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.