Christopher Nolan's film "The Odyssey" opens in cinemas across India and the world on July 17, putting Matt Damon in the role of a Greek king Odysseus who has been famous for roughly 2,700 years. But long before Damon put on the costume, Homer's original poem told a much older story: a war hero who wins on the battlefield, then spends a decade nearly losing his life, his crew, and his wife, kingdom just trying to get home.

That gap, between winning the war and surviving the peace, is the real engine of the story, and it's why "The Odyssey" has outlasted almost every other tale from the ancient world.

The Odyssey original story summary: He won the war with a trick, not a sword

Odysseus, king of the Greek island of Ithaca, doesn't win the Trojan War through brute strength. According to the legend, it's his idea, the wooden horse packed with hidden soldiers, that finally brings down the city of Troy after ten years of fighting. He walks away from the battlefield as one of the war's sharpest minds. What he doesn't know yet is that the war was the easy part.

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Getting home takes ten more years

Odysseus expects a short sail back to Ithaca. Instead, the journey home eats up another decade, as long as the war itself. Storms blow his ships off course. His crew eats a fruit from the Lotus Eaters that makes them forget home entirely. They get trapped in the cave of a one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, who eats several of Odysseus's men before the rest escape through a trick of his own making. An angry sea god, Poseidon, vows to keep him from home after that escape, and the setbacks only pile up from there.

He loses almost everything along the way

By the time Odysseus washes ashore near his own kingdom, he has lost his ships, his weapons, and every single member of his crew. A witch named Circe turns some of his men into pigs. Sea monsters and a giant whirlpool swallow others. His own starving sailors kill sacred cattle belonging to the sun god Helios and are wiped out for it, leaving Odysseus as the only survivor. A nymph named Calypso holds him on her island for seven years, offering him eternal life if he simply gives up on going home. He says no.

Home isn't waiting quietly either

While Odysseus fights to survive at sea, his wife Penelope is under siege of a different kind. A house full of suitors has moved into the palace, eating through the family's wealth and pressuring her to remarry, convinced her husband is dead. Their son Telemachus has grown up without a father and is barely holding the household together. When Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca, he has to fight one last battle, this time in his own home, before the family is whole again.

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Why the Odyssey story still works

Nolan's film, shot entirely on IMAX cameras and starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland, is only the latest attempt to put this arc on screen. What keeps drawing filmmakers and readers back, generation after generation, is that the ending isn't really about the monsters Odysseus defeats. It's about a man who wins everything on the battlefield and still has to fight, for ten more years, just to get back to the people waiting for him.