Greek mythology has a way of cycling back. Every generation seems to take a turn with these stories, reshaping them to fit the tools and tastes of the moment. With a new version of The Odyssey directed by Christopher Nolan on the horizon, it feels like a good time to revisit a few earlier attempts. Not the definitive versions. Just four films that each capture a different moment in how the myths were staged.
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Directed by Don Chaffey and brought to life by the stop motion work of Ray Harryhausen, this remains the standard for mythological adventure on film.
The skeleton fight is still the showcase. Harryhausen animated seven sword fighting skeletons by hand, frame by frame, matching choreography that had already been filmed with live actors. It took months to complete just a few minutes of screen time. The patience shows. The movement has weight and timing that still feels precise.
There is also Talos, the bronze giant, who creaks to life in a way that feels mechanical and ancient at the same time. No digital polish. Just careful craft. The film was not a major hit in 1963, but it built its reputation through television airings and revival screenings. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have pointed to it as an influence.
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Nearly twenty years later, Harryhausen returned for what would be his final feature. Released in 1981, the same summer as Raiders of the Lost Ark, it feels like a bridge between eras.
Medusa is the standout. Instead of legs she has a serpentine body, and the sequence plays almost like a horror film, full of shadow and flickering light. Harryhausen again handled the creature effects himself, at a time when optical and early digital techniques were starting to change the industry.
The cast gives the film a formal tone. Laurence Olivier plays Zeus and Maggie Smith appears as Thetis. There is also Bubo, the small mechanical owl added after the success of Star Wars. Even at the time some viewers were unsure about that addition. It says a lot about where fantasy films were headed in the early 1980s.
Hercules (1983)
Directed by Luigi Cozzi and starring Lou Ferrigno, this version of Hercules leans into spectacle in a way that is sometimes baffling and sometimes charming.
Ferrigno had already been known for playing the Hulk on television, so casting him as Hercules made sense on a physical level. The film itself mixes Greek myth with science fiction imagery, including cosmic visuals and creatures that feel closer to Italian fantasy cinema than to Homer.
It was part of a cycle of sword and sandal films in the early 1980s, many of them international co productions designed for global markets. The effects are uneven, but there is sincerity here. It commits to its vision without irony.
The Odyssey (1997)
Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Armand Assante, this two part television adaptation aired in 1997 as an event production.
The format allows it to cover more of the journey than most feature films attempt. The Cyclops sequence and the Sirens episode stand out, helped by visual effects that were ambitious for network television at the time. The production won an Emmy for visual effects and reflects a brief period when large scale myth adaptations were being mounted for prime time audiences.
Watching it now, you can see both its limits and its effort. It wants to treat the source material seriously, without reducing it to spectacle alone.
Taken together, these films show how the same source material can shift with the era. Stop motion craft in the 1960s. Transitional fantasy in the early 1980s. International genre filmmaking. Large scale television in the 1990s.
When Nolan releases his Odyssey, it will enter a long line of attempts to translate these myths into something contemporary. Revisiting these earlier versions is a way to see how each generation solved the same problem with different tools.
They are worth tracking down. Not because they are perfect, but because each one reflects a moment when someone decided these ancient stories were still worth staging carefully.
