In Graphics: A guide to Homer's 'Odyssey', the epic poem behind Christopher Nolan's biggest film yet

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey arrives in theatres on July 17, shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, his first film since Oppenheimer, and already being talked about as the most ambitious thing he's ever attempted. But before the spectacle, there's the small matter of what he's adapting: a nearly 3,000-year-old poem that isn't just old; it's foundational.

Homer's Odyssey, composed sometime around the 8th century BCE, is one of the two epics credited with essentially inventing Western storytelling, the other being its own prequel, the Iliad. Every "hero's journey" structure since, from Virgil's Aeneid to Joyce's Ulysses to the modern three-act screenplay, owes something to the ten-year voyage of one man trying to get home.

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Its fingerprints are everywhere, often without anyone noticing. The words "odyssey" and "siren" exist in everyday English because of this poem. So does the idea of the "Trojan horse," the "Achilles' heel," the entire template for the wandering-hero narrative that Hollywood has recycled for a century, from Ulysses in 1954 to O Brother, Where Art Thou? to, now, Nolan's own version. It's arguably the single most adapted story in the history of cinema, precisely because it was never really written to sit just as is.

Most people last read it (or skimmed it) in school, and by the time the cyclopes and sirens and ten-year detour blur together, it's easy to walk into the film cold. So before Nolan's version reshapes it for a new generation, here's a closer look at the poem that started all of this, in graphics.