One Of The Odyssey's Most Beautiful Moments Was Filmed By Complete Accident

Universal Pictures

Christopher Nolan is unquestionably at the top of his game. After directing "Oppenheimer" to great success and a Best Picture win at the Oscars, Nolan decided he had to finally make "The Odyssey," a movie he's been considering for a long time. That proved to be a wise decision, as it's been a critical and commercial smash thus far. But for as meticulous as Nolan is as a filmmaker, one of the movie's most beautiful scenes wasn't planned.

Streaming now on Peacock, "The Odyssey: The Making of an Epic" offers a thorough behind the scenes look at the making of Nolan's latest. The documentary focuses a lot on the challenges that went into filming the movie's many boat scenes out on the open water. Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, explained that when they were filming those scenes, they were pretty much just stuck out there:

"Being out there on the boat [...] nobody could go off, or go sit down somewhere, or go to a trailer. No, it was, we were out in the middle of the ocean together and it was like, 'What's the next shot?'"

Nolan famously has banned several things from his sets anyway, including cell phones and smoking. He wants it to be about the work. In this case, though, being at the mercy of the elements worked out in the movie's favor. Nilo Otero, the first assistant director, revealed that the dolphins we see jumping out of the water at one point in the film were a total accident:

"We're doing a close-up, Matt was looking over where the ship is sailing to, and a dolphin jumps right through frame. I mean, come on? I'll tell you where that would not happen: On the tank. And luckily, we had this great big IMAX camera, and we recorded it."

Universal Pictures

"When I was adapting the screenplay I was sort of privately kind of hoping I would be able to sort of minimize the amount of boat time," Christopher Nolan said in the doc. "But it's 'The Odyssey.' Of course we're going to be on this boat for months, as we were."

All of that time on the boats paid off, though, and as meticulous a planner as Nolan is, this bit of taking advantage of what mother nature had to offer resulted in a very impressive shot. "The Odyssey" is a massive epic that is equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. The way in which it was filmed very much led to that feeling permeating the screen.

"The issue with this movie is that we're shooting in extraordinary places that were hard to get to, hard to shoot in," Nolan further explained. The boats were no exception. Steven Spielberg famously made a similar decision when he shot "Jaws," opting to shoot in the ocean instead of a tank. Likewise, Nolan knew the results for "The Odyssey" would be better out on the open water, even if that made for a much more taxing shoot.

The team, many of whom played Odysseus' men in the movie, actually rowed these giant ships, with minimal help from hidden motors. Many of the actors had to go to a "rowing camp" to learn how to move this giant boat on the ocean. In essence, a lot of what's on screen looks real because it largely is — the dolphins included. It's a downright insane level of dedication to the craft that we rarely see.

"The Odyssey" is in theaters now.