The Odyssey viewer revealed the truly correct format for watching – as a browser favicon 16 by 16 pixels in size
A user going by MaxGaniyev posted a browser screenshot claiming to watch The Odyssey exactly the way Nolan intended.
The movie plays back in a favicon – the tiny icon shown on a browser tab. The standard size for one of these is 16 by 16 pixels, or 256 total dots for the entire frame.
For context, The Odyssey is the first feature film shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film cameras, and only 41 theaters worldwide can screen it in its original format. The gap between that source format and a browser tab is probably the biggest ever recorded under the "as Nolan intended" joke.
The joke predates the current movie by years. It started back in 2017 when someone posted Dunkirk running on an old Game Boy on Twitter, and with the release of The Odyssey it grew into a whole genre of competing for the worst possible screen. TV Tropes even lists it as one of the key memes surrounding the film.
There is even a dedicated catalog of these attempts, asnolanintended.com, gathering the most creative entries:
a red Tamagotchi that apparently outlived the average pet
the external screen of a Vodafone flip phone held up against a canvas painted with flames
an original DMG-model Game Boy with its dot-matrix screen and stereo sound
an image projected onto the side of a cow at 1900 meters, with the aspect ratio entirely dependent on the cow
an iPod Classic on a stand, and another one using the click wheel instead of a scrubber
a four-function desk calculator with a single-line segment display, running at double speed
Tenet on an Apple Watch – a movie that was hard to follow even at 70mm, now squeezed onto a 44mm screen
the display on the handlebar of a parked Bird scooter, a kitchen scale, and an oscilloscope
Older entries that went around online include a screening on a smart fridge display and playback on an old Nokia phone. Some viewers skipped screens altogether, saying they would just piece the movie together from memes and clips floating around X.
The running joke about botched Odyssey viewings has stuck around all summer. In August, a photo from the front row of an IMAX theater went viral, showing Matt Damon stretched vertically into an unrecognizable blur.
Even earlier, a shot captioned as a viewing from inside the Trojan horse went viral. The auditorium, with seats crammed into the right half of the room and a tiny screen far in the distance, turned out to be real – it is screen number 9 at the in89 theater in Taipei's Ximending district, which closed on May 31, 2026, after 62 years in operation.
The Odyssey came out on July 17, crossed the billion-dollar mark, and became Nolan first movie to hit that number since The Dark Knight Rises.
70mm screenings have been extended through September 16.
