Christopher Nolan is sending audiences into the world of gods, monsters, cursed seas, and one seriously exhausted king with The Odyssey. But before Odysseus could spend years fighting his way back home, there was another little disaster to survive first, the Trojan War. The real twist, however, is that historians are still debating how much of this blood-soaked story actually happened.

So, before The Odyssey sends Matt Damon sailing through one mythological nightmare after another, here is what happened in the Trojan War and whether history ever truly witnessed the legendary battle.

According to Greek mythology, the chaos began when Paris, a prince of Troy, took Helen, the wife of Spartan king Menelaus, back to Troy. Menelaus was understandably not interested in letting that slide, so his brother Agamemnon gathered a massive Greek force and sailed toward Troy, turning one disastrous romance into a ten-year war. Heroes including Achilles, Odysseus, Hector, Ajax, and Diomedes became central to the conflict as even the gods picked sides and repeatedly interfered with the battlefield.

The Greeks finally broke Troy not with another heroic duel, but with history’s most suspicious gift. Odysseus reportedly devised the Trojan Horse strategy, hiding Greek warriors inside the enormous wooden structure while the remaining army pretended to sail away. The Trojans dragged the horse inside their walls, the hidden soldiers emerged at night, and Troy fell, although historians still debate whether Homer’s legendary war reflects a real conflict, several wars blended together, or a heavily mythologized memory of Bronze Age violence.

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But Troy falling was only the beginning of Odysseus’ problems, because Christopher Nolan is now taking the famously terrible journey home and blowing it up across the biggest screens possible.

The Odyssey follows Matt Damon’s Odysseus as he attempts to return to Ithaca after the Trojan War, only for the voyage home to become a years-long parade of monsters, gods, temptations, and catastrophically bad sailing luck. Waiting in Ithaca are Anne Hathaway’s Penelope and Tom Holland’s Telemachus, while Zendaya plays Athena, Charlize Theron steps into the role of Circe, and Robert Pattinson plays the dangerous Antinous. Nolan’s enormous Greek epic will arrive in theaters on July 17, 2026, with the spectacle shot entirely using IMAX cameras.

And apparently, Nolan decided Greek mythology needed half of Hollywood before setting sail. Alongside Damon, Hathaway, Holland, Zendaya, Theron, and Pattinson, the sprawling cast includes Lupita Nyong’o, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Jon Bernthal, Himesh Patel, Mia Goth, and Benny Safdie. With Odysseus facing everything from the Cyclops and Sirens to the wrath of Poseidon on his way home, The Odyssey is preparing to prove that surviving the Trojan War may have been the easy part.

And whether the Trojan War was history, mythology, or one ancient story stretched wildly out of proportion, The Odyssey is ready to remind audiences that for Odysseus, winning the war was only the beginning of the nightmare.

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Do you think the Trojan War really happened, or did mythology simply turn an ancient conflict into its greatest legend? Let us know in the comments.