Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has been praised for the grandeur of its presentation — the 70mm and IMAX presentations in particular make the film feel vast and tactile. But for viewers who’ve already chased those formats, the question becomes whether the gimmick-driven 4DX experience, with its moving seats and physical effects, adds anything meaningful to Nolan’s three-hour epic.
4DX promises a “fully immersive cinematic experience that makes you feel like you’re in the movie.” The system — offering seat motion, water spritzes, wind and more — is available in nearly 800 movie theaters around the world. To test that claim, three intrepid Variety writers — two returning viewers and one first-timer — headed to Regal’s L.A. Live to find out what Nolan’s film feels like when the theater itself joins the cast.
We arrived better provisioned than Damon and his crew: Tanya stocked mozzarella sticks and Gatorade, while Pat smuggled a peanut butter protein bar and a bottle of water for the three-hour runtime.
Our pre-show began with a 4DX trailer that effectively served as a test run. The seats heaved and jiggled, water misted into the air and the room filled with motion — a primer for the bouncy trailers that followed for Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Fast and the Furious rerelease. One particularly jarring moment came during a pitch for enlisting in the Navy, when the onslaught of effects felt especially out of place.
Then the film began. Read on to see who survived the hero’s journey.
Pat
From a practical perspective, 4DX’s selling points are straightforward: shaking seats, water spritzes and intermittent wind. The breeze sometimes felt like someone ruffling the hair of the person behind me — though in my case that person happened to be my coworker. During the film’s many stormy-sea sequences and the inevitable shipwrecks, the motion often matched the action well enough to increase our sympathy for Odysseus and his battered crew.
The water wasn’t the deluge I had feared; the light spritzing felt refreshing rather than invasive. Midway through the screening I even used the “turn water off” button to reduce distractions and focus on Nolan’s filmmaking. The shaking was especially effective during the Charybdis whirlpool sequence — one of several moments when the movement genuinely complemented what was on screen. But there were also less successful uses of the effects: do we really need to heave up and down every time a soldier marches into a castle? “Just because you CAN shake the seats doesn’t mean you SHOULD every time there’s movement in the frame.”
Overall, I enjoyed my first 4DX experience, though I suspect a simpler film might make better use of the format. A few more sensory touches — the smell of pigs or ripening cheese — might have been fun. And while Damon intones in his climactic speech, “We were all praying for forgiveness,” for many in the theater the more immediate prayer after three hours was that our seats might finally hold still.
Matt
My verdict begins with a caveat: I couldn’t make it through the entire 4DX screening. I can handle pretty much any roller coaster, but three hours of constant movement proved too much — “I’m no Odysseus!” I started feeling nauseous about halfway through and, worrying about the intense water sequences near the end, chose to bow out rather than push my stomach further.
From the portion of the film I did see, 4DX felt like a sometimes-fun, sometimes-unpredictable mix of seat motion and environmental effects, with misting and short breaks during quieter, dialogue-heavy scenes. The mist and movement did help sell the sea-bound sequences, but the format’s intensity makes it a tougher sell compared with premium formats that enhance sound and image. Given the price — I paid $36 — and the value I get from AMC A-List for IMAX and Dolby screenings at no extra cost, I’m not sure I’d choose 4DX again except as a novelty. If you’re determined to tick off as many premium formats as possible for The Odyssey, consider seeing the film once first; you don’t want your first viewing spent parsing a dense plot while trying not to get tossed out of your seat.
Tanya
As a frequent 4DX attendee and someone who had already seen Nolan’s film, I came prepared for my own Odyssey. I packed snacks for the nearly three-hour runtime, but eating proved tricky: I tried to dip a mozzarella stick into its sauce during what I judged to be a calm moment, and a sudden jolt sent the overpriced snack skittering to the floor. That small mishap was a reminder that, in 4DX, the room can always surprise you.
When I first saw The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm I thought, “This couldn’t get any better.” Watching it in 4DX proved me wrong. You’re not just immersed in the film — you’re living in it. You feel the blows that hit Odysseus’ men, dodge strikes from the Laestrygonians, breathe actual smoke during the Battle of Troy and sense impacts where arrows pierce soldiers. That physical coupling with the action deepened my appreciation for the actors’ work and the production’s scale.
More than the individual effects, what stayed with me was the energy in the theater. We reacted together — frightened gasps and even shrieks during action sequences, collective sighs of relief afterward, shared laughter as we tried not to tumble from our seats. When Odysseus finally reveals he has returned to Ithaca, the entire house erupted into applause. For those brief moments the audience truly felt like fellow travelers on the journey home, an experience that’s hard to replicate in a silent, motionless screening.
