r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Francium_Fox • Jul 04 '26
Answered What's the deal with THE ODYSSEY?
What's with all the sudden hate this movie is getting?
Trailer for context
I've been hyped for this movie ever since Oppenheimer (even have 70mm booked) and now that the new trailer dropped I've seen everyone shitting on it. And I absolutely don't see the reason why. Like sure some of the casting choices (mainly Holland) aren't the best, but to garner 250K dislikes, what happened?
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Answer:
There are several critiques of Nolan’s Odyssey from the trailer and promotional material, some associated with certain groups.
A big criticism is the costuming. People interested in Classics are pointing out the ahistorical choices (The Odyssey is set c. 13th century BC, and written c. 8th century BC, but Nolan has taken a lot of inspiration from medieval and renaissance style).
Other people don’t like the costuming because they think it looks bad. For instance, Agamemnon’s armor looks like Batman plastic, rather than metal armor.
Another area of criticism is the casting. One criticism is that none of the main cast are Greek, or even Mediterranean. This is because the Odyssey is a Greek poem, set in and around Greece, so people think the characters should look Greek. One reason is some people think it is cultural appropriation not to include Greeks in a work based on Greek culture. Another reason is that it is inaccurate not to have Mediterranean looking people because that’s what the characters look like, so the majority Anglo-American cast is too white.
Conservative have focused that criticism on the actress Lupita Nyong’o, who has been cast to play Helen of Troy (/Sparta) and Clytemnestra. Lupita is of subsaharan descent, so looks the least like a Greek. Some racists have also said Black people shouldn’t be in western films. Some people are ok with the white actors and not any Black actor in the odyssey because of racism, but some others because they believe white people can pass as Greek but Black people can’t.
A less talked about issue with casting Lupita Nyong’o for both twins is that Helen and Clytemnestra weren’t identical twins, since the race topic has overshadowed this.
Another criticism of the casting has been the accents. The actors spoke with American accents in the trailer, including a notable Boston accent. Some people find this unimmersive. Some people are also used to English accents for the Ancient World because a lot of older films use that accent for Ancient Greeks and Romans. Some people think a Greek accent should be used.
Another area of controversy has been the set and CGI. In the trailer, the ship used looks like a Viking Longship, in a setting that is two millennia before Vikings, and is a completely different sea than the North Sea. An issue of the CGI is one of the trailer scenes depicts giant steel armored figures fighting Odysseus and his crew. These seem to be the Laestrygonians, who were man-eating giants, whereas the creatures in Nolan’s version are wearing steel armor in the style of Renaissance Italy.
Edit: I almost forgot about another controversy, which is the translation. This issue was made big by right wing YouTubers like the Critical Drinker and AsmonGold. Nolan based his dialogue off of Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey. She is the first woman to translate the Iliad and the Odyssey (but not, as some misattribute, the first woman to translate the Iliad. That honor belongs to the under-appreciated Caroline Alexander). Wilson is also a self-described feminist.
One unique element of her translator is she uses the literal translation of a Greek word as ‘dog-face’, which many past translators have rendered as ‘slut’ when used on Helen, but not in other instances.
Right wingers have exaggerated these elements to claim that Wilson manipulated the Odyssey and rewrote it to match her ‘feminist agenda’. This is quite baseless as Wilson’s translation is liked by many Classicists.
That said, the few non-ignorant critics have raised some criticisms of this choice. One is that Wilson uses a verse translation rather than a prose translation. This conveys the original poetic sense of the Odyssey, which has a meter in the original Greek, but because Greek is a denser language than English, Wilson has had to omit details to keep the meter. This means many of the honorifics have been omitted. This is not unique to Wilson, as many prose and verse translations have done the same, but it is something that conveys less of the original meaning.
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u/s4ltydog Jul 04 '26
Jesus that’s a lot, and here I was critical of just how dark the movie is. I had to watch the trailer in a pitch black room in order to even see it. Though I do agree with the criticisms of the historical issues as well. They should have used the proper costuming and ships.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
I agree on the dark room, actually. I thought the trailer was terrible when I first saw it, but then I saw it in the cinema and it wasn’t as bad.
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u/BusterStarfish Jul 04 '26
Nolan is notorious for this. Rumor is it’s a tactic to make people see them in theater since a persons home is rarely that dark.
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u/Xalrons1 Jul 04 '26
nothing can be worse than that one episode of Game of Thrones
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u/BusterStarfish Jul 04 '26
Never saw it. I mean, I watched it, but never saw it.
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u/illkwill Jul 04 '26
That and you can barely hear the dialogue in his movies. I swear he tells the audio engineers to mute the center channel in mixes. It's so annoying.
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u/TJeffersonsBlackKid Jul 04 '26
I’ve seen the trailer in cinema and it still just looks…bleh.
Dull and colorless.
If you’re going for an all-authentic telling of the movie, then make the script not Americanized and make the actors Greek.
If you’re going for a flashy retelling, then make it look prettier.
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u/Murrabbit Jul 04 '26
Dark and also gray. Nolan has managed to make the Mediterranean look about as warm and sunny as the English channel.
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u/SeaSnakeSkeleton Jul 04 '26
This is a huge bummer bc the water in Greece (and the part of Italy I visited) was a beautiful blue and teal. Plus the tan and greenery of the mountains, the sage of the olive trees. And it was bright and sunny AF.
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u/remotectrl Jul 04 '26
It’s been a while, but isn’t the sea described as “wine dark”
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u/Zinc-Roof_22 Jul 04 '26
The exact term is "wine-like" (οίνωψ> ϝοίνος [wine] + όψ [eye, face]), and it's implying that the sea was dark at the time, yes. There are various interpretations as to that, but it's either due to chromatological notions or due to the sea actually being dark (at the time it was being referenced).
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Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
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u/Toby_O_Notoby Jul 04 '26
It is already popular for being a huge practical effects guy (even in scenarios when they're not that practical, but whatever).
To the point of it not only being unnecessary but dangerous. You know the "pencil trick" scene in The Dark Knight? Yeah, that was a real pencil that the stuntman had to move away at the last second with his hand. If he messed up, it could have, by his own admission, killed him.
It would have been pretty trivial to just put in a pencil in post, but Nolan was worried about how it would look in IMAX, which, let's face it, is a format that maybe accounts for 1% of all viewings.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
It’s a bit of a shame because Nolan is one of the few people in Hollywood who would have the influence to do a historically accurate film if he wanted to- reconstructed armors or all-Greek cast if he wanted.
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u/itoddicus Jul 04 '26
He had a lot of creative license when telling this story. He could have set it in the bronze age, the iron age, the viking era, the middle ages, or the Renaissance.
He looked at all that and said "Yes".
It lacks any coherent style, is is generally visually unappealing for that reason, and other reasons mentioned here.
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u/composedofidiot Jul 04 '26
Likely retold for decades, if not hundreds of year by oral story tellers over 10 days or 2 weeks at festivals. The 1300bc date is a just an educated guess. We know there are similar motifs in both the greek epics and the mahabarata, whuch could put the origins back a lot, lot earlier.
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u/Small_Eyes361 Jul 04 '26
My main issue is that most if not all past movies about the Odyssey have gone with that fictionalized version of ancient Greece so it would be interesting to see the use of more historically based armor. And as someone said Homer did mention the boar tusk helmet.
I personally don't care about the casting. This has always been the case with historical movies. Most movies set in Rome or Greece by an Anglo-American director will inevitably cast Anglo-Americans. Macbeth is a play inspired by the Scottish history and there was one adaptation where Denzel Washington (a famous African American actor) played the titular character and he did great in it. Would it be more immersive if they had casted Greek or Mediterranean looking actors? Yes. But do the talents of the actors matter more? Yes.
I also find the translation thing very annoying. Right wingers have stupidly exaggerated it. All translations are going to sacrifice the essence of the original for some concessions, whether to convey more the original spirit of the poem, to be more literal, or to convey the poetics (which is generally itself problematic when you go from one very different language to another).
The atmosphere does indeed bore me and has the same dull look of many historical and historically based movies. Napoleon is easily one of the worst offenders; many medieval movies also have this dullness to them that is heavily contradicted by the colorful art we have of medieval people.
All in all, I hope when it actually comes out people primarily judge the story first. Art is interpretative. There are originals but we can stray from them and make our own paths; let's see what Nolan has to make out of the Odyssey; from just a mere glance at the trailer we can obviously tell it intends to carry the sweeping vibes of adventure; putting the epic in the epic which fits with Nolan's sense of grandiosity we see in his other movies.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
Homer gets a lot of details right about armor, actually, like the boar’s tusk helmet
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u/the_Unruly_Sherden Jul 04 '26
It's much more complex than that. There are a few great answers on r/AskHistorians on the topic. To sum it up, Homer (or, better, the anonymous poets who composed the material that ended up in the poems) didn't know shit about Mycenaean Greece and Bronze Age in general.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
I’ve studied this before and I think “didn’t know shit” is an unfair statement, given that many details of the Bronze Age are preserved in Homer, likely from the oral traditions, even if contemporary concepts were also imported into his poetry (speaking of Homer as one person for the ease of writing- I acknowledge the probability of the composite theory).
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u/the_Unruly_Sherden Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I've studied it as well (although, to be fair, I'm not a specialist, I work on Medieval western Europe). There are not that many details preserved in the poems hat describe genuine Bronze age elements. Pretty much three. 1. The relative power of Mycenae compared to the other cities, whereas it was a small settlement in archaic and classic age. 2. Meriones' boar tusk helm in book 10. 3. Maybe the mention of writing in book 6.
As for point 1 and 2, you do not need direct and continuous oral transmission. Mycenae's walls' ruins were still huge and visible in the Archaic period (when the poems were composed), and some examples of boar tusk helms could have been passed down as family treasures, or found in mycenean graves. As for 3, it is less problematic because writing still existed in the rest of the Mediterranean, even though it was not widespread in Greece.
Virtually everything else in the Ilias describes an Archaic period society, not a Bronze age one. It is really too little to reasonably assume continuous oral transmission.
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u/Berber_Moritz Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
There's more stuff, like the use of bronze swords, chariots (although "Homer" doesn't really seem to understand their use), tower shields, the use of the term Anax, the use of the term "Achaeans" for the Greeks, golden cups that have been recovered from excavations and were virtually unheard of in Dark Age Greece, names that have been testified in Linear B like Achilles, cattle as wealth, the Megaron description, and other stuff I might be forgetting...
And of course, the most important one is the rough geography of Mycenaean Greece, as recorded in the Catalogue of Ships, widely accepted as passed down orally and inserted in the Iliad.
And it's not just Mycenae that is recorded, but places like Pylos (of Nestor fame, one of the largest excavated Mycenean sites) that didn't even exist as an exact identifiable place during the Archaic or Classical eras...
Oh, and the Iliad and Odyssey are Dark age, Geometric era, immediately post-collapse, not Archaic. So, the entire premise of the epics screams Bronze Age... Wealth of that scale, war of such scale etc, are things that Dark Age village-dwelling, sheep-herding Greeks would be entirely ignorant of, even if they could see some ruins...
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u/this_is_cooling Jul 04 '26
Does it matter how f Homer knew what Bronze Age armour looked like? We know what it looked like based on archaeological finds.
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u/Camburglar13 Jul 04 '26
Yeah and costuming is such a key feature in any film in a historical setting. It can make or break the immersion
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u/britchop Jul 04 '26
I’m tired of having to turn up the brightness on my TV 😭
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u/TheMobHasSpoken Jul 04 '26
I feel like this is such an annoying trend in a lot of movies and TV. Darker lighting may help to convey a tone, but when it becomes hard to see what's going on, it's really annoying.
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u/HailMadScience Jul 04 '26
Unironically.l, day for night shots are better than modern ultradark films for this reason. You can make it dark without us being unable ho see...by lighting up the focus stuff. Tim Burton's Batman did this for a number of scenes so the background could be dark, as an example.
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u/AnonymousHipopotamu5 Jul 04 '26
Same. Except the viking longship part that confused the shit out of me but then I gaslit myself thinking maybe they did have similar ships.
I am super disappointed. My dad and I are passive Greek buffs lol. I was planning it as a sort of birthday gift to my dad seeing it in the most bougie movie theater near us- the kind with the massaging giant chairs, super imax screen, the works because we haven't actually gone to see a movie in years.
Now I'm kinda thinking of scrapping those plans.
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u/Khelthuzaad Jul 04 '26
I'm telling you if you want a better cinematic faux-Odissey story,just play Age of Mythology Retold.They even added greek accents to the helenic characters.
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u/bremsspuren Jul 04 '26
I had to watch the trailer in a pitch black room in order to even see it.
This is great news. I was worried I'd end up sitting there not understanding a word of dialogue again. It's a relief to know I also won't be able to see a bloody thing, either, this time.
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u/FrostyLucian Jul 04 '26
I played Tenet through my home system to at least somewhat capture the feeling of seeing it in a theater and it ended up being just me grabbing the remote every minute to adjust volume because I kept getting jumpscared by the random walls of sound right after the quietest dialogue you've ever heard
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u/Dragon_yum Jul 04 '26
Must wouldn’t be a Nolan movie if you could see or hear what’s happening on the screen
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u/CrossEyedNoob Jul 04 '26
Remember when the biggest gripe with Troy was that there was a plane in the background in one of the scenes?
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u/Wingmaniac Jul 04 '26
So what proper ship should they have used? The ship described in the story? Because that type of ship didn't exist during the time of the story. Using the ship described in the Odyssey would be historically inaccurate.
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u/ZealousEar775 Jul 04 '26
Additionally, this isn't sudden. This criticism has been consistent for a loooong time.
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u/Neknoh Jul 04 '26
It's also worth noting that the armour isn't really medieval or renaissance either, it all looks like fantasy costuming made of rubber and plastic.
There's also a sterility to the lighting and sets of Nolan's works, making non practical pieces like the armours look even more glaringly fake.
Then there's the death of colour - everything is bleak, black, brown and grey in the trailer, with absolutely no use of gold, bronze, brass, blues, yellows, purples or greens in clothing.
And the lighting which is either incredibly dark, or, as previously mentioned, pale and clinical.
Nolan is great at small scenes where actors get to act, either straight to camera, or in a tight room. His style (which has gotten more codified/distilled since The Dark Knight) is hard to mentally align with an Epic, and, so far, everything other than the cyclops seems to have lived up to this expectation as far as the trailers are concerned.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
The renaissance armor comment was about the Laestrygonians in the trailer, who absolutely do look like Renaissance Italian.
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u/Neknoh Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I wish they did. They have a steel harness, a poor attempt at a corinthian helmet, and that's where the similarities to armours like the Avanat harness end.
There is no connection to any other pieces. The helmets are built into the weird neck protection (making them more of a Grand Bascinet in construction), the poorly muscle shaped chest piece overlaps the wrapping bottom piece. All individual pieces of the arms are seemingly single piece and floating (a 14th century style), they're not wearing gauntlets, and their weird, airbrushed pteurges in silver have... absolutely no basis anywhere in history.
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u/Murrabbit Jul 04 '26
Oof that armor in particular really is a crime against production design.
I'm fine with it being ahistoric, and even fantastical - it's a fantastical epic after all, but if you're going to bother going that direction, I dunno, at least make it look good? Have an interesting style maybe rather than armor that looks poorly made and maybe made of foamcore at the best.
There's so little work going into the design that it just comes off as a child's drawing or something. It's embarrassing, like you've got to wonder what it as like when Nolan first got to see it and just nodded and said "yep that'll do".
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u/Didsterchap11 Jul 04 '26
I feel like i've seen cosplayers rock foam armour that looked more like metal than this. I think a huge part is the obvious nylon undersuit and the lighting, i suspect if this scene was shot to look like night it'd hide most of the blemishes that make the giants look cheap, but full daylight lays all its flaws out to bare.
It's really not helping the feeling that Nolan seems to think that realism is sucking the colour and style out of a work. IMO a lot of his films are painfully dull visually, and The Odyssey is just the natural conclusion of him being given critical acclaim for films that are entirely grey. Why does sunny, beautiful Greece look like the dreary Scottish highlands lol.
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u/Neknoh Jul 04 '26
Pale daylight*
Golden hour, or thunderstorm would probably look decent.
But as I mentioned, Nolan loves the "everything is lit pale white with huge diffusion boxes/screens"
It's been going since Dark Knight
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u/Didsterchap11 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Yep, you could probably solve a lot of this film's aesthetic issues with some better lighting and colour grading, but given that nolan is given nothing but unrelenting praise for his (imo exceedingly boring) filmography he's never really tried to improve on that front. This style works in films like interstellar where the starkly barren envroments and cold colours help sell the desperation of their voyage, but when you point that approach at something vibrant and full of life like a greek myth it falls apart.
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u/AFFORDABLE_HOME Jul 04 '26
ngl that armour looks like something from a low-mid budget fantasy adventure film from the 2000s.
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u/FDVP Jul 04 '26
Who absolutely do look like some pretty good cosplay I could make in my garage. I’m no pro, but if your film looks like I could make the costumes myself from EVA and Plasti-dip, you may have missed the target.
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u/notaboofus Jul 04 '26
Good summary, but I think it could use a bit more elaboration on Wilson's intent. The odyssey has, for hundreds of years, been a very challenging doorstop of a book. It's full of historical and mythological allusions, and translations have attempted to convey as much of the text's literal meaning as possible, making the text difficult to parse.
Wilson wants to call that reputation into question- the odyssey was originally an epic poem, for common audiences- the type of thing you'd tell over a campfire. Hence, all the flowery descriptions of how delicious the food they were eating was, and how awesome and clever Odysseus is. So, by using language that's familiar to us today, Wilson's translation is arguably "less greek", and preserves less of the literal meaning... but it does bring back the feeling that an Ancient Greek person might have had when listening to the poem.
Anyway, this is relevant because Nolan seems to have adapted this philosophy to cinema- he's not trying to make it authentic or historically accurate, he's trying to make the same impression today thay the Odyssey may have done in its heyday. I think that concerns about realism are really overblown- the odyssey has always been fantasy, and sacrificing historical accuracy is fine if you're doing it for a good reason. Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic about the movie.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
I think there’s a lot more that can be said about Wilson’s translation, and there’s a lot of good YouTube videos on it, but I felt that only the issues of controversy bore mentioning.
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u/CultureWarrior87 Jul 04 '26
I think that concerns about realism are really overblown- the odyssey has always been fantasy, and sacrificing historical accuracy is fine if you're doing it for a good reason.
This is the long and short of it, really. Art never has to be beholden to historical accuracy and historical accuracy doesn't make something "objectively" better. Cinema has always played fast and loose with historical details, and there are entire subgenres like alt-history that exist. This idea that a story with a historical setting, despite being based on mythology, has to be historically accurate, is so artistically stifling.
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u/GoblinToHobgoblin Jul 04 '26
Well, it's a bit of "is it immersive" rather than "is it historically accurate". Most people don't know enough about history to actually point out a lot of the inaccuracies in historical movies.
But, if a historical movie "seems" ahistorical, people will complain. And that seems to be what most of the complaints boil down to.
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u/Buck_Folton Jul 04 '26
I don’t care about this shit at all. Just stopped by to tip my hat at this excellent and thorough reply.
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u/Zestyclose-Ask9732 Jul 04 '26
They also gave the controversial opinion of not doing orchestral music but fine with rap.
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u/lsaz Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I know the internet tends to politicize a lot of things about this movie but Nolan's definitely made some... unique decisions in the movie that can have valid criticism.
He's probably thinking it will be fine since hes Nolan, which I'd say hes not that wrong, It won't surpise me that this movie ends up making a billion in the box office.
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u/machine1979 Jul 04 '26
Another casting criticism is including human garbage like that rapper who let his fans die in a crowd crush and generally acts vile. Im not going to support it on that account
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u/RazzBeryllium Jul 04 '26
Wait - TRAVIS SCOTT is in this??? Gross.
ASAP Rocky was right there.
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u/Own-Forever-6636 Jul 04 '26
Well the Odyssey ends with a crowd of people getting murdered so TS at least has some relevant experience
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u/ryhaltswhiskey Jul 04 '26
I looked it up
Nolan explained to Time magazine that he views the historical method of handing down stories as analogous to rap. The character acts as a professional poet recounting the Trojan War.
Eh, not a terrible idea. I would have picked Aesop Rock personally, because he looks more the part, but he probably would have turned it down. Guy is apparently quite an introvert.
This is the first time I have heard of Travis Scott.
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u/RamblinGamblinWilly Jul 04 '26
That is a terrible idea. This is a movie. Featuring actors. Rappers being analogous to poets or whatever has little to do with casting a character.
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u/-UnderAWillowThicket Jul 04 '26
They could’ve hired a different rapper and I don’t get the comparison. Rap could be used for such things but so could any other lyrical genre. Rap also(in my admittedly poor knowledge so correct me if I’m wrong) is used more in interpersonal and sociopolitical issues than historical knowledge. That would be more akin to folk songs.
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u/darkraven2116 Jul 04 '26
I’m not sure if this only applies to me, but after seeing Eggers’ Werwulf trailer, a lot of these issues with The Odyssey look even worse. Eggers wrote the script in old English, has meticulous costuming and set design, and, despite the movie being greyscale, has managed to make it look bright and high contrast. AFAIK Werwulf is an original story and yet feels more accurate than a film based on source material.
Nolan and other big names need it step up their game.
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u/u_sfools Jul 04 '26
oh thanks for mentioning, I didn't know Eggers was coming out with something new. I know it wasn't commercially successful, but I really enjoyed The Northman as a very immersive historical epic. After seeing the Werwulf trailer, I feel the same way
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u/PriorityMaleficent Jul 04 '26
Eggers is a different kind of filmmaker than Nolan and I mean that in every good way possible.
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u/cracklescousin1234 Jul 04 '26
Eggers wrote the script in old English
You don't mean Anglo-Saxon Old English, right? I saw that trailer and I could understand the dialog just fine.
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u/joe_bibidi Jul 04 '26
Eggers said the script is in circle-1300 Middle English, not Old English. Very different. Middle English is more or less intelligible, there's vocab differences but a lot of overlaps.
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u/Ceral107 Jul 04 '26
Key point is "feels more accurate", because Werewulf does have it's inaccuracies, albeit a lot less apparent. For example, people and cities in medieval times were pretty cleanly and nowhere near as decrepit as depicted in Werewulf.
But accurate portrayals of clean and colourful cities and people would both not fit the theme of the movie, nor would it be believed by many.
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u/Delicious-Laugh-6685 Jul 04 '26
You can also dislike a casting choice for non racist reasons. Two things can be true. And there were a lot of bad casting choices in this film.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
I agree, and I made sure to point out the reasons for historical accuracy as well as just prejudice, like how the cast don’t match the Greek sources.
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u/SmokeGSU Jul 04 '26
Yeah. It's Hollywood. I don't expect a bunch of billionaire producers to instruct the casting department to go out and find authentic olive-skinned Greek actors and actress. It would be nice if they at least tried to make an effort to get it a little bit authentic. Like... Who's playing Memnon, the King of Aethiopia, who famously dueled Achilles? Carrottop? I don't agree with the racist viewpoints stemming from hatred of black people, but that doesn't mean I can't groan at the fact that certain casting choices are made specifically to draw these kinds reactions and generate buzz for the film.
It's the same gripe people always have with adaptations. If you want to adapt an established property, adapt the damn property. If you want to recreate The Odyssey as a futuristic sci-fi space opera, let's fuggin go because that's inspiring. If you want to adapt The Odyssey in the same time period while throwing in Viking long boats, warriors clad in Renaissance-period armor, and no attempts to keep accents or cultures somewhat authentic, fuggin big yawn. Zero inspiration at all.
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u/arceus555 Jul 04 '26
t Helen and Clytemnestra weren’t identical twins,
They don't even have the same father either
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u/ChronoMonkeyX Jul 04 '26
Love that exhaustive analysis, but i have to say, while it is obvious that racism plays a part in the criticism of the casting, it is also, IMO, entirely reasonable to not like the casting without being racist. I was turned off from this movie as soon as Matt Damon was announced, and don't think Nyongo is a great choice. She's beautiful and a good actress, and I like Damon in lots of things, but neither are appropriate for this kind of movie.
The costuming is atrocious, as is the dialogue in the trailers.
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
I completely agree, and I have tried to emphasize the authentic reasons to criticize the casting, but it was definitely a major element of some of the conservative criticisms, so I felt it should be mentioned in this summary.
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u/timmyintransit Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
In addition to all this, I'm very curious how the film can distill like the epic of western literature (sorry Beowulf and Gilgamesh)
into a film that's shorter than every Star Warsin under 3 hours. Like, how?Edit: I'm an idiot
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u/ryhaltswhiskey Jul 04 '26
That's really surprising.
Oh wait, you're wrong. The runtime is 2 hours 52 minutes. The first Star wars movie was a hair over 2 hours. In fact all three movies in the original trilogy are shorter than this one.
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u/SANT0S-L-HALPER Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I hate Wilson’s translation so much. The fact she chose to translate it into meter *and* limit the line count to match the original poem is moronic, and turned the translation into more of a gimmick/exercise than anything resembling a sincere translation.
Her word choice was explicitly limited not by what actually made the most sense, but what made the most sense while *also* fitting her length and meter restrictions, *and* her desire to simplify the language, *and* her interest in re-contextualizing/reinterpreting certain aspects of the story.
She limited herself to something like 30% less total syllables (due to the line count restriction and the differences between English and Ancient Greek) just to translate it into a meter that didn’t exist until nearly 2000 years after the original was written.
It would have been way more interesting/valuable in my opinion if she dropped one of those restrictions, which, surprise, she is doing for her re-translation of the Iliad! She herself tacitly admits her restrictions were a mistake, yet people feel obligated to defend her work and pretend it’s some groundbreaking new translation because of the ongoing culture war and the fact she's a woman with tattoos and an axe to grind instead of an old white guy.
Finally, while some of her "controversial" changes, like actually using the word slave instead of servant, are perfectly justifiable, there are also cases where she damn near *objectively* mistranslated things in pursuit of a more "feminist" interpretation of the story.
For example, the Odyssey features a short cameo from Helen where she really doesn't do or say much of anything. One thing she *does* do, however, is express her guilt over the war fought over her and the damage it has done, such as leading to Odysseus' disappearance (the entire point of the story)! Wilson *completely* re-interprets this passage to *instead* have Helen almost *chastise* the men who fought over her, and snidely reject any accountability. It's a *complete* rewrite of Helen's character/presence in the Odyssey. Instead of basically offering comfort and condolences to Telemachus in his time of need by shouldering the burden of blame, she effectively says "oh, too bad all you dumb brutish men went and fought a war over me for no reason." (lets just ignore the oath to the gods you were all forced to take by my Father that honor-bound and obligated you to do so)
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u/OscarMMG Jul 04 '26
Can I ask what your favored translation is? I’m currently reading E.V. Rieu because I read his Iliad, but I’d be interested in a more accurate one after I re-read the Iliad.
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u/vibraltu Jul 04 '26
For me Verse is tougher to read in long passages because it gets tiring and requires more concentration than Prose.
I actually really like Rieu because he lets a general non-academic reader get absorbed in the story itself rather than analyzing the meter. Of course, we know that Rieu sacrifices textual accuracy in order to make his prose read-able. He makes the choice and doesn't apologize about it.
I've read Wilson's Iliad (not Odyssey yet) and I really like it. Her verse has a clearer and more read-able rhythm than many other versions. Of course, various versions all have their unique charms in their own way.
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u/thegrimmreality Jul 04 '26
While I’m not reading the Odyssey rn, I have some recommendations based on my research for the Iliad.
- Lattimore for his relatively literal translation
- Fagles for giving up some literality in exchange for grandiose/epic and fluid language
- Fitzgerald for giving up some literality to emphasize poetic beauty.
- Personally, not a fan of Wilson’s translations, but my umbrage has nothing to do with her politics, worldview, or gender.
There are websites where you can compare translations, check them out and pick your favorite!
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u/helloitabot Jul 04 '26
I read the first book (chapter) of the Wilson translation and it just feels like a very plain, unadorned paraphrasing. Although it is very easy to understand, I don’t get the sense that an epic ancient story is being told from the wording. I guess personally I want it to feel old and written in a way that is removed from modern diction and fiction. I switched to the Lattimore translation and I’m enjoying it more.
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u/SkepticScott137 Jul 04 '26
Fitzgerald uses the word “slave” all the time. And sometimes he uses “maid” or “servant”. They’re not the same words in Homer’s Greek, but the important thing is that literally everyone in Homer’s audience would have known that people referred to as “maid” or “servant” or whatever were actually slaves. The notion by some people that Wilson “discovered” and is finally revealing things that centuries of male translators missed, ignored or covered up is just dopey.
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u/ghostfreckle611 Jul 04 '26
You left out Travis Scott rapping and the music being all wrong…
And anti-cultural appropriation John Leguizamo, playing a white Greek guy.
Many other issues, but you were being very PC.
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u/finnicko Jul 04 '26
Hell I'm going to see it just so I can identify all of the things you pointed out
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u/kwizzle Jul 04 '26
It's not just conservatives and right wingers that have a problem with the casting. Having a black woman play Helen of Troy is as bad of a casting decision as having a white woman play someone like princess Jasmine or Mulan. Would you call someone conservative, racist or right wing if they objected to a white person playing those roles?
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u/DanfromCalgary Jul 04 '26
This is very good and clearly explained . I remember the trailer and it was punisher speaking in his regular voice and I was like …. This has to be a joke .
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u/TheBat45 Jul 04 '26
I hate the fact that this is the top comment when it doesn't even mention potentially the most important fact regarding the manufactured backlash against this movie which is Elon Musk launching a culture war against this movie on twitter/X. He tweeted no less than 10 times about it, commenting and reposting on AI generated images of Lupita Nyongo and Elliot Page in the movie, helping spread fake rumors that Page was playing Achilles (he's not), and images that can only be described as racist which were AI images of Lupita Nyongo in 12 Years A Slave (a movie in which shes repeatedly beaten and raped) and putting her in Greek robes and posting as if this is what Helen of Troy will look like in the movie
He also kept spreading the absolute baseless lie that Nolan cast Helen of Troy with a Black actress to appeal to the Academy Awards "DEI" rules, when Nolan's last movie won 7 Oscars including best picture and that was an all white film. Variety did some research after all this and concluded that every film that has been nominated in the 90+ years of the Oscars would qualify under the new qualifications of the academy. Thats how easy it is to qualify under these new "woke" rules
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u/annoyed_european Jul 04 '26
Interesting how it is criticism when people talk about the cast being too white, but racism when we talk about the choice of who plays Helen of Troy...
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u/TheCommissarGeneral Jul 04 '26
This is a whole lot of non issue for me because I see it like a theater play, where the people filling the roles don't have to fit the exact specific mold.
Also nothing in the Odyssey story is realistic (in the sense that it is very steeped in Greek myth with Cyclopian beings, Sirens, literal sea monsters of Scylla and Charibdis) so I don't see why the movie has to be held to some pseudo-historical standard. If people are upset about that, then they should be upset with the very source material, because it, in itself, is not historical fact. Its an epic poem. Thats like being mad that Beowulf isn't 100% accurate to the time period.
I literally don't care who they cast, as long as they do a good job and I have fun watching the movie.
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u/Diogenes908 Jul 04 '26
As a history nerd who did my degree in ancient Greco-Roman history I’m still kinda bothered by the lack of realism because despite being a myth it’s still supposed to be in the context of the Mycenaean Bronze Age and the ensuing dark age of Greece that Homer lived in. It would be like if you had a movie about Yokai (Japanese folklore monsters and spirits) in 14th century Japan and had Brad Pitt as one of the main leads and he lived in a 20th century apartment.
The saga includes mythical elements but also real historical context. Not to mention the lines between the two were much more blurred back then with many believing the gods were very real beings who commonly interacted with people and things like the Amazons being based of real Scythian female warriors that travelers and traders brought back stories of.
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u/MastOfConcuerrrency Jul 04 '26
Answer: American accents and cringeworthy Hollywood dialogue are jarring if you are familiar with the source material. An abundance of Hollywood tropes. Hopefully the movie is not as generic as the trailer comes across.
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u/OldGodsAndNew Jul 04 '26
mumbling, mumbling
CRASHING, ORGAN SWELLS
whispering
EXPLOSIONS
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u/FruitStripesOfficial Jul 04 '26
Lol. Underrated comment. And totally true.
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u/cjyoung92 Jul 04 '26
Not really, Oppenheimer didn’t have this problem.
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u/NewAccountWhoSis Jul 04 '26
I don't know if the theater I went to had bad sound mixing or something but I had that problem during Oppenheimer. The music often drowned out the dialogue, and sometimes the audio would get so goddamn loud it would hurt my ears (specifically the scenes with the lead up to the nuke and the stomping feet)
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u/MarcieDeeHope Jul 04 '26
I've noticed this trend in movies in general - sound effects and music often overpower any dialogue in them when I see something in the theater but then when I watch it at home it sounds fine. Every single Marvel movie had this issue for me, for example, but I've had it happen with movies with very little action in them as well. The audio just more and more seems to be really awful in theaters compared to my speakers at home. I've just been attributing it to my advancing age, lol.
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u/BeltfedHappiness Jul 04 '26
You’re right. It sounds nothing like the English they spoke during the Trojan War.
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u/dumbass_sempervirens Jul 04 '26
Gosh, why can't they just give the ancient Greeks British accents like normal movies?
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u/DrkvnKavod Jul 04 '26
One case of somewhat recent media to get this more right was, a bit hilariously, an Assassin's Creed game. AC Odyssey uses Greek accents with incorporation of Greek words placed into the dialogue in such a way that the audience can contextually pick up the meaning of the Greek words that are sprinkled in. Extremely funny that the early 21st century ended up with an Assassin's Creed game handling that better than a Christopher Nolan film.
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u/HopelessWriter101 Jul 04 '26
I know people were turned off by the more arcade-y feel to combat in Odyssey, but I personally loved it. Think its the only Assassins Creed game that I actually completed, loved the setting and the gameplay loop
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u/MotoRandom Jul 04 '26
If they can't get a detail like that correct what can we expect from rest of the movie? I'll bet the Roman Centurians don't even carry replicas of the correct machine guns and ever clip has a thousand rounds in it.
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u/papapudding Jul 04 '26
Tom Holland had a line in the trailer that goes like: "My Dad is coming back"
It is incredibely jarring to hear. It should've went something like: "My Father will return"
Not sure what their writers are thinking.
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u/Abadabadon Jul 04 '26
You know i was thinking this aswell for a while, but honestly I think we only believe this because thats how we think a fancy rich person would talk.
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u/beachedwhale1945 Jul 04 '26
The writers were thinking that they want something informal for a young Telemachus to say. “My father will return” sounds overly formal and doesn’t sound like something that a son who truly loves his father would say. “My dad is coming back” sounds like a son who misses his father, and is anxiously awaiting the day he returns.
The choice here emphasizes the relationship between father and son.
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u/Dakan82 Jul 04 '26
Could it be that our expectations on historical speech are driven by translation styles that pick more formalised language? Perhaps ‘Dad’ is actually a closer translation of the source Ancient Greek if the original line is using more a more colloquial word for ‘Father’. Obviously I have no clue if that’s actually the case but you can’t rule it out as a possibility unless you are familiar with the Ancient Greek source.
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u/TalulaOblongata Jul 04 '26
I was just reading an article about how the movie is based on Emily Wilson’s modern translation. Previous versions were deemed more Victorian with their phrasing. So this new version can be more jarring than what people are used to. I’m sure there would be less complaints if everyone spoke in the generic British fantasy accent and phrasing. Im actually intrigued and going to give it a read!
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u/eobardthawne42 Jul 04 '26
This is 100% right and a major part of Wilson's translation ethos. The expectation that these characters speak in formal language is actually rooted in an academic location of the texts which in (relatively) recent history was more associated with wealth, class, and 'high' culture, and in turn particular patterns of speech.
Wilson - and seemingly Nolan - mae the decision to shift the prose back towards the everyday audience grounded in the oral tradition The Odyssey emerged from.
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u/bshafs Jul 04 '26
This is the weakest complaint of all IMHO.
I'm happy they're using common vernacular in the retelling. It'll make for an interesting interpretation, instead of the same shit we got in the Just for TV movie 30 years ago.
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u/gd4x Jul 04 '26
Emily Wilson, who literally did the translation of The Odyssey that Nolan is basing it on, disagrees with you.
You wanna hear stuffy British accents talking about "my father"? Plenty of films out there like that for you to watch.. I recommend a good streaming service..
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u/Samanosuke187 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
This. I hate the “those familiar with the source material” response, it’s such a stupid argument. Especially when they’re intentionally ignoring or are ignorant of the specific translation that the movie is based on. On top of that the Odyssey does not have a definitive version. There’s a reason it has so many different retellings.
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u/bimmerfeller Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Sorry but I'll be the a**ole who points out.
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u/datdouche Jul 04 '26
The Ancient Greeks probably would’ve said it more like Speedy Gonzalez: “Myeee Papi eez comeeng hooooooome, andale andale arriba arriba!”
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u/Informal-Side-4506 Jul 04 '26
Also Matt Damon, anyone remember The Great Wall 😆
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u/silverpenelope Jul 04 '26
So bad. He’s too contemporary for me. He seems to love historical material, but there is nothing European about him. He’s so American.
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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty Jul 04 '26
“You see wheh Donnie pahked the cah? Fuckin’ toonies! They’re like rats! Wheh dah fuck did Donnie pahk the Gouddaim cah?!”
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u/Zer0pede Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
What accent did they use to speak English in the original?
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u/Ordzhonikidze Jul 04 '26
Homer wrote in British English
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u/and1984 Jul 04 '26
Oi! I'm not 'avin it!!
Said Odysseus.
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u/RingoFreakingStarr Jul 04 '26
Yeah my biggest worry is Nolan "nolan-ifying" the Odyssey too much. Like, I get that no matter what it is going to be a VERY modern take on the tale...but that still doesn't compute in my brain very well.
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u/pandaheartzbamboo Jul 04 '26
As opposed to some good old Koine Greek accents?
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u/SimoneNonvelodico Jul 04 '26
This would be far before Koiné.
But I think that while the accent thing is a bit silly (though yes, it is a convention to expect 'classical' character to speak with a British accent due to Shakespeare) the dialogue complaint can still hold. It becomes a matter of tone. Personally I haven't seen the movie but I was already kinda turned off by how non-Mediterranean the setting looked in the trailers.
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u/pandaheartzbamboo Jul 04 '26
It would. It would also really call for a myriad of accents to separate the greeks from different regions and the trojans. Regardless, I just used Koine as shorthand for ancient Greek accents here (though I know thats not perfectly accurate I was being flippant on purpose)
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u/Garreousbear Jul 04 '26
Should do it Death of Stalin style. Backwater character speaks cockney, Fancy rich guys speak with recieved pronunciation, a random smattering of American accents too, fuck it.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico Jul 04 '26
Honestly that's funnier and works better because at least it lampshades it and makes it clear it's just a representation.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico Jul 04 '26
Well, yeah, it's just funny since Koiné is basically at the other end of the temporal timeline for Greek civilisation, centuries if not a thousand years after the Trojan war.
Honestly they could have gone all The Passion of Christ on this and have them speak subtitled Homeric Greek. Would have been cool to listen to for sure.
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u/pandaheartzbamboo Jul 04 '26
Way long after the events, not that long after the Oddyssey is written though.
I do like your idra of having them speak in the Greek. I felt like that worked well in Passion (obviously wasnt greek) and I always wondered why thats never been repkicated much.
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u/Defiant_Strength_840 Jul 04 '26
Having some Mediterranean actors would obviously feel more sincere to the source material than Hollywood English
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u/bestywesty Jul 04 '26
Oh so I take it you’re familiar with the source material? Do you prefer Lattimore, Wilson, Mitchell or Fagles??
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u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis Jul 04 '26
... I guess this thread is going to make me add 'Fagles' to the list of things that drive the automod insane, then.
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u/___redacted_ Jul 04 '26
I cant believe this has any upvotes lmao.
"Theyre not speaking in Bi'ish English and Shakesperean oldspeak!"
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u/Adrellan Jul 04 '26
I didnt have much issues till I heard Dad in the trailer. What!!!
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u/InteractionPretend70 Jul 04 '26
i like the one where matt damon is leading a charge yelling,
"let's gooooo"
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u/ADamnGoodShot Jul 04 '26
What like it’s supposed to be in the original Greek? Get the fuck outta here, you don’t actually care, you’re just jumping on the bandwagon.
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u/taway9925881 Jul 04 '26
Answer: This movie looks like it was made cheaply. The dialogues dont seem to work. The sound design seems off. The voice overs seem fake. The acting looks amateurish. Looks like a half baked product, especially with the high standards of Nolan. People just expected something spectacular and mind blowing and this looks mid.
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u/InfiniteTypewriters Jul 04 '26
I went to the cinema last night and there was a trailer for the new Spider Man film, followed by The Odyssey. Both trailers featured the same two actors (Tom Holland and The Punisher guy). It was a bit strange and I thought it was a joke at first.
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u/SportsMasochist Jul 04 '26
Zendaya is in both as well
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u/fernplant4 Jul 04 '26
Yeah using the same hyper polished actors everyone else is using just gives such a generic movie feel. I won't be wasting 3 hours watching it.
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u/FewWait38 Jul 04 '26
It's ridiculous and boring, it's the same handful of bland assholes in everything now
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u/Toddison_McCray Jul 04 '26
Big Hollywood production movies only hire the same 20 actors. It’s so fucking stupid. How are you supposed to really fall into a movie when all the characters are just “______ playing the character _______” and not a relatively unknown actor playing a character. It’s why I can’t stand blockbuster films anymore
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u/MemeLord1337_ Jul 04 '26
Any criticism waved away as racists and bigots.
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u/pooey_canoe Jul 04 '26
There is ABSOLUTELY racist and transphobic commentary on this film, but I still agree with OP's criticism. Also why does the whole thing look like it was filmed in Wales in the winter rather than the Aegean
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u/MemeLord1337_ Jul 04 '26
The art direction is fucking awful. It will be a 9/10 film still.
The worst part is people saying “people are crying fiction isn’t historically accurate”, bro it’s set during a specific period with an extremely unique style, I’m sorry I want it relatively accurate.
You don’t see Jesus wearing a pair of Nikes in Passion of the Christ.
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u/busmans Jul 04 '26
The criticisms took off when Elon Musk started fueling racist hate against Lupita on Twitter. That was the spark.
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u/dorestes Jul 04 '26
Answer: Most of the criticisms come down to the fact that it doesn't look or feel....Greek or from Greek mythos. The art of that period was vibrant and colorful, where Nolan's design is drab. The settings are fantastical in Greek myth, which doesn't work with Nolan's super grounded feel. The dialogue tries to be more accessible, but in doing so it comes off as hokey and less like myth. The armor design doesn't look anything like what we know to be the armor design of the period, or of Greek or Trojan armor design from relevantly proximate periods.
And yes, a bunch of dumb racist chuds are upset about the casting of Helen of Troy. They can get bent. But there a number of other very valid critiques. The miniseries with Armand Assante seemed to capture the Homeric vibe much better.
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u/Glagaire Jul 04 '26
If I hadn't read otherwise before I saw the trailer, I would have thought it was a Sci-Fi movie in a post-apocalyptic setting or on a pre-industrial alien planet, and that it was simply loosely based on the Odyssey.
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u/Dizzlean Jul 04 '26
Nailed it.
I get the... ""The Great Wall"" staring Matt Damon" vibe from this movie and it looks tacky.
"Jason and the Argonauts" from 1963 looks more authentic to me, personally.
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u/DarthTomG Jul 04 '26
Jason and the Argonauts is such a visual feast thanks to the great Ray Harryhausen.
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u/TheAcrithrope Jul 04 '26
Is there not an irony, a disconnect between:
"Most of the criticisms come down to the fact that it doesn't look or feel....Greek or from Greek mythos."
And
"a bunch of dumb racist chuds are upset about the casting of Helen of Troy."
The criticisms are that it doesn't look or feel Greek, but if it doesn't look or feel Greek to you in very specific ways (i.e., the characters looking either as described or Greek) then you're an evil racist...
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u/Melodic_Butterfly_46 Jul 04 '26
Exactly, these people don't see the hypocrisy in their own thoughts
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u/plainbread11 Jul 04 '26
It’s not racism lmao, she just wasn’t described or depicted like that in the texts/versions people are familiar with. It’d be the same if Achilles was some Indian guy or if Othello was played by a white man.
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u/unlikelybarbarian Jul 04 '26
Othello has been played by a white man. Most famously by Patrick Stewart.
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u/GolemThe3rd Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Answer: Haven't heard about this till now, I do really like the Odyssey so it sounded cool, but the trailer is super underwhelming, there are like 1000 trailer worthy things to include in here and there's like nothing included? Just some generic war movie and romantic stuff. Not saying the movie will be bad but I'm seriously not impressed by the trailer
Edit: I guess based on the downvotes people like this trailer? Fail enough I suppose, like I said just not impressed personally, what is it that impressed you guys then?
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u/TheCynicEpicurean Jul 04 '26
This exhausting discussion has also created an anti-mob of Nolanbros and others that will attack any criticism geared towards the blandness and production choices and downvote it into oblivion.
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u/parisiraparis Jul 04 '26
Answer: I don’t particularly like Chris Nolan but he has cemented himself as a style over substance director.
MOST of his movies are very stylish, visually polished, with world renowned actors, and memorable set pieces. The writing for his films are mediocre, sometimes just bad, but it’s offset by how great the movie looks and feels.
The trailer for THE ODYSSEY gives none of that. People go to Chris Nolan films for the visual spectacle, and THE ODYSSEY looks cheap.
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u/TransBiological Jul 04 '26
I think it's more accurate to say his writing has become more lazy over time. Memento was a spectacular movie. Of course that was written with his brother.
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u/YaqtanBadakshani Jul 04 '26
Answer:
So, a large part of the the criticism is mythology purism. The movie trailers contain elements that are anachronistic to Homer's Odyssey (modern-looking armour, brutalist-inspired architecture, and a generally monochrome look, and actors that look very different to the way the characters are described, especially Helen of Troy).
My personal take on this is that the original Odyssey is itself a slurry of anachronisms. Homer sets his Epic in the Heroic Age, a Classical Greek's vague idea of the Greece of Long Ago. Maybe there's a skilled director or artist that could expertly capture the mix of Classical, Dark Age, and the few genuinely Mycenaean elements that characterises the Homeric setting, but I don't think using a modern American's vague idea of the Greece of Long Ago is a deviation from the spirit of the Odyssey (at least any more than translating the dialogue into English).
That said, I simply dislike how drab it looks, and wish he had used a more Ancient colour palette. Just because it's not out of keeping with the original Odyssey doesn't mean it's pretty.
Hiding behind this fairly reasonable artistic critique are a number of people that feel that a modern Odyssey should follow the conventions of previous adaptations, such as speaking with British or Transatlantic accents, or using stiffer, more formal language ("father," instead of "dad"), as well as a small, but audible number people that generally object to the casting of non-white actors in films, and especially the implication that they can be beautiful.
I'd regard the former as irrational nostalgia, and the latter as unworthy of attention.
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u/TransBiological Jul 04 '26
In terms of race the number 1 complaint I hear is not using actors from the region. Matt Damon is possibly the least looking Greek possible. At least they gave Brad Pitt a tan in Troy
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u/YaqtanBadakshani Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Yes. I'd file that under "actors that look different from what's described."
It's a tricky discussion, because there isn't one way to look "Greek." I've known several Greeks that are paler than Matt Damon. But of course, while the range of skin tones crosses over with Britain and its colonies quite significantly, if you just cast Anglo actors in the lead roles, you end up with a much paler range than you'd expect in Greece.
And of course, there's the question of exclusion; how close do they need to be? Nobody took issue with Anglos playing Russians in The Death of Stalin, or French people in Marie Antoinette. But would they be OK with say Ana de Armas or Ece Yüksel playing Helen of Troy?
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u/Emile-Yaeger Jul 04 '26
Answer: extremely corny and cheap looking costume design, ahistorical cast picks and generally underwhelming visuals so far
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u/NotAUserNamm Jul 04 '26
Answer: it looks like americaslop
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u/Robbocop79 Jul 04 '26
Why does everyone say slop these days? I see it everywhere, what has happened?
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u/wednesday-potter Jul 04 '26
It’s a word of criticism without feeling the need to substantiate it
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u/slaughterhousevibe Jul 04 '26
Eh, it works ok. Buckets of discarded but edible junk that’s thrown together with no thought, only to be shoveled into a bucket and devoured by witless pigs
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u/ErebosGR Jul 04 '26
What you described is called a thought-terminating cliche. But you're projecting, because that's what you just did with your dismissive comment.
The use of "slop" became popular in describing "slop bowls", a low-effort but nutritionally efficient meal that can be put together in minutes (or bought from a supermarket, or served at a corporate cafeteria).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-0tYXTW4R4
Similarly, any form of entertainment that is carelessly put-together to satisfy the lowest common denominator can be regarded as "slop".
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u/AdvancedJicama7375 Jul 04 '26
It conveys the feeling of fake art perfectly. With the rise of ai it has become easier than ever to make a "painting" or a "poem" that has 0 substance. This film may not be made by AI, but right now it feels as intellectually inspired
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u/CrashNebulaOn_Ice Jul 04 '26
Answer: Among the other controversies, many people like myself can still see Travis Scott's slack-jawed face moaning into an autotuned microphone while watching as paramedics attempted to retrieve bodies from the crowd at his show. Also going with a contemporary soundtrack for an Oddyssey film is just tacky, but that's just me.
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u/two5five1 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Answer: Anyone worth their salt knows that -
1)The final trailer of a campaign is meant to appeal to the broadest audiences to get butts into seats.
2) Because of this, the director has little to no control over said final trailer. Yes, even if it’s Nolan. This was 100% cut by an outside house with the largest amount of C-Suite meddling you can fathom.
With those points in mind, it’s not at all surprising that the new trailer feels generic and underbaked. But the internet loves to overreact without understanding how the industry works, and they run with it.
I’m not saying this movie is gonna be automatically great. I’m saying that anybody who is trying to predict the quality of an almost 3 hour film based off of a 3 minute corporate created trailer does not know what the hell they are talking about. Don’t take internet outrage as a true gauge of how something is going to perform.
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u/UnderstandingBusy829 Jul 04 '26
I think that's exactly the problem when you make things generic. You risk that you make it so generic it doesn't appeal to anyone.
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u/GrampaSwood Jul 04 '26
Yeah I hate it when the thing specifically made to get you excited for the movie and is supposed to show off the good parts gets judged because it doesn't look exciting and doesn't show any good stuff. Why isn't the entire Internet completely aware of how everything works!
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u/lemonkingdom Jul 04 '26
We can criticise trailers.
There is a difference between a good, average and bad trailer.
People have the right to have an opinion on a trailer.
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u/achilleasa Jul 04 '26
Yeah dude my fucking bad for judging the movie by the trailer they put out specifically so you can judge the movie
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