Anticipation is building ahead of one of the biggest films of the year after the second trailer for Christopher Nolan’s re-telling of The Odyssey dropped online.
Nolan collected a number of awards for his last film Oppenheimer and many are expecting similarly great things from his latest big-budget blockbuster.
Set to be released on 17 July, which is incidentally the same day as the new Spider-Man film’s release (do we have another Barbenheimer on our hands?), the film revolves around Homer’s epic poem.
If you’re not familiar with the famous Greek tale, it will focus on Odysseus’ 10-year journey back to Ithaca after the Trojan War, with Matt Damon reprising his main character role as the lead who simply wants to go home.
Meanwhile, his wife Penelope – played by Anne Hathaway – and son Telemachus (played by Tom Holland), are desperately warding away suitors, including Robert Pattinson as Antinous, who want to take Odysseus’ throne.
Historical fantasy films are never likely to please everyone but after the second trailer dropped, a lot of keen-eyed fans who are hoping for an accurate representation of life in ancient Greece have been left with some complaints.
You can watch the trailer below:
The main issue, which many have described as ‘jarring’, is seemingly the dialogue and accents on show.
In the new three-minute clip, we see an exchange between Antinous and Telemachus, where Tom Holland is told that he’s ‘pining for a daddy’ – which the internet is probably going to love. But that doesn’t mean that it’s ok.
The word dad first came into use in the 1500s, which is a good 2000 years after the Odyssey is set. Go figure. Now fans might not be expecting ancient Greek accents and unintelligible language but it’s clearly not sitting right with a number of viewers.
“The American accents are incredibly jarring for a movie in this time period,” one person wrote on Reddit, with another saying: “For something as big as The Odyssey, you’d think they’d make the way the characters speak to each other sound less… modern?”
Tom Holland ‘pining for his daddy’ isn’t a line many expected to hear (Universal Pictures)
We also see Damon shouting ‘let’s go’ to an army of men, which again feels a bit too like a Marvel film rather than the heroic tales which probably inspired our more modern superhero films.
Nolan has since spoken to Stephen Colbert about his hopes for the upcoming blockbuster, suggesting that he wants to do it justice.
He said: “Greek mythology hadn’t really been done on a kind of A-budget, big studio, throw everything at the screen and see what sticks kind of way. It’s just one of the great adventure stories and I really wanted to see it done justice.”
Nolan has a big job on his hands (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/YouTube)
Plenty of folks online are also taking issue with some of the clothing choices in the trailer, with the silver armour worn by the giants, or laestrygonians, another moment that feels a little out of place.
However, this is perhaps something that’s more open to creative interpretation, since they’re monsters that don’t exist, with the armour worn by soldiers also pretty much ‘impossible’ to replicate according to Kim Shelton, a University of California professor from the department of ancient Greek and Roman studies.
Now, it’s worth remembering that you can’t judge a film from two minutes of trailer and this epic will probably still be well worth a watch, so long as you don’t nit pick every detail you don’t think is 100 per cent accurate.
But if Nolan really wants to do Homer’s tale ‘justice’, then hopefully we don’t see this modern terminology dotted throughout the release.
I’ll be watching it no matter what, so hopefully it lives up to expectations, even if the latest trailer has left plenty of people with some doubts.