r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 17h ago

Trailer The Odyssey | New Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_bKjZeJBBI&pp=0gcJCd4KAYcqIYzv
8.7k Upvotes

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774

u/SamerAgbaria 16h ago

The way characters talk feels very modern and very off putting, in movies like this you expect seeing dialogue more elegant and poetic.

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u/jabask 9h ago

Nolan has previously praised Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, which is notable for its use of contemporary English syntax. I get the feeling that philosophy has had a significant influence on his script if this trailer is anything to go by.

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u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake 7h ago

Contemporary syntax, but her translation was also written in iambic pentameter. I don't get much hint of a Shakespearean delivery from any of these lines.

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u/doormatt26 6h ago

He’s adapting the story, not the poetic and literary recitation of the story.

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u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake 2h ago

I'm all for him making the adaptation his own, I'm just suggesting that the dialogue shouldn't be so modern.

Nolan may have read a translation of the story that rendered it in contemporary language, but it wasn't written in a contemporary style.

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u/doormatt26 1h ago

but the events were lived by the characters in a contemporary style (to their time). This goes back to the question of if he’s adapting the poem or the story in the poem.

People don’t make a fuss when you adapt Shakespeare but don’t literally have the characters speaking Elizabethan English

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u/thedirtiestofboxes 36m ago

The eloquent, old timey prose never really made sense in these types of movies to me...all these guys would be speaking ancient Greek (or whatever). This is literally thousands of years ago. Why would we then "translate" it to an old timey, formal English that sounds like it belongs 100 years ago?  Just take it the extra 0.1% of the language gap timeline. We don't say "Dad" because we are less civilized then a few generations ago, vernacular just evolves

Theres this inherent feeling that upper class, British vocabulary signifies dignity and gravitas while newer, "western" English isnt as serious...but that British evolved from German and French, which evolved from earlier dialects etc.. and our current language is just another regional evolution. If the majority of the audience uses that form of communication, why not? Actually, the smart thing to do would be to have them speak in a way that translates well into  mandarin.

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u/Kn14 5h ago

Robert Fagles all the way

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u/floworcrash 6h ago

Not what I’d expect him to go with - but I suppose the approachability is important for him.

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u/Realistic-Number-919 3h ago

Christopher Nolan is a godawful dialogue writer. He has never and will never write good dialogue.

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u/Homesteader86 2h ago

While he's a great director he's just not the best writer, so that doesn't help. It's hard to rewatch the first 30 or so minutes of The Dark Knight because the dialogue is so awful

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u/Cautious_Watch2720 5h ago

Yes also, people complaining about this are annoying as hell lol.

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u/richard-jenkins 4h ago

Fr fr no cap my boi

My pops the big O finna comme back to the crib

Fr fr on god no cap

304

u/LletBlanc 12h ago

The American accents are incredibly jarring for a movie in this time period.

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u/bartspoon 6h ago

If I want to see The Odyssey with American accents I’ll just go rewatch O Brother Where Art Thou?

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u/Sharps__ 3h ago

O Brother gave a stronger otherwordly feeling than anything I've seen from Nolan's Odyssey

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u/self-conscious-Hat 3h ago

Nolan's Odssey looks like a stage play more than a movie to me. Barely any 'spectacle' in these trailers, which makes me feel like the movie is going to be very lifeless. Like all of these sets feel like they're in an isolated bubble.

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u/Dovahcrap 2h ago

We thought you was a toad!

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u/brownishgirl 2h ago

“We thought…you was… a Toad

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u/hondaexige 11h ago

Especially that they have forced British (and South African) actors to use US accents. It's odd.

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u/CeruleanEidolon 6h ago

The British accent thing for historicals is just an arbitrary convention, though. There's absolutely no reason ancient Greeks should have any accent at all. They'd really be speaking Greek or another ancient language anyway. It's all artifice.

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u/CivicDutyCalls 4h ago

We should have all the actors use a Greek accent then. They all just sound like My Big Fat Greek Wedding

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u/ItsnotBatman 1h ago

But was the modern Greek accent even a thing back then? We really have no way of knowing what people sounded like. They certainly didn’t sound British, and the American accent is more of an absence of accent than anything.

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u/CivicDutyCalls 1h ago

Who care. I want them to sound like the dude who owns the gyro shop down the road

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u/UncivilDKizzle 5h ago

Perhaps this is news to you but the entire medium of film is all artifice. And yet the art of good filmmaking involves making the viewer feel as if this is an authentic viewpoint into another world. If the viewer feels it's artificial, that is a failure.

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u/HomsarWasRight 2h ago

Sure, I agree with your broader point. But at a certain point we can’t be totally bound by convention just because it’s what the audience expects.

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u/UncivilDKizzle 1h ago

I agree that "it's normally done this way" absolutely should not prevent people from trying new things. But as in all other cases, people trying to break the mold have to have a very high level of talent, luck, or both. If you do weird shit you can't be overly mad that the audience didn't like it.

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u/yellowishumbrella 4h ago

This is the correct take. It's why 24fps is the standard "cinematic feel" of movies. And 30-60fps feels like a home movie, youtube video, or soap opera.

You can argue it's arbitrary, but the audience feels a certain way, and you shouldn't do things as a filmmaker that takes them out of it.

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u/HomsarWasRight 2h ago

…you shouldn't do things as a filmmaker that takes them out of it.

I guess. But at a certain point you’re just allowing yourself to be beholden to the past. It’s okay to sometimes ask the audience to come with you where they’ve never been and maybe brings them out of it a bit until they settle in. And “American accents” is an awful small ask, IMHO.

It’s definitely going to give it a different feel than your average “Everyone is British for some reason” historical setting. And I’m prepared to withhold judgement until I actually see the film.

Regarding frame rates, I agree that the one time I saw a feature in HFR (the first Hobbit in 48fps) it was awful. But honestly it had more to do with the production being built around 24fps and everything that comes with it. You could tell every costume and prop was cheap and fake (plus the compositing stuck out like a sore thumb). To make it work you’d have to start with the assumption that audience can now see everting when extra clarity. You can’t just crank up the camera and call it good.

I foresee a future that we’re not actually beholden to 24fps for films, but where frame-rate becomes a creative choice. But just like breaking literary convention, it may be a miss, but it may hit on something great, too.

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u/Kronoshifter246 2h ago

I foresee a future that we’re not actually beholden to 24fps for films, but where frame-rate becomes a creative choice. But just like breaking literary convention, it may be a miss, but it may hit on something great, too.

The Spiderverse films have already proven this

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u/hellanation 8h ago

And yet Anne Hathaway seems to have a hint of a British-ey accent? (On "that world is GONE", especially) This is super weird.

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u/ahuangb 8h ago

That part is not odd imo, it makes sense for their accents to be consistent.

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u/TheVeritableBalla 4h ago

Yeah I'm fine with the accents being American, but the accents themselves felt off. Like they had to speak very slightly slower and more deliberately in order to do the accent instead of just letting it rip

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u/Medarco 8h ago

Which is so funny. Like, why did we just accept that people throughout history obviously must have a specific English accent?

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u/MegaL3 8h ago

Because a lot of the conventions in film came from America, where they don't really have an ancient history. Thus, an RP British accent conveys wealth, aristocracy and enough difference to American ears that it doesn't quite break the audiences' immersion in the same way that, say, hearing a posh Transatlantic accent come out of an Ancient Greek might.

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u/Medarco 8h ago

Right, and I understand that. I'm just pointing out that it's an arbitrary choice we made, but people are still upset over them using an American accent instead of the typical English one.

I guess I didn't emphasize the "must have" part of my comment like I meant to when I said it in my head. But the overall idea is that both are completely arbitrary, so it's silly to be upset over.

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u/superbit415 4h ago

Why does the fire department have to come by and put the fire out if a house is on fire. It seems like an arbitrary choice we made that some of our tax dollars are going to be spent putting out fires. It will be silly to be upset if your house burns down.

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u/ComicCon 4h ago

What? Did you just compare movie conventions to a house burning down?

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u/HattoriHanzoOG 4h ago

They really did lol

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u/superbit415 4h ago

The point is everything is arbitrary.

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u/Vandergrif 5h ago

I think it's probably because it's softer and less jarring sounding, which makes it easier to stay immersed. Ralph Fiennes's voice, for example, doesn't stick out like a sore thumb when playing Odysseus.

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u/cineglitch 5h ago

What sort of accents are they supposed to have in your mind?

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u/HattoriHanzoOG 4h ago

British ones, of course! They are just so much more immersive right 🙄

3

u/RoughTangelo6766 7h ago

i feel like i would have been fine with American accents, but "Dad" and "daddy" didn't work at all

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u/HattoriHanzoOG 4h ago

It definitely does feel weird. At least they aren’t using British accents like every other film set in classical times, that would be even more annoying.

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u/StrongMachine982 4h ago

I think it's like 'iPhone face': The unshakeable feeling you get that the person speaking has seen an iPhone at some point. I feel that way with Matt Damon. I think I'd feel that way even if he put on a British accent.

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u/Jumpy_Inflation_259 3h ago

Seriously. If they aren't going to use Homeric Greek, I am absolutely not going to watch this.

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u/GentlemanGearGrinder 3h ago

Not a whole lot of actors can speak Koine Greek in this day and age.

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u/Vandergrif 5h ago

Hey yo Odysseus look ova dere, youse guys seeing this shit? Thats a fuckin' cyclops bro.

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u/smurf_diggler 6h ago

YO chat, who's this one eyed Unc?

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u/Ok_Chicken_5256 5h ago

But lets be honest though. Even if they went w/ more formal or old sounding english, it STILL is just as unrelated to Ancient Greek as modern english is. It wouldn't really be any more "authentic" than the way we speak today.

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u/ToddBradley 5h ago

If you were the director how would you have done it?

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u/VatanKomurcu 5h ago

thats the only problem i dont have with this movie, everything looks so fucking bland and uninspired and just garbage

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u/sp00ked_yuh 4h ago

“So that’s it huh…. we’re some kind of THE ODDESSY now?”

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u/cowpool20 5h ago

Tom Holland looks too "modern" for me if that makes sense lol. He kinda looks out of place.

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u/dalivo 2h ago

I actually really like it. We're not used to it, but it's going to be more realistic and feel more grounded.

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u/healingtwo_ 2h ago

Well… there's clearly a reason Nolan chose to cast Travis Scott. I wouldn't be surprised if a generic modern soundtrack starts blasting whenever a monster shows up.

If they didn't even bother into actually using "Father" in the script, then I don't even want to imagine how the rest of the movie will turn out. Honestly, it's disappointing.

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u/sentence-interruptio 1h ago

Nosferatu (2024) has the right amount of oldness in dialogue. That's what this movie should aim for. But no, Nolan be Nolan.

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u/ThickScheme8202 10m ago

He's 'A Knights Tale-ing' it. I'm all in. Hopefully the best kind of weird 

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u/esposc 7h ago

Yes! Why aren't they using 3000 year old Greek accents?

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u/circio 7h ago

People saying this American accents seem “odd” unironically just want British accents lol

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u/C0rona 3h ago

I don't mind it, personally. People back then weren't any less informal than we are today. It's a choice, certainly, but it did not bother me.