Christopher Nolan has reached a career high with his epic take on Homer’s The Odyssey, with five star reviews for the star-studded movie flooding in from around the globe.

The review embargo lifted on Wednesday ahead of the movie’s release on Friday, and with nearly 60 reviews in so far, The Odyssey has achieved a near-perfect score on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes with a current standing of 99%.

That 99% score places Nolan’s 13th feature film at the top of the pile of his past movies with The Dark Knight trailing behind with a 94% critic score.

The reviews for The Odyssey are almost universal in their soaring praise and five star ratings.

Brian Viner declared that ‘Nolan’s film – its star-studded cast led by Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron and Zendaya – is a glorious cinematic experience, a triumph both of story-telling and movie-making.’

Viner added ‘I rarely say this of movies nearly three hours long – one viewing simply isn’t enough.’

Christopher Nolan has reached a career high with his epic take on Homer’s The Odyssey, with five star reviews for the star-studded movie flooding in from around the globe

Peter Bradshaw for the Guardian in another five star review went one step further, writing that ‘Nolan goes god-tier with a breathtaking epic of men, monsters and moral metamorphosis.’

‘This is a film with thrilling ambition, boldness, seriousness, generosity and flair. There are some broad-brush moments in the dialogue, yes, but even these are applied with a muscular flourish.’

Any minor criticisms hone in on Nolan’s choice to modernise the dialogue and deviate from his source material.

John Nugent for Empire writes that ‘it is as elegant and economical an adaptation as it’s possible to make of such a lengthy tome, and you don’t need a Classics degree to understand it. Some purists may bristle at the liberties taken with the text, with significant omissions.’

‘The dialogue inevitably loses some of the poetry and lyricism of the original text; no dactylic hexameter here. But what it loses in faithfulness, it gains in visual and structural poetry.’

Writing for The Times though, historian Mary Beard said ‘I liked that Telemachus (Tom Holland) refers to Odysseus as ‘Dad’ (though I suspect some viewers may feel differently). This is an epic, and a myth, in the here and now, not set in a hoary past.’

David Rooney for The Hollywood Reporter calls it ‘a meditative action movie both immense and intimate, albeit one whose flow is impeded by the inherently episodic nature of the nonlinear source material and some questionable casting choices.’

Rooney singles out Tom Holland, who plays the son of Matt Damon’s Odysseus, Telemachus, deciding that ‘while he is always an appealing screen presence, he is wrong for the role.’

The review embargo lifted on Wednesday ahead of the three hour spectacle’s release on Friday, and with nearly 60 reviews in so far, The Odyssey has achieved a near-perfect score on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes

‘Like [Robert] Pattinson, the Brit actor plays his character with an American accent. But he comes across as, well, Peter Parker in a tunic, sapping the gravitas from Telemachus’ path to maturity.’

Deadline’s Gregory Nussen disagreed though, calling Holland’s performance ‘his strongest one to date.’

‘His performance certainly seems tinged with the courageous naivety of Spider-Man, insisting on trying to influence those much more cunning and physically capable than he,’ he wrote. ‘Holland may be playing a child, but his performance is bursting with a newfound maturity.’

Other critics hailed the female actors. Ahead of the review embargo lifting the film had received heaps of attention for all the wrong reasons – sparking backlash over its ‘bizarre’ casting, being accused of fuelling ‘brutal repression’ and sending Elon Musk into meltdown.

Nolan recently defended his decision to cast Kenyan actress Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, after Musk called the casting ‘historically inaccurate.’

The likes of Clarisse Loughrey in her five star review for The Independent said the film is ‘brought to life by a cast of seemingly thousands – but it’s the women (among them Anne Hathaway and Samantha Morton) who steal the show.’

The reviews are almost universal in their soaring praise and five star ratings. The Daily Mail’s Brian Viner declared that ‘Nolan’s film is a glorious cinematic experience: Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, Charlize Theron, and Zendaya

RogerEbert.com Editor-at-Large Matt Zoller Seitz meanwhile called Nolan’s casting ‘not just defensible but inspiring.’

Financial Times Danny Leigh said Nyong’o ‘deserves more screen time’, labelling the performance as ‘vivid and bristling’ whilst ‘Holland, still playing boys at 30, is comic-book basic.’

There was of course praise for Nolan’s directing, with Hoai-Tran Bui for Inverse writing that ‘it feels like Nolan is turning a new page in his filmography; a film that continues the soul-searching introspection that his Oscar-winning Oppenheimer grappled with, and deepens our understanding of one of the oldest stories in history.’

‘But it’s also a crowdpleaser in every sense of the word, a rousing and spectacular feat of blockbuster entertainment that wrestles with monsters and myths in equally dazzling ways.’

Robbie Collin, critic for The Telegraph said ‘Nolan and his collaborators have constructed a strange, fearsome and trailblazing machine of a movie – by some distance, the best of the year so far.’

‘Its creator is known for playing tricks with time, and this may be his grandest yet: turning one of the oldest stories in literature into a vote of confidence in blockbuster cinema’s future.’

Some critics singled out Tom Holland, who plays the son of Matt Damon’s Odysseus, Telemachus, deciding that ‘while he is always an appealing screen presence, he is wrong for the role’

In a five-star review, Metro’s Tori Brazier said, external The Odyssey was ‘a watershed moment for filmmaking’.

Guy Lodge for Variety wrote that Nolan’s ‘take on Homer is thorough, robust and attentive both to scholarly detail and old-school moviemaking craft.’

‘A genuinely grand, gutsy vision, The Odyssey thrills generously for the bulk of its near three-hour running time.

Amongst the praise, Stephanie Zacharek for Time labeled The Odyssey an ‘eye-glazing dud of a movie.’

The film critic used the battle scenes as an example, penning that despite being ‘elaborate,’ they ‘are so tastefully un-bloody that it’s hard to feel there’s anything at stake.’

Samantha Morton’s performance in the film was applauded, with one of her scenes in the movie being called ‘the only truly good one.’

There was praise before even the review embargo lifted. Last week critics rushed to social media to hail Nolan’s 13th feature as ‘flawless filmmaking.’

Universal Studios opted to skip the previews it typically holds for influencers, meaning the majority of the initial reactions on social media come from members of the press invited to the gala premiere in Leicester Square.

Introducing the movie in London last week, British filmmaker Nolan told the audience that holding the global premiere in London was ‘a full circle moment’ after growing up ‘coming to see movies in Leicester Square’ and ‘dreaming of one day making a movie that would fill this screen.’

He then issued a lighthearted warning to the crowd of critics, pointing out: ‘You are the first in the world to see this film so be kind’

The likes of Clarisse Loughrey in her five star review for The Independent said the film is ‘ brought to life by a cast of seemingly thousands – but it’s the women who steal the show’

Collider’s Steven Weintraub led the effervescent posts, declaring the movie ‘INCREDIBLE’ and writing ‘I’m really blown away by this film’.

 ‘Everything from the flawless performances to the way Nolan embraces the supernatural is just perfect. If you can, SEE IT IN @IMAX 70mm. It’s a jaw dropping experience.’

The Hollywood Reporter’s Aaron Couch singled out Nolan’s surprising twist to horror, writing that he had ‘been seeing his movies in theaters since Memento, and after 25 years, The Odyssey gives us a first: a fleshed out horror sequence directed by Christopher Nolan.’

Los Angeles Times film editor Joshua Rothkopf gushed: ‘THE ODYSSEY is staggering. Earthy, ghostly, weighty, touched by humor and grandeur alike. It’s pure cinema. Obviously the story is about returning home, but in a larger sense, this is also a return home to the robustly entertaining action movies that cinema was invented to tell.’

Rothkopf also singled out Samantha Morton’s performance as Circe, the goddess of Aeaea. ‘People are not ready for how much Samantha Morton owns THE ODYSSEY — her scenes are simply incredible, witchy and wonderful,’ he wrote.

Morton reportedly received a standing ovation from the cast and crew on set after one pivotal scene, with a producer revealing of Nolan’s reaction ‘that’s something we hadn’t seen since Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight.’

In what has been dubbed his ‘most extreme project to date’ alongside an incredibly starry cast – the pressure for Nolan to win over critics is like no other.

Already known for his impressive art and high-budget fare, Nolan’s latest film could prove to be his most ambitious yet, with the $250million budget the most expensive of his career, his first shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras.

The Odyssey is in cinemas from July 17.