Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Trailer Has One Major Issue (And It’s Really Bugging Us) – SlashFilm

A full-size trailer for Christopher Nolan’s huge-funds movie adaptation of “The Odyssey” has dropped, giving of us a superb, wholesome earful of the film’s precise dialogue. In what seems like an odd alternative, although, Nolan has determined to present the movie’s characters American accents. To be honest, many members of the solid are from the U.S.: Matt Damon (Odysseus), Anne Hathaway (Penelope), Zendaya (Athena), and so forth. In the meantime, Charlize Theron (Calypso) was born in South Africa, however she’s been working within the U.S. for many years now. Who may overlook her star-making flip in “Youngsters of the Corn III: City Harvest?”

Most curiously, although, Nolan has requested his British solid members to have an effect on American accents as effectively. The London-born Tom Holland is taking part in Telemachus, and he speaks with a nonspecific American dialect. Elsewhere, Robert Pattinson, additionally born in London, co-stars as Antinous, considered one of Penelope’s many suitors, and he, too, appears to hail from Southern California. At one level within the newest trailer, Antinous leans in near Telemachus and whispers, “You are pining for a daddy you did not even know.” A daddy? Not a “father” or a “patriarch,” however a daddy. It’s a colloquialism that feels weirdly misplaced. 

Later nonetheless within the trailer, Odysseus, main a military of troopers, yells overtly, “Let’s go!” like he is heading an American Little League staff. To not belittle my very own voice, however American accents usually lack the mandatory gravitas to speak the grandeur of historical Greek poetry. It’s particularly egregious when persons are saying “daddy” and yelling “let’s go.” The American voice lends, forgive me, an amateurish high quality to Homer’s historical epic. I have never seen Nolan’s movie but, however the brand new trailer is giving me some doubts.

It’s value noting that early variations of English solely got here into being in about 450 CE, whereas Homer’s “Odyssey” dates again to the eighth century BCE. The poem is older than the language of Matt Damon.

However then, Christopher Nolan needed to make a inventive determination, did not he? He may have taught his actors to talk within the actual dialect of historical Greece after which introduced his film with subtitles, however that may possible have made his 9-determine epic all of the costlier. Alternatively, he may have employed Greek actors to talk the movie’s dialogue in fashionable Greek, however that, too, would have been an anachronism, as historical Greek is totally different from the model spoken at this time. To not point out, most Greek actors do not command the identical type of blockbuster consideration as Hollywood stars like Damon and Anne Hathaway.

Even when Nolan had allowed his actors to talk in their very own voices, that may’ve been distracting as effectively, highlighting the American-ness of some characters and the British-ness of others. So, as a substitute, he elected to make everybody sound American, which is okay. Each model of “The Odyssey” that exists at this time is a translation, anyway. 

What rubs me the unsuitable approach is the informal colloquialisms in Nolan’s script. The “pining for a daddy” line would not bear the ring of historical poetry. It appears like, effectively, a slang time period written within the 2020s. Ditto for Damon yelling “Let’s go!” That is an motion film line, not an entreaty of Odysseus, spurring his males to battle. 

It’s fantastic that the characters converse English, however did Nolan additionally must make their dialogue sound so informal and accessible to the fashionable ear? It might have been extra acceptable if the language did sound a bit of poetic, highfalutin, or in any other case dusty. 

However then, this situation with the language in “The Odyssey” is a really outdated drawback that cinema has by no means fairly been in a position to clear up. One can possible listing dozens of flicks off the tops of their heads through which Historic Roman characters converse with British accents. British actors like Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov equally performed Roman characters in films like “Spartacus” and “Quo Vadis,” and, for a lot of of us, the British accent may as effectively be the accent of Historic Rome. By no means thoughts that the folks these actors are taking part in would have been, in the actual world, talking Latin. 

American and Italian actors do that, too. Charlton Heston portrayed Ben-Hur and Moses, as an illustration. Italian peplum films have been likewise in Italian, but they featured American stars like Steve Reeves in Herculean roles and have been dubbed in English for U.S. tv. The actors for these dubs would even retain their British or American accents. (I recall watching a lot of them that approach as a child.) A minimum of Italian would’ve been extra geographically correct to Historic Greece. Nonetheless, for “The Odyssey,” the American-ness of every little thing is making its story really feel much less classical and too up to date. It bugs me.

(For this reason the Muppets ought to have merely tailored “The Odyssey” as a substitute.)

After all, we have not seen “The Odyssey” but, and the film’s fashionable American voices may be employed to deliver some kind of fashionable American thesis to its supply materials. Maybe the selection of colloquial language is being completed for some kind of thematic impact we’re not but conscious of. Nevertheless it’s a distraction within the trailer — one which evokes McDonald’s and SoCal surfers greater than the seashores of historical Ithaca.

“The Odyssey” opens in theaters on July 17, 2026.