Matt Damon was dubbed by a woman in this spectacular scene from The Odyssey

A trick that allowed Christopher Nolan not to use digital special effects.

During their long journey back to Ithaca, Odysseus and his companions stop in the territory of the Laestrygonians. This people of hostile giants ambushed them in a forest, and decimated them, pursuing them back to their boats. Only Ulysses’ ship will leave unscathed from this unequal fight.

How was the size difference between the Laestrygonians and the Greek soldiers achieved in The Odyssey ? Officially without digital special effects. Matt Damon told the Happy Sad Confused podcast behind the scenes of this scene:

“When we did the forced perspective shots with the Lestrygons, there were these stuntmen who were all over 2.10 m, and others who were less than 1.50 m. My stunt double was a female stuntwoman who had the crazy arms I had ever seen. When she came to the tent where we take meals, I saw her for the first time, I took her in my arms and I thanked her for all the work she had done.”

Matt Damon put a lot of effort into appearing lean and muscular on screen, at Christopher Nolan’s request, but it’s not his biceps that we see in this scene: “It was my arms almost 100% of the time, it must be said what is“.

This woman’s name is Devyn Dalton. She is 34 years old, measures 1.37m, and we have seen her on screen in films Planet of the Apesthe series Legends of Tomorrow or even Brothers alongside Josh Brolin and Peter Dincklage. In the images that she shared on her Instagram account, we can see the impressive difference in size between the different stuntmen used for this scene of The Odyssey.

Nolan made a point of avoiding digital on the film, by shooting in real settings and using traditional cinema methods: animatronics, dolls, makeup, prosthetics and other visual trick techniques (notably with Weta Workshop). However, companies specializing in VFX have worked on The Odysseylike DNEG, to finalize the sequence with Charybdis and Scylla.