The Odyssey film theory: Odysseus' fantastical adventures didn't really happen

As a Greek myth, Homer's Odyssey is full of the fantastical, as Odysseus spends a decade encountering gods and monsters. Yet in Christopher Nolan's film adaptation, there are plenty of hints that these fantastical experiences never actually happened.

The Odyssey film opens jarringly with the line, "In a time of apparent magic". What else could this imply from Nolan, a rumoured secular humanist, than that the ancient people in a pre-'enlightened' age were simply imagining the spiritual and the fantastical? The evidence is clear throughout the movie.