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Universal Pictures unveiled the new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” a little over 24 hours ago, and it has sparked a hell of a lot of discourse, with much of it focused on some of the creative choices that Nolan has made with the film.
More specifically, with the dialogue. Arguments are raging left and right over two aspects. One is the use of relatively contemporary language. Robert Pattinson using the word ‘daddy’, which itself has generated a whole wave of memes. At other points, Tom Holland uses the word ‘dad’, and Matt Damon yells “Let’s go!”.
The other is opting to go with American accents across the board, resulting in the various American actors like Damon, Anne Hathaway and Jon Bernthal sticking with their American accents while others like Pattinson and Holland masking their natural UK accents with American ones.
It has long been widely accepted that many historical and Greek mythological epics from the original “Clash of the Titans” and “Jason and the Argonauts” through to “Gladiator” can have their characters speaking English with Received Pronunciation accent – the upper/middle-class English accent standard in stage acting.
The use of American here across the board is seen as a concession to the film’s leading man Matt Damon so he wouldn’t have to do a British accent, a very similar thing to what Oliver Stone did with 2004’s “Alexander” in which all the Macedonians spoke with Irish accents matching leading man Colin Farrell’s native accent.
That said, the creative choice has been seen as jarring by some – especially as more and more people have come to accept actors in films set in ancient times and/or with mythological elements, having different accents within the same film.
Zack Snyder’s “300,” for example, notably uses a blend of Scottish, American, English and other accents but Snyder is also an American director, as opposed to Nolan who is British.
While complaints and arguments are flying, people otherwise seem high on the film’s scope, scale and visuals (though some have called it too drab). Nolan hasn’t yet gone on the record about the dialogue and accent choices, but it’s expected he will at some point.
You can hear him talking about “The Odyssey” in an extended interview with Stephen Colbert this week below.
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