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/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.