“Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston” the Must-See Documentary of the Decade

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., it created a shock that would be felt by humans more than 2,000 years later. Two of those humans are actor Tom Hiddleston and producer Kevin Wright. From Latin inscriptions to religious icons, Pompeii: Out of Time breathes new life into the victims and survivors of one of history’s greatest tragedies. 

The idea of a history documentary made by the guys over at Marvel Studios sounds a bit absurd, but there was no one better for the job. Tom Hiddleston is a charismatic guide as you time travel through the past, making and correcting assumptions about the people who lived in Pompeii. Hiddleston speaks Latin and his closeness to the subject and ability to participate in the archeological process is felt throughout the story. 

Executive producer Kevin Wright gave me more insight into Hiddleston’s attachment to the project. “Pompeii is something that Tom has been so passionate about, and as the story is told in the documentary. He went there when he was 17, and it really changed the course of his life, as a storyteller, as an actor. And so, I think it’s something that always sat in the back of his head. He obviously studied the classics at university, and comes with a real passion for it that we felt could. Help us properly tell this story.”  

Marvel’s Loki contains a well-known scene involving the Asgardian anti-hero as he travels back to Vesuvius’s eruption: a plot point that would later bring Hiddleston and Wright together to tell the story for real. Wright stated that Hiddleston was already passionate about Pompeii and was “trying to tell the story of Pompeii to me as he understood it”. 

The documentary goes beyond just a timeline of events that lead to the destruction of Pompeii. Rather, it focuses on three real Romans who were living in the city at the time: Avianius, Julia Felix, and the praetorian. Hiddleston works with experts across the fields of archeology, geology, and psychology to figure out what happened to these people in the last 24 hours of Pompeii. This focus on three individuals rather than society at large makes the documentary feel more personal. When learning about history, it can often feel grand and distant, so the attention to detail brings a level of humanity to the narrative. Avianius, Julia Felix, and the praetorian are all played by actors on set to bring their stories to life as Hiddleston learns more about them. 

“I think with these three characters, they felt different enough that we could show varying sides of Roman life at that time, and that they maybe challenged the assumptions of what we would think that life would be like,” said Wright. “And then from just a filmmaking standpoint, they felt distinctly different, almost different genres. There’s a redemption story, there’s a bit of a disaster movie, there’s this unlikely mystery.” 

The documentary is also deeply embedded in themes of time travel: not only how archeology can take us back in time but how time itself is precious. Hiddleston casually rewinds and flashes forward through time to show how all things, big and small, are connected. Never once does this feel like a gimmick but rather a true expression of the fascination and compassion he feels for the Roman people. 

“After doing two seasons of Loki and time travel,” Wright explained, “it was less about the time travel, and more just both of us are interested in time, and the span of time that you can use to tell stories, condensing time, elongating time. In a show like Loki, where we’re hopping all over the place, we’re rewinding time, we’re jumping to different timelines, we realized that stuff that we thought audiences might not want to go along with, they did, and so when you get into this, we’ve realized that it really was a story of two timelines, past, present, and that the techniques of telling a story. Feeling like maybe we got it wrong and wanting to go back were things that were happening in the writer’s room. We were trying to break a story, and we realized  because of new information from a researcher, that we got it wrong. And you start going, ‘Well, that’s actually fun. That should be in the show’. Because that’s what history is. It’s constantly being rewritten and re-understood.” 

Director of Photography Jim Jolliffe said, “It’s beautiful to try and break those barriers that documentary kind of gets tied to, and doing something that’s more cinematic and more beautiful, and still getting across the actual point of what you’re making.”

He explained the choice to use anamorphic lenses when filming both the documentary and drama pieces of the series, which is an uncommon choice for documentary filmmaking. “To use it in a documentary was to tie the two worlds together. So that’s a big thing with this was tying Tom Hiddleston in the present day with the drama of the past and tying it together. It’s one of the many tools we kind of used to help bring the world together.”

When I say Pompeii: Out of Time is one of the best documentaries to date, it’s not an overstatement. The creativity of the time travel elements and up close look into the lives of real Romans brings an immersive quality to the narrative. It made me laugh, cry, and feel a deep-rooted connection to all humanity. This documentary reminds you that the plaster casts of Pompeii are more than just remains, they are proof of the very real lives that were lost that day– and how their memory persists despite the passage of time.

I promise, you’ve never seen a story told like this.

Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston premieres on National Geographic July 22 and streams on Disney+ and Hulu the next day.

Author: Abby Kirby

Abby Kirby is an English teacher and fan studies scholar. She holds an M.A. in Media and Cinema Communications from DePaul University.

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