Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and Why It's OK Everyone’s Speaking Plain Old American in It

What?

You’ve never heard anyone call Odysseus “daddy” before!?

Nolan didn’t just have to make the decision about how he wanted Odysseus to speak, but he also had to consider what audiences might expect.
Then again, adapting a work of literature into a movie is also a form of translation, which means Nolan didn’t just have to make the decision about how he wanted Odysseus and the rest to speak, but while doing so he also had to consider what audiences might expect these characters to sound like.

And again, judging by some of the chatter online today, it was certainly a consideration that he and his team could not have taken lightly.

One is reminded of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, and, prior to his debut, the question of how the character would fit into the relatively grounded Marvel Cinematic Universe back when it was in its infancy.

Talk about a guy who likes to spout “thees” and “thous”!

Audiences of course got used to the “Asgard-speak” right away, but also, Thor as a character became a bit more centered as a comic figure, or at the very least one of the most outlandish Avengers, and as such his eccentricities were played for fun.

(After his first couple of appearances, he also may have cut back on the thees and thous a bit too.)
I remember doing the press junket for K-19: The Widowmaker, that Harrison Ford/Liam Neeson Russian submarine movie.

(Yeah, I’m old.) During interviews, there was a slight sense of “did we screw up?” among some of the cast when it came to the fact that they all went with Russian accents in the film, as opposed to going The Hunt for Red October route of just, right out of the gate (and rather cleverly), letting the actors playing Russians speak in their native American, English, or even Scottish accents.

(Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country pulled a similar trick with its big Klingon courtroom scene.)
So in the end, did Nolan make the right choice by having Pattinson’s Antinous say “daddy”?

Is it gonna be weird to see Damon’s Odysseus slip into a Boston accent while fighting the Cyclops?

(That last bit’s a joke.) We won’t really know until we see the final movie, but there is certainly a tradition on the printed page as well as onscreen of dispensing with the more formal ideas of how a story about ancient times should sound.

Talk to Scott Collura @scottcollura.bsky.social, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3.

Or do both!