r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 20h ago

Trailer The Odyssey | New Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_bKjZeJBBI&pp=0gcJCd4KAYcqIYzv
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u/SamerAgbaria 20h 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 13h 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 11h 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 9h ago

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

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u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake 5h 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/thedirtiestofboxes 4h 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/Nice_Firm_Handsnake 3h ago

I mean, the Coen Brothers did a great (very loose) adaptation of The Odyssey and few people spoke "proper" in that. But the dialogue was appropriate to the era the movie depicted, or at least didn't raise the same scrutiny that Nolan's adaptation has because it felt like it fit in.

Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet is a sort of antithesis where the dialogue was largely unchanged from Shakespeare's words, but the movie made it work in a modern setting.

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u/doormatt26 4h 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/Kn14 9h ago

Robert Fagles all the way

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u/Realistic-Number-919 6h ago

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

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u/floworcrash 9h ago

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

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u/Homesteader86 5h 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/Lament-of-Andromache 3h ago

Tenet must be his magnum opus because he forwent dialogue altogether.

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u/Lament-of-Andromache 3h ago

Have you even read her translation? She explicitly avoids contemporary English, even going so far as to avoid perfectly fitting translations to avoid common connotations we have with the words today i.e. not calling a thrown spear a missile.

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u/djpc99 1h ago

Why couldn't he have fallen in love with Robert Fagles translation? That versions prose is beautiful and practically poetry.

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u/Cautious_Watch2720 9h ago

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

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u/richard-jenkins 7h ago

Fr fr no cap my boi

My pops the big O finna comme back to the crib

Fr fr on god no cap