As The Odyssey prepares to storm into theaters on Friday, director Christopher Nolan is being hailed as the patron saint of movie theaters, of shooting on film, of the cobweb-festooned Classics department. Is there anything the blockbuster auteur can’t do?
I’ve got at least one gripe: Couldn’t Nolan, of all filmmakers, stave off the merch-ification of his movies?
This isn’t a reference to the Trojan Horse popcorn bucket…or the IMAX camera popcorn bucket. (I assume at this point every studio contract stipulates that the artists must agree to any popcorn bucket design, no matter how grotesque and/or salacious.) I’m talking instead about the Happy Meal-worthy watch inspired by The Odyssey that Hamilton is about to release.
The Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey Limited Edition, which goes on sale on Friday, is the latest in a long line of collaborations between Nolan and the Swiss watchmaker, going back over a decade to 2014’s Interstellar. So yes, Hamilton has sold pieces in the past inspired by the director’s films. The difference is that the previous partnerships were extensions of the cinematic worlds, where the watch designs were carefully considered for the movies and only then offered for sale to the public.
Now, it’s the other way around: merchandise first, reasoning second. Apparently, someone at Hamilton felt FOMO after Barbie product tie-ins raked it in during the Barbenheimer bonanza.
How else do you explain a watch “inspired” by a movie set 3,000 years before wristwatches were invented? To be fair, Hamilton anticipated this criticism, noting in a press release that the watch presented “a unique creative challenge.” Since the timepiece isn’t being worn in the film, the focus was instead on weaving “the epic story’s symbols, materials and mythology” into the design.
The company started with one of its most recognizable models, the Khaki Field, which is based on the brand’s vintage mil-spec field watches, and gave it a bronze makeover, a nod to the Bronze Age when Homer’s Odyssey takes place. I’ll concede that’s a handsome starting point, but it gets gimmicky from there: the dial manages to be both illegible, thanks to a lack of hour markers, and awkward, with Hamilton’s modern logo paired with decorative detailing taken from Odysseus’s helmet and sword; the hands are a combination of literal swords and a spear; and on the titanium caseback underneath an engraving of the hero’s helmet is no less than Nolan’s own signature.
When Did Christopher Nolan Become a Watch Guy?
The “grand watchmaker of cinema” and his obsession with actual wristwatchesThe question becomes: Who approved this? Surprisingly, Hamilton CEO Francesca Ginocchio told Esquire that the watch was Nolan’s idea in the first place.
“He came to us,” she said. “Together we developed the idea of creating a special piece linked to the story, with his signature. Time is always very important in Christopher Nolan’s storytelling.”
That last sentiment is an understatement. Any true Nolan fan knows that time is one of the key themes he’s wrestled with his entire career, from the non-linear structure of his debut feature Following in 1998 to the time inversion in 2020’s Tenet. Six years ago, when I wrote about Nolan’s obsession with time as it pertained to his partnerships with Hamilton, film critic Tom Shone told me that you could view the director as the “grand watchmaker of cinema.”
In that regard, Nolan has little competition. As for his reputation as an actual watchmaker, at least judged by his collaborations with Hamilton, he’s been similarly renowned up until this point.
For Interstellar, Hamilton worked with Nolan’s team to create a unique watch that Matthew McConaughey’s character could give to his daughter, Murph; the brand eventually released a faithful recreation nicknamed “The Murph,” which continues to be a top seller to this day. For Tenet, they reworked the Khaki Navy BeLOWZERO dive watch to include digital countdown displays that played a prominent role in the final time-inversion battle; the consumer models nixed the digital display, but otherwise looked slick. Then, for Oppenheimer, Nolan apparently decided to forgo a tie-in timepiece, sticking exclusively with vintage Hamiltons, which makes sense for what ended up being an Oscar-winning tour de force.
As for the Odyssey Hamilton? It makes no logical, creative or aesthetic sense. I doubt we’ll see Nolan wearing it a decade from now, as we’ve seen with the Murph.
If none of that matters to you, I’m certainly not going to stop you from dropping $1,500 on this misguided merch. You could do worse. Like spend $70 on a popcorn bucket.
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