On Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'

Acclaimed director Chistopher Nolan's The Odyssey is coming out this summer, and the official trailer dropped yesterday.

Before I give my two cents, let me begin by saying that I have nothing but respect for creators. It requires an unfathomable amount of energy to direct an epic on this scale, and I'm under no illusions that I could do a better job.

Furthermore, I'm not some stick in the mud who thinks the classics can never be interpreted. I've written several such stories myself, think Percy Jackson is hilarious, and have nothing but glowing reviews for HBO's Rome, among many other historical adaptations. I still get pumped when I think about 300.

That being said, I do agree with some of the criticism of Christopher Nolan's adaptation. Before we dive in, you should probably watch the trailer so you know what I'm talking about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk6LZrA2JSQ

1. Word Choice

To me, Nolan's choice to modernize the speech of The Odyssey is a crime.

Perhaps the full movie will be different, but in the trailer, you'll be hard-pressed to find a word that doesn't come straight from monosyllabic Saxon. The cringiest line is undoubtedly when the suitors tell Telemachus he's "pining for a daddy," but the dramatic, "Ithaca's king is coming home," followed by, "No, he's not" is right up there. As is, "we won a war."

The argument for modernizing speech is always that their words sounded "normal" to them, so the adaptation should sound "normal" to you.

But consider this chronologically solipsistic opinion in a different context. You're watching Titanic; Rose gazes at the icebergs and tells Jack, "It's, like, giving Antarctica."

"But it's a translation!" I hear someone object. "It's not the same!"

I get that. But translation is an art, and approximately 150,000 words in the English language that come from ancient Greek. Why not pay homage to that? Why use "dad" or "daddy" when "father" exists, and "father" comes from the Greek/Latin "pater"? It's entirely possible to write an English script that evokes ancient Greek far more than any line in that trailer.

2. Out of Character

Even if I weren't inexplicably fascinated by etymology, hearing Odysseus say "we won a war" would still bother me because it's laughably out of character.

Homer never saw a noun he didn't want to precede with an adjective or epic simile, and his Odyssean protagonist never missed an opportunity to spin a self-aggrandizing story.

In The Odyssey, the sea is "wine-dark," Athena is "owl-eyed," and the Trojan War concluded after ten years only because cunning Odysseus and his brave men toppled the god-built towers of Ilium.

"We won a war"? Are you kidding?

3. Color Palette/Cybermen

I don't know how/why Nolan made the Mediterranean look so dreary, but the hazy color palette of grays and browns feels better suited to northern England than the Aegean Sea. Combined with the pseudo-medieval knights---or maybe Dr. Who's Cybermen?---the visuals don't exactly scream The Odyssey. They moan, "generic period piece/war movie."

And can we circle back to the Cybermen for a second? Apparently they're supposed to be Laestrygonians, savage cannibalistic giants who were too stupid to do anything but throw boulders at their enemies. The Laestrygonians couldn't even make ships. But they could plate this kind of armor? Sure, Jan.

Again, all of this just yanks you out of the story.

Closing Thoughts

When a book is adapted to the screen, viewers can immediately tell how passionate the director was about the source material. We instinctively question whether they genuinely wanted to bring the story to life in another medium...or just took advantage of the title and built-in audience.

Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" (which she put in quotation marks) is a phenomenal example. She took huge liberties with the story---hence the quotation marks---but no one walks away doubting her love of the book. That sort of passion is beautiful, and while I didn't love the movie for other reasons, there's no doubt in my mind that Fennel has a much-loved copy of Wuthering Heights somewhere, the pages dog-eared and the spine cracked.

Perhaps Nolan has the same kind of passion for The Odyssey, but I wouldn't venture to make the same claim. To me, this seems like a generic war movie, and his passion for filmmaking shows through far more than his passion for Homeric Greece.

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The screenshots and promotional imagery in this post are taken from the official trailer for The Odyssey, courtesy of Universal Pictures.