Speaking with IGN as part of our IGN30 Icon Series, Guillermo del Toro opened up about how he inspired Christopher Nolan’s cyclops in The Odyssey — along with a hilarious anecdote about one particular scene in the film.
Christopher Nolan has been open about how much del Toro’s iconic creatures have inspired his own work, especially when crafting The Odyssey’s Polyphemus, the giant cyclops (and Poseidon’s son) that feasts on Odysseus’s men.
In an interview with Josh Horowitz, Nolan said, “Anytime you’re dealing with fantasy or creatures, what Guillermo has taught all of us is that a monster is never just a monster. And for a monster to be interesting or credible, there has to be an individuality, there has to be substance to that.”
We got the chance to speak with Del Toro about The Odyssey, where he opened up about his talks with Nolan and even said that the two saw the movie together in IMAX.
“I loved it,” he said of Nolan’s Polyphemus (saying ‘the Cyclops’ sounds a bit dehumanizing, doesn’t it?). “I loved everything.”
He went on to describe a humorous conversation he had with Nolan, where he revealed how he managed to make Poseidon’s angry waters so realistic.
“I asked him, ‘So, when Matt Damon is in the tempestuous waters, how did you do that?’” del Toro recalled. “He’s like, ‘We put him in the water.’ It was so fantastic to hear him answer that. Chris has always been — and I’ve known him now for about 15 years or more — and he’s always been absolutely laser-focused.”
Our full, extended interview with Guillermo del Toro will be published later this year as part of the IGN30 Icons series. In the meantime, you can check out a previous episode of the series, where we chatted with Ken Levine, creator of famed games like System Shock 2 and its spiritual successor, Bioshock.
And if you’re really keen on more Guillermo del Toro conversations, you can check out a short snippet of the full talk right here on IGN, where he opened up about his favorite video games with one majorly surprising pick.
The Odyssey is currently showing in theaters across the US, and it’s been such a hit at the box office that the Prime Minister of Greece personally reached out to Nolan to thank him for “stimulating global interest in ancient Greek culture’ — though one of the source text’s translators had a painfully scathing opinion of the film.
IGN, however, scored it an 8 out of 10, with Scott Collura saying the movie “adapts Homer through a new eye that brings a sense of horror and existential angst to the story – and some humor too.”
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
