It wouldn’t be a new Christopher Nolan movie if there weren’t some contentious sticking point that has the internet all riled up. “The Dark Knight Rises,” had that incredibly distracting sound mix that rendered so much dialogue completely unintelligible. When it came to “Inception” (and “Interstellar” and “The Prestige” and “Memento” and…), many questioned the prevalence of that ever-recurring “dead wife” trope. With “Oppenheimer,” certain critics raised the issue of leaving out the Japanese perspective, with James Cameron among them. “The Odyssey” is only the director’s latest effort to find itself in the crosshairs, but at least one relatively understandable criticism is finally being addressed.
Join me on a trip down memory lane, if you will, when the only backlash regarding “The Odyssey” was that trailer where Robert Pattinson’s Antinous uses some oddly modern-sounding lingo to stick it to Tom Holland’s Telemachus. Call it the “Daddy” that launched a thousand internet gripes. To be fair, opting for such anachronistic vocabulary in an ancient Greek epic was always bound to stir up debate, but obviously a filmmaker as studious and obsessive as Nolan had his reasons.
In a new profile with the LA Times, Nolan has explained exactly what his thought process was behind this choice. The “historical accuracy” of this fictional movie has been a touchy subject online, largely concerned with costume design and casting and other such aspects. But that also extends to the vocabulary of the script, where Nolan made the intentional decision to find “language that has emotional, not intellectual, meaning to people.” He went on:
“I was maybe being naïve, it might bite me on the ass, but I wanted an earthy narrative. To me it was a no-brainer.”
Christopher Nolan wanted to tell The Odyssey in a ‘fresh and modern way’
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
Let Chris Nolan cook. The acclaimed filmmaker has nothing left to prove at this point, churning out hit after crowd-pleasing hit over the course of his celebrated career. One would think this track record would’ve bought the man some benefit of the doubt, but the pre-release maelstrom swirling around “The Odyssey” suggests otherwise. For my part, having actually seen the film along with other critics who recently voiced their first reactions, I’d argue the modern dialogue serves its purpose incredibly well and never takes one out of the moment at any point in the film. Audiences, of course, will have to decide for themselves.
Regardless, Nolan is standing by his work. Speaking generally with the LA Times, he explained, “I wanted to tell it in a fresh and modern way, to make it as accessible for a modern audience as it was for Homer’s.” That certainly explains much of the casting, gathering some of the biggest and most recognizable names in the world to bring a lived-in sense of humanity to these larger-than-life heroes (and villains) from Greek myth. As Nolan tells it:
“These are mythological figures, iconic in some ways. I wanted to cast it big, get the finest bunch of actors.”
Considering the amount of A-list talent jockeying for the top of the call sheet on any given day of filming, we’d say that this was mission accomplished. Not just anyone could’ve pulled off an ensemble filled with the likes of Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Samantha Morton, and plenty more. Moviegoers will get to check this out for themselves when “The Odyssey” sails into theaters July 17, 2026.
