The Odyssey premiere will happen soon. Early reactions will be out on social media. And then the spoiler reviews will start coming out within a couple of weeks. This is it.

Worst case expectation:  It's a boring movie with no strong emotional impact, glaring plot contrivances, and so it will only be remembered in the future for its anachronistic aesthetics (casting, costumes, props.)

Best case expectation: It's a very emotionally moving, well paced, well constructed narrative. A thrilling masterpiece fantasy that is on the level of the Lord of the Rings films. So even the harshest critics will only point out the historical inaccuracies of the aesthetics while appreciating the filmmaking. It'll be seen as a great fantasy film that just happens to be inspired by Homer's Odyssey. Like Kubrick's Shining, not an accurate adaptation but a great film on its own.

Because Lord knows, it doesn't just need to be OK or even good at this point, it needs to be a masterpiece of a script. The bad word of mouth for this is pretty disproportionate before it's even out. I know Lord of the Rings trilogy is a very high bar but that's just the level of storytelling quality it will need to have for Nolan's credibility to survive as a storyteller.

Seeing a lot of historical revisionism about his entire career now. "Oh Chris is a hack and only makes good movies when his brother Jonathan is writing for him". Such is the world. I've never been this iffy about a movie. Nolan's filmography is basically my entire childhood so I definitely have my bias. I'm still a harsh critic myself so even I won't be able to lie to myself if it's genuinely not a good movie.

No exaggeration, this is the most important movie of Christopher Nolan's career. It's make or break. I'm not worried about the box office at all, just the quality of the storytelling.

- Nolan's Odyssey has been criticized for the use of immersion breaking "modern language/slang". Characters in the trailer use phrases like "let's go" and words like "dad" and "daddy". People have mocked these for sounding too 21st century (besides the accent).

If you think those words are too *informal* and not epic enough for these specific characters because they're royalty, and that breaks your immersion personally, then your complaint is valid.

If the movie is already a 0/10 for you because of the accents along with the aesthetics of the non-Greek cast, the inaccurate costumes and ships no matter what, I won't argue with that part.

I just want to explore whether these words are *NEW* for not just historical cinema, but also for official translations of ancient epics, and for the English language itself. Is this unique to Nolan's writing or does it have at least some precedent?

Is this new?

1. Examples from movies with historical settings, real or fantasy:

(Check timestamps for film quotes in my image or find transcripts online)

• In Kubrick's Spartacus (1960), the phrase "let's go" is used within a larger sentence.

"Let's go and hear more about Rome from Crassus."

Similar to Matt Damon's "Let's go home" in Nolan's Odyssey.

• In Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), "let's go" is used as a standalone phrase.

  "Pippin." "Let's go."

Similar to Matt Damon's "Let's go!" in Nolan's Odyssey.

In both Spartacus and Two Towers, "let's go" is used as a plain command (to move), rather than a football/streamer excited hype chant. So why the different reactions from audiences?

Matt Damon's Odysseus is also using it as a plain command but since he's addressing a faraway crowd, he shouts the phrase instead of saying it quietly like the other examples. And so it reminds the viewer of a football hype chant, even though it's contextually (and intentionally) more similar to previous examples.

Is Odysseus' "Let's go!" just a casual "war cry?" Likely not. The scenery is filled with dark clouds and thousands of ghosts. This is most likely the Underworld and Odysseus is frantically running, telling his men to get away from the ghosts. It's supposed to be less "Forth Eorlingas!" and more like "Let's move back to the ship!"

That's just my prediction anyway based on my memory of the original.

• Also in Two Towers (2002) is the use of the word "Dad" to describe fathers.

  "Frodo was really courageous wasn't he, dad?"

  Similar to Tom Holland's "My dad is coming home" in Nolan's Odyssey.

2. Examples from official English translations of Homer's Odyssey:

• Robert Fagles' critically acclaimed 1996 translation of Homer's Odyssey used the phrase "let's go" within larger sentences multiple times.

  "Let's go to bed..."

  "Let's go wash these clothes..."

Much like Matt Damon's "let's go home" in Nolan's Odyssey.

• Richmond Lattimore's 1965 translation of Homer's Odyssey used the word "daddy" to describe dear father, and so did Fagles' 1996 version.

  "Daddy dear, will you not have them harness me the wagon..."

  - Lattimore, 1965/67

  "Daddy dear, I wonder, won't you have them harness a wagon for me..."

  - Fagles, 1996

Robert Pattinson mockingly says "You're pining for a daddy..." in Nolan's Odyssey.

[Notes on "anachronistic translations" of older stories:

Most translations of older stories are products of their time, albeit with formal academic speech and flowery embellishments. This applies to official literary translations as well as media:

• Samuel Butler translated Homer's Odyssey in the 1890s so his reads like 19th century English. He didn't deliberately write it in 18th century English, just to make it "sound ancient".
• Robert Fagles translated Homer's Odyssey in the 1990s so his English is reflective of 20th century academic language, while avoiding region specific slang.

So this idea that "Oh it's an older story so it should sound old" is likely an expectation due to the misunderstanding of cinematic tropes:

• The "ancient sounding British" in movies like Gladiator (2000) and Troy (2004) is actually just Received Pronunciation from elite schools in the early 20th century, it's not really ancient. (Check the wiki for Received Pronunciation)
• The 1979 Russian TV adaptation of 19th century Sherlock Holmes novels just spoke in the 20th century standardized contemporary Russian language.
• Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) was supposed to be set in Classical Antiquity Rome but they spoke 20th century English because that was their audience.
• Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ (1988) infamously had Willem Dafoe as Jesus speaking in 20th century American English. He would pronounce the word "God" as the American "Gah-d" instead of the British RP "Gaw-d".
• Even the sacred Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was supposed to be set in Early Medieval Britain, just had characters speaking mostly in late 19th - early 20th century English because that's the time period the author Tolkien grew up in.

They didn't actually speak Shakespearean English or Early Medieval Germanic Old English, barring some Old English names and phrases, some fictional languages. The entire text in Old English would've been completely unintelligible to a modern audience.]

• The most obvious example of actual modern dialogue that is accepted by fans in Jackson's LOTR is again in Two Towers (2002):

  "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!"

The orcs use the word "menu" which didn't even enter the English vocabulary till the 19th century. "Menu" is very much not early medieval, it's not even a Shakespearean word.

By contrast, "Let's go" and "dad" are centuries older than the word "menu" yet nobody dismisses LOTR for using it. The distance between "let's go" and "menu" is the distance between the existence of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. That's more than two centuries. Speaking of Shakespeare, let's see his English.

3. Examples from Shakespeare's English:

• In The Comedy of Errors (1589-1595), Shakespeare used the phrase "let's go" within a larger sentence as a plain command.

  "And now let's go hand in hand..."

[Note: Using "let's go" as standalone command phrase wouldn't happen till the end of 19th century. And "let's go" didn't turn into a hype chant until mid 20th century military and sports. There's a nice Slate article about the history of it as a meme phrase.]

• In King John (1587-1598), Shakespeare used the word "dad" to describe father.

  "Since I called my brother's father Dad"

[Note: Upper class people would use "papa". Dad was typically used by lower class juveniles back then and would not be normalized until the early 20th century. There are some articles on Time and psychologytoday about this.]

• Shakespeare's play about Julius Caesar (1599) was mostly written in the Early Modern English language that was spoken during Shakespeare's lifetime instead of Antiquity Latin just to "sound more ancient".

Some Latin phrases like "Et tu, Brute?" were added in to be understood by the small percent of Latin literate men of his time. Most people were illiterate back then. Unlike today's movies which are designed for the masses to enjoy. Most people today don't speak ancient Greek phrases.

My understanding of this "Odysseus' let's go sounds too modern" phenomenon is that people are asserting that it's objectively modern slang based on their vibes. I'm not immune to this either, I'm speaking from humbling experience.

"Let's go" is used by Nolan in about the same context and intention that Jackson used it in Two Towers but the one in Odyssey "feels more modern" because it's shouted out and so it evokes specific memories of memes within modern people's minds.

• Two Towers (2002) also had a scene where the orcs shouted

"Let's move!"

Shouting "Let's move!" is functionally similar to shouting "Let's go!" as a plain command to move, but because "let's move!" hasn't been memed to become a hype chant in sports/livestreams, we don't perceive that as modern. And so nobody complains about this being in LOTR.

Here's a more personal example of my own bias:

There's this meme from the Invincible TV show where Omni Man says the phrase "Are you sure?" A young person might hear that and assume that it's "modern" even though it's just a plain English phrase that has been around for centuries.

• In A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594-1596), Shakespeare used the phrase "are you sure" in the same way modern English does.

"Are you sure... that we are awake?"

Because the phrase has been thoroughly memed, I'm reminded of the meme every time I hear any other character in another piece of media say "Are you sure?" Even though I know they're not referencing that Omni Man meme, it still feels funny every time I hear it. But that's just my personal bias, not an objective flaw within other media.

That might just be what's happening with the "LOL Odysseus said Let's F-kn gooo! like it's a football game, this sounds so modern!" phenomenon.

Nolan seems to be stripping down any pretenses of flowery formal vocabulary that is expected from ancient epic films, instead opting for plain dialogue (presumably for raw emotions?), and it's understandably breaking a lot of people's immersion. The words are not new, as I demonstrated, but this approach to the tone is new.

Still hoping it's an enjoyable movie despite all of this.

https://preview.redd.it/6c7qpazen97h1.png?width=4000&format=png&auto=webp&s=d6e78e8f33cd32537d9e009743036d4ab96a5a61

This usually happens in films where Nolan has the sole writing credit. There's probably gonna be a scene like this in the Odyssey - "How's your aim?"

https://preview.redd.it/hbmjih9ai57h1.png?width=1366&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b12511481e7a854a647b285f42fde31773c550a