Robert Pattinson has a habit of flipping the script on what people expect from him. He started out as the kind of on-screen heartthrob fans adored, and then he spent years doing the exact opposite of what that image suggested.
Now, with one major casting reveal of ‘The Odyssey‘ finally out in the open, Pattinson is lining up for the OG villain role that just pisses viewers off, yet stays etched.
Robert Pattinson’s Character Is Built To Be Hated In ‘The Odyssey’
Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey‘ is where Pattinson’s villain turn really comes into focus. Nolan has been careful about revealing character details. Still, one thing is now confirmed: Robert Pattinson plays Antinous. He’s one of the major suitors trying to marry Penelope while Odysseus is kept away from home.
In Homer’s epic, Antinous is about as close as the story gets to a main human villain. Antinous causes the most damage in Ithaca, where he leads the suitors approaching Penelope and openly disrespects Odysseus’ home. He treats the palace like it already belongs to him and shows zero patience. More importantly, when Telemachus tries to step up as the man of the house, Antinous goes as far as plotting to remove Odysseus’s son from the picture altogether.
If Nolan stays faithful to this version of the character, audiences will spend a large chunk of the film watching Antinous push his luck and waiting for him to finally face the consequences. The role moves Pattinson away from the emo-dark Venn diagram of a villain and a hero, and places him squarely in the villain circle. Antinous knows what he’s doing, enjoys the power he has, and doesn’t care who gets hurt along the way. That’s what makes him so satisfying to hate.
How Robert Pattinson Moved Away From His Heartthrob Image
After ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire‘ and the ‘Twilight‘ films, Robert Pattinson became known as the ultimate heartthrob hero. However, instead of holding on to that image, he spent the next decade tearing it down. He chose independent films and strange roles that felt uncomfortable, messy, and sometimes very unpleasant.
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Even during this phase, though, Pattinson didn’t really become a villain actor. Yes, he played a deeply unlikeable preacher in ‘The Devil All the Time‘, but most of the time, his characters were still hard to label. They weren’t heroes, but they weren’t clear bad guys either. They sat somewhere in the middle.
Then, when Pattinson returned to big studio films in the 2020s, he once again landed on the “good” side. ‘Tenet‘ and ‘The Batman‘ both put him back in hero roles. But 2026 is surely going to change it. Pattinson has three films lined up, but what has drawn the most attention is his role as Antinous in Homer’s epic ‘The Odyssey‘.
