I’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s secretive Odyssey trailer. It teases one battle after another

Naturally, Nolan takes us inside. We next see Menelaus, Odysseus (Matt Damon) and the other Greek stowaways, stuffed cheek by jowl inside their fabulously designed gift. These shots of stifling claustrophobia are very reminiscent of the capsized ship sequences in Dunkirk, minus, on this occasion, Harry Styles. The Trojans – it takes dozens of them – tie ropes around it and lug it to their city gate. An unsuspecting guard stabs his sword down into its midriff a few times – even piercing the shoulder of one unlucky Greek, whose cries are suppressed by someone else’s hand clamped swiftly to his mouth.

And then, in the cover of night, Odysseus drops the hatch, and out all they descend. Oppenheimer composer Ludwig Göransson’s score rises to a nerve-racking crescendo as they swarm stealthily towards the gate, to open it from the inside before they’re all picked off by Trojan archers. The immediacy of this sequence as a race against time is very Nolan, whose films make everything a race against time.

Finally, the gates are cranked open to reveal a giant, statuesque, and very imposing figure in armour spearheading the Greek charge – perhaps commander-in-chief Agamemnon, to be played by Benny Safdie, though a helmet conceals his face here. Or it could be Ajax, the tallest of the Greeks, if he even features (there has been no casting announcement for that guy). Then we have a quick montage featuring a glimpse of what appears to be a Cyclops emerging from the shadows.

That’s about the size of it. It may not quite stack up against that bank-raid prologue from The Dark Knight – a total knockout in Imax, that – but it bodes very promisingly for a take on Homeric epic that’s gritty, gruelling, and aptly awe-inspiring. At this launch, there was a bit of cooing and some scattered, if subdued, applause.

There will be considerably more expectancy when word leaks out. For there is no excitable film fan quite like an excitable Christopher Nolan fan (even beyond Tarantino, I would say). The film’s out next July and the hype will reach a zenith months before. Prepare to be deafened. This footage alone will be dissected to death on Reddit threads before the day is out. It only teases one battle, fittingly enough – with plenty more to come after.