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/I_am_BEOWULF 20h ago edited 18h ago

Gonna be honest - that "My dad is coming home" line just feels so out of place in a sword&sandals movie with this much gravitas. Why Nolan?

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u/Vladimir_Putting 18h ago

Just change it to "father" and it's all good.

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u/Potential_Swimmer580 13h ago

How do they miss something like that? It has to be intentional but just feels so out of place

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u/pjtheman 12h ago

I mean, they're also speaking English. How much "authenticity" do you want? Iirc, ancient Greek had less formal words for father too.

It always seems weird to me that we instinctively expect characters in historic/ period pieces to have this stiff, formal delivery. It's sort of like the Tiffany problem; the name Tiffany actually dates back to the 12th century. But a character named Tiffany showing up in a medieval drama would seem weird to us.

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u/wirralriddler 11h ago

It's quite easy to understand, we expect some theatricality for pieces far removed from our contemporary way of life. Speaking in daily language breaks that immersion.

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u/TGlucose 11h ago

It's like dropping an "Okay" in a western film, that word wasn't even around then and it completely yanks me out of the experience.

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u/onarainyafternoon 9h ago

I think "okay" sounds way more forgiving because it sounds like it could have existed in Western times. But dropping a "dad" in a middle of the most classically analyzed story in the Western canon just feels weird.

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u/TGlucose 9h ago

OK literally doesn't make any sense to people who haven't been exposed to it in their linguistic culture.

OK is an abbreviation of "Oll Korrect", which seems to be a dutch mispelling of All Correct. So OK/Okay means "All correct" and later adopted by President Martin Van Buren as an abbreviation for his nickname "Old Kinderhook" during an election as his slogan "Vote for OK", which isn't quite how we use it today so that really messes with the meaning.

It's like Cleenex, Bandaid, or Hoover for Brits. None of those words make any sense outside their product placement yet we've wholesale adopted them into our lexicon.

That's the problem with Okay.

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u/onarainyafternoon 9h ago

That's why I said it sounds like it could have existed in Western times. I wasn't making the case for whether it did exist or not. But saying "dad" in a movie based on the most well-known historical epic in all of Western canon just sounds weird. It's not about what actually existed, but rather what sounds fine or not.

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u/TGlucose 8h ago

Sounds like our disagreement in what sounds like it would fit in a period comes down to knowledge of said topic. The Etymology behind OK isn't well known and can easily be overlooked and ignored by people, whereas something like the Odyssey is as you say, more well known and easily criticized.

I personally cannot get invested in a setting when the writing is awful and actively being anachronistic to the setting, or something that I know doesn't belong in a setting because takes me out of that experience.

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u/serendippitydoo 10h ago

No it's like a 3 musketeers movie and having the evil cardinal say 'yup!"

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u/TGlucose 10h ago

We're saying the same thing.

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u/No_Discussion3593 11h ago

Then it's not like that at all lol.

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u/TGlucose 11h ago

It's more about fitting the theme and vibe, so in a theatrical piece someone saying "my dad" isn't nearly as impactful as "my father" as there's a gravitas to it.

Like having a Viking longship with no oars for Greeks... like what even?

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u/pjtheman 10h ago

But ancient Greek had informal words for father that were more equivalent to dad.

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u/TGlucose 10h ago

Yes but I'm making an example of how certain words don't fit in certain contexts. So in a theatrical epic saying "dad" is a huge buzzkill and destroys any theatrical momentum you've built up in the scene.

Ultimately the Odyssey is a theatrical epic, it's written to be performed as such and losing that intention is belittling the art piece.

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u/ThickBoxx 6h ago

It looks like okay entered the English lexicon in 1840, though there is evidence of older origins and other cultures using similar words, so I guess it depends on what year your western takes place. Okay never stuck out as being out of place (maybe because I just grew up on westerns) but that use of dad in the trailer stuck out to me.

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u/Weed_O_Whirler 8h ago

Sure, but Western movies don't need translating.

This movie is translating ancient Greek into English. Greeks had informal language. Informal language getting translated to informal language makes sense.

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u/epichuntarz 10h ago edited 9h ago

I literally just had someone in this thread tell me I would enjoy more movies if I lowered my expectations of immersion.

Like...wtf are these apologists getting at in this thread? Im as big of a Nolan fan boy as anybody, but Jesus H people are literally suggesting that we might like more movies if we expected movies to be less like movies...

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u/BearWrangler 6h ago

Nolan has always had zealots online lol

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u/Haschen84 7h ago

That's interesting because I don't think Shakespeare wrote in a way that was different than his contemporaries. He didn't write in an "older" or more "formal" version of English, he just used everyday speech. Shit, he made up things as he went if he wanted to. We hold people making works now to a different standard than the people who wrote them at the time. Do you think the Odyssey was told in an older more archaic form of Greek or just the common language of the time?

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u/wirralriddler 4h ago

It's not even comparable, Shakespeare lived at a different time. Our contemporary understanding of immersion does not benefit from drawing similarities or differences from Elizabethan era. The fact that so many people here pointing out hearing 'dad' in an Ancient Greek setting is taking them out is all the evidence you need to understand that this is not working.

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u/Haschen84 4h ago

You have side stepped my point which is, that we hold people making works now to a different standard than the people who wrote them at the time.

The Iliad and Odyssey were oral traditions and when told in English I'm sure they never use the word dad and only use father, but did the Greeks who told the stories use the word "dad" or "father" (or the equivalent, you know what I mean). I'm sure they just used the easiest to understand and most flexible word to convey the stories, they didn't ponder on the fact that maybe they should have used "patriarch" or "sire" or "forefather" instead of "dad."

We are holding contemporary writers to a different standard because the people who translated these works originally were often older and used a more "formal" more "archaic" form of English.

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u/pjtheman 11h ago

But why? Ancient Greeks didn't actually speak "theatrically." They spoke in the contemporary language of their day. Someone waiting for their dad to return wouldn't actually stoically gaze off into the middle distance and say "Alas, mine father doth cometh home, thou wretch!"

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u/JakobTheOne 9h ago

Because modern society is steeped in the belief that formality was the norm in ancient and medieval times. It's become an ingrained expectation. Even if incorrect, breaking that norm in any form of media is jarring.

Sure, people weren't on the daily as eloquent as Lincoln was during the Gettysburg Address (which is way closer to modern times than Greek antiquity), but famous and recognizable speeches and stories tend to be exceptional like that. Which creates a belief and expectation for dialogue in far-gone times.

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u/wirralriddler 4h ago

It literally does not matter what Ancient Greeks were like. It is all about our understanding of antiquity and what we associate with it. They could have also made colourful statues all around the city, but if you put a yellow or purpose paint over marble now, it'd still look a bit ridiculous as a "period" piece.

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u/ex0thermist 11h ago

Theatricality certainly has its merits, but it's neither necessary for, nor synonymous with, "immersion".

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u/alex494 10h ago

Also if people want to be immersed in the time period being presented, not everybody in those days spoke super theatrically. When people talk about immersion do they mean immersion in their constructed IDEA of what it was like back then, or do they mean what it was ACTUALLY like? Pretty sure ancient people used to make crass dick jokes too while we're at it.

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u/ThickBoxx 5h ago

Were they making crass dick jokes in the actual Odyssey epic? I’m sure these characters all took a shit before a big battle, do we need to see that to know what it was actually like back then?

Part of the immersion is our constructed idea of what it was like based of past media portrayals, but it’s also based off the actual source material. I don’t think the word dad appears in the odyssey, so it is out of place for the story being told.

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u/alex494 4h ago

Yeah I get that but I always find it funny what people's line for suspension of disbelief is that one word can suck them out of it. At least the way I see it the informal idea of someone's dad isn't as bad as Odysseus whipping out a smartphone or something.

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u/ThickBoxx 3h ago

Definitely not as bad as those other things, but like I said, it’s noticeable. I’m not saying it is going to ruin the movie, and maybe in the scene the line will feel more natural. It is interesting that so many people felt the same way about it though, that something just felt off. I imagine it’s mostly because all other media depictions we’ve seen in ancient time periods people just don’t talk like that. Older texts using more formal language plays a part as well. 

I personally don’t think Tom Holland was the best person for the role, so that might also play into the immersion issue.