s Odyssey—especially the English editions—are all on loan, with ten reservations on the full English text. The pattern repeats in Gothenburg and Umeå, where Stephen Fry’s recent retelling is sold out. ‘We see that loans have increased sharply,’ wrote a librarian in Gothenburg. ‘It’s usually like this when films based on books are shown, which is very fun.’ On the small Italian island of Favignana, which stood in for Odysseus’ Ithaca, the local government is preparing a permanent exhibition of costumes and props from the shoot, to open in October in a former tuna-processing plant. The mayor, Giuseppe Pagoto, hopes to channel the film’s global box office—$264 million in its first week—into sustainable tourism, inspired by the Inspector Montalbano effect that once boosted southeastern Sicily.

As the 70mm IMAX projectors continue to whir in a handful of darkened rooms, and the island of Favignana readies its exhibition halls, the film’s afterlives multiply. In New York, a professor of marketing who saw the film in a regular theatre confessed, ‘I felt like a loser.’ He promptly bought a ticket for the scarce format, joining the many who seek not just the story, but the story of having seen it.