Jason and the Argonauts
Updated: 2 days ago
Map of Homer’s The Odyssey
By Julie Sisk | July 24, 2026
The first time I saw Jason and the Argonauts I was a little kid and saw it screened on the beach during summer vacation. I remember sitting on the beach chair, the feel of the cold sand on my feet, the huge bag of grocery store popcorn shared amongst my group of siblings and friends and the anticipation as we waited for it to be dark enough to start the film.
And oh – what a film! It is still one of my all-time favorites and I always make an effort to see it when it screens in a film festival – as, thankfully, it often does!
Like so many children in previous generations, I was equally terrified and captivated. The bronze giant Talos. Zeus and Poseidon, the Hydra. And, of course, the skeleton warriors—still one of the coolest sequences ever put on film.
At the time, I had no idea who Ray Harryhausen was. I certainly didn't appreciate the painstaking artistry behind stop-motion animation. I only knew that I believed what I was seeing.
And Harryhausen hadn't simply created memorable movie monsters. He actually introduced millions of us to Greek mythology.
For many people, Jason, Medea and the gods of Olympus first came alive not in a classroom, but on a movie screen.
Now, more than sixty years later, a different filmmaker is taking on another of mythology's greatest stories.
The effects have changed.
The human questions at the heart of the story remain exactly the same.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey may be one of the most anticipated films in years. And while the technology available to Nolan bears little resemblance to what Harryhausen had in 1963, they're both using the most advanced filmmaking tools of their era to tell stories that have resonated for centuries.
That's the enduring power of myth—and of great cinema. They tell stories that seem distant in time and place, only to reveal something unmistakably familiar about ourselves.
When I wrote recently about xenia—the ancient Greek tradition of hospitality—I was struck by how modern Homer's world still feels. And because I've been immersed in ideas of hospitality lately, I found myself revisiting Greek mythology with new eyes. What fascinated me wasn't the fantasy. It was how these ancient stories continue to ask profoundly contemporary questions about how we treat one another.
Reading The Odyssey today, people reveal themselves not by what they say, but by how they welcome strangers, respond to adversity, and choose between fear and generosity. Isn’t that true for a people in any time period?
Strip away the gods and monsters, and you're left with questions about character that are just as relevant today as they were in Homer's time.
It's one of the reasons I love film festivals. Seeing four or five films a day from every corner of the world has a cumulative effect. Themes begin to echo across cultures, ideas build on one another, and you start to notice connections you might never have seen if you'd watched those films months and continents apart.
Every year, filmmakers from around the world revisit timeless questions through entirely new stories. Some draw directly from Greek mythology. Others never mention Homer or the ancient world at all, yet grapple with the same enduring themes: identity, exile, courage, justice, belonging, forgiveness, and the search for home.The settings change.
Human nature doesn't.
I suspect that's why Nolan chose The Odyssey now.
Not because audiences want another sword-and-sandal epic, but because this ancient story still has something urgent to say.
As film lovers, we have the privilege of watching this conversation unfold across generations. Ray Harryhausen inspired George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, and countless others. Those filmmakers, in turn will inspire another generation.
Cinema is really one long conversation.
And that's one of the greatest joys of traveling to film festivals. We aren't simply watching movies before everyone else. We're witnessing the next chapter in that conversation as it's being written.
There's something wonderfully fitting about that.
The stories endure.
The filmmakers change.
And each generation finds its own way to tell them.
I have a feeling Homer would approve.
– Julie
