He was greeted with a standing ovation as he walked on stage at the Colosseum. The introvert filmmaker tried to deflect the attention, joking that he’s happy he’s not following Spielberg during Universal’s presentation to exhibitors. (Spielberg’s new film “Disclosure Day” was teased later in the afternoon.)

“Why ‘The Odyssey?’ ‘The Odyssey’ is a story that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years,” Nolan mused. “It’s not a story. It’s the story.”

“Did I have a wife? Children? Maybe a son?” he asks. “If I had a son, how old would he be now?”

Most of the footage revolved around “the story of the horse” — the famous Trojan horse attack, which the Greeks used as cover to enter the city of Troy at the end of the war. As the wooden figure washes up on the beach, thousands of men have to pull the Trojan horse out of the water and onto the sand before  wheeling it into the city.

In the thrilling sequence, the Greeks are forced to stay quiet as the Trojans plunge swords into the statue to see if anything was hidden, with one blade slicing into the face of a hidden soldier.

There are shots of Odysseus urging his soldiers to keep rowing through a storm, and then slinging arrows as they launch their full-scale attack in the dark of night. The footage ended with a shot of Odysseus and his soldiers as they face the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus; the massive brute picks up a man in his hand before the screen cuts to black.

He’s one of many figures — Cyclops, sirens and Circe among them — who Odysseus encounters as he ventures to reunite with his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland).

“This has been an absolute nightmare to film — but in all the right ways,” he said. “We had an amazing time.”

Starring Matt Damon

He referring to Damon as his “partner on this journey,” calling his work “incredible.” “He was there on the boats, up the mountains, in the caves, in the beating sunshine, sideways rain, wind,” Nolan said. “You’ll be pleased to know how difficult it was. It was meant to be; that’s the nature of this story.”

“Oppenheimer” in 70mm Imax sold out those particularly large auditoriums for weeks. Nolan’s other major films include the “Dark Knight” trilogy, “Inception” and “Interstellar.”

“As a boy, all I wanted to do was tell large-scale stories using that technology, putting the audience into the world,” Nolan said about Imax. “And I spent many, many years trying to bring that to fruition, starting with ‘The Dark Knight,’ back when I was in my 30s. We shot the action sequences in Imax, but we were never able to shoot the entire film. My crew did an incredible job figuring out how to do this for the first time.”