One man on a quest far from home.

That's the plot summary of many a Christopher Nolan movie.

In "The Odyssey" (in theaters now), Nolan employs a slew of Hollywood's brightest leading ladies, including Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong'o.

Yet like most other Nolan films, "The Odyssey" still fails the Bechdel test.

To pass, two women must have a conversation with each other about something other than a man.

Unless you count Penelope (Hathaway) barking orders at her servant Melantho (Mia Goth), no two women interact in the entirety of the three-hour film.

I'm not surprised.

Across 28 years and 13 films, Nolan has never cast a female protagonist.

But from the trailer and a cast list of Hollywood royalty, it seemed perhaps Nolan was turning a corner.

Expect more of a slight shuffle to the side.

Penelope and Circe (Samantha Morton) do poignantly contextualize the horror women suffer at the cost of men and their wars.

But I largely left the theater dreaming of an "Odyssey" that realized the full potential of its actresses.

'The Odyssey' gives Christopher Nolan's women more to do, but not enough Nolan's Achilles heel, famously, is half-baked female characters.

Think back to "Oppenheimer," where Emily Blunt plays a scientist you probably forgot was a scientist, or his overused "dead wife" trope.

And by the film's name alone, you know you're getting a story about one man: Odysseus.

But "The Odyssey" is also about the people and gods who help and thwart his journey home.

Many of them are women.

Athena actively guides him.

Calypso traps him.

Penelope remains faithful and rules Ithaca in his absence, cunningly stalling her suitors.

In standout moments, the women of "The Odyssey" show how they are victims of patriarchal, violent rule.

Nyong'o's Helen objects that she's the reason for the war, despite being the face that launched a thousand ships.

Her sister Clytemnestra (also Nyong'o) kills King Agememnon (Benny Safdie) after he sacrificed their daughter to curry favor with the gods.

Circe (Morton) turned Odysseus' men into pigs only to expose their true nature, afraid of what they might do to her.

And in a departure from the poem, it's Odysseus' impassioned speech, not sex, that gets her to reverse it.

Penelope laments that men will ultimately decide her fate, whether it's her son or the many suitors at her door.

She snaps at her son Telemachus (Tom Holland) when he encourages her to move on and remarry so he can become king of....