"The Spodyssey". It doesn't have quite the same ring as "Barbenheimer", does it? And yet, this summer, we're living through the convergence of two even bigger cinematic events. After just two weeks, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is very close to outstripping the total global gross of Oppenheimer, and on its opening weekend, Spider-Man: Brand New Day made just shy of a billion dollars, setting it on a course to leapfrog Barbie's $1.5bn. Together, they are responsible for the biggest box office weekend in US history. So, no, I'm not trying to make "Fetch" happen. "The Spodyssey" is a thing! Is there anything to be gained from seeing them back to back? They are both, after all, about trauma-stricken men trying to return to their loved ones. They also share three actors in common, in Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jon Bernthal. So, maybe.

To find out, I went on a Spodyssey of my own last Saturday. First, a 10am showing of The Odyssey - if you don't know what this movie is about by now, I can't help you - in Brixton, on a regular-ass screen, because the BFI IMAX showings are rather psychotically booked through September. The cinema was empty save for one other customer, who spent most of the middle third of the movie scrolling on Instagram. Heinous etiquette, obviously. But... the movie does drag in the middle, as Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his shipmates bounce from ratty, magical island to ratty, magical island. So, I let them away with it and booked my Spider-Man ticket on my phone, too, while the lads plotted a way out of the cyclops' cave.

After the credits rolled, I hopped on a Lime bike and rode over to East Dulwich for a polar-opposite kind of experience. The 1.50pm Spider-Man: Brand New Day screening was full of teenagers, who were all impeccably behaved - which I took as evidence that they were extremely locked into the film, as, I must admit, was I. This is the fourth instalment in Tom Holland's Spider-Man series, which follows on from the cliffhanger in 2021's No Way Home, when Peter Parker's existence was erased from the memory of everyone he knows and loves, leaving him to go about his spider-business in solitude for several years. In Brand New Day, he reconnects with Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) after a mysterious villain (if I'm being vague, it's because it's a spoiler) threatens to harm them. Problem is, they still don't remember who he is.

Tired - and intermittently bored - as it made me, I was glad I did "The Spodyssey". Here are my takeaways: firstly, if you're going to do this - and if you have an entire day free, then you might as well - it's gotta be Odyssey, then Spider-Man. It's not quite as neat a double feature as "Barbenheimer", where you could have your seven-course vegetarian tasting menu (nourishing, but still just vegetables) followed by a three-scoop gelato cone (a delicious but brief high). With "The Spodyssey", they're both fairly balanced meals. Both movies are very long and have a few dull fight scenes that'll make you zone out, but Spider-Man is objectively more fun, and zips by faster. The Odyssey is objectively a better film - anything shot in the actual sea in actual boats is a winner for me - but Spider-Man: Brand New Day is better craic. Sorry!

Secondly, mainlining these two Tom Holland performances together is quite something. People have largely been mean about his work in The Odyssey, but I was genuinely impressed - this is his greatest-ever role outside of the red and blue suit. As Telemachus, the son waiting for a father he barely knows to return home from war, he delivers some of the few genuinely moving scenes in a film that somehow fails to land its heaviest emotional punches. He's good in Brand New Day, too, of course, pretty much affirming his status as the best Spider-Man of all time. But Telemachus is decent evidence that he can move on from Marvel whenever he wants.

"The Spodyssey" doesn't split things along gender lines like "Barbenheimer", but it does represent the two distant poles of modern-day blockbuster filmmaking. At one end you've got Marvel, the faltering franchise machine, which makes movies by committee in front of giant green screens, sometimes with actors who don't know what they're saying or who they're saying it to. At the other, you have the most powerful auteur director in the world, Christopher Nolan, who does things the old-school way, with giant cameras in real places, with actors who definitely want to be there. He gets his hands dirty, and it's palpable - his movies look incredible. But seeing these two films back-to-back, it's clear they're not really all that different. They're both repurposing old (in one case, very, very old) stories about troubled men to make mass-market entertainment. They both succeed in landing some modern ideas - The Odyssey is explicitly anti-war and anti-imperialist, and Brand New Day gestures at the negative impacts of male loneliness. And they're examples of moviemaking at the highest level - even if they're not quite to everyone's tastes, you can spend five and a half hours straight purely respecting craft. Just pick a cinema with decent aircon.

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