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What? You’ve never heard anyone call Odysseus “daddy” before!?
With the new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey now out in the wild, one thing folks seem to be banging up against a bit is the filmmaker’s use of colloquial “21st century” American English for the dialogue. For some, it sounds a bit odd to hear Homer’s 3,000-year-old tale (give or take a few centuries) of the ultimate Greek hero enacted by people who could just as well be your next-door neighbors.
“You’re pining for a daddy you didn’t even know”… “My dad is coming home”… “I think it’s asleep”… For Matt Damon’s Odysseus, Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, Tom Holland’s Telemachus, Robert Pattinson’s Antinous, and pretty much everyone else in the trailer, the language is decidedly modern in its approach. Anyone expecting a bunch of “thees” and “thous” – and maybe even a few “thou arts!” – should steel themselves for one of the greatest stories ever told being told in, well, American.
The thing is, that’s totally fine and, in fact, I’d go so far as to say that’s probably how Homer would’ve wanted it. (And yes, of course the true identity of Homer and whether or not he was even a single person or grew in antiquity to become an amalgamation of many voices remains one of the great mysteries of ancient literature.) The precise origins of The Odyssey (and its companion epic poem, The Iliad) are much-debated among scholars, but part of that history certainly involved the oral tradition; that is to say, the works, or parts of them, were performed for illiterate audiences – possibly even by illiterate bards – read aloud and acted out. As such, it seems likely that at least one of the goals of telling these stories was to entertain – a far cry, perhaps, from any of us who struggled with the texts in the 10th grade. And taking that concept a step further, it would seem logical to suggest that The Odyssey and The Iliad were performed in a manner that the commonfolk would be able to understand. Basically, in their own, everyday language.
Now, I’m no Homeric scholar, so let’s look to the classicist Emily Wilson, whose 2018 translation of The Odyssey was quite popular (she has since released her take on The Iliad as well). In the Translator’s Note of that 2018 text, Wilson says the following:
“It may be tempting to imagine that a translation of a very ancient poem would be somehow better if it used the language of an earlier era. Mild stylistic archaism is often accepted without question in translations of ancient texts and can be presented as if it were a mark of authenticity. But of course, the English of the nineteenth or early twentieth century is no closer to Homeric Greek than the language of today.”
And so in her translation, Wilson uses contemporary language so that it can “remind readers that this text can engage us in a direct way, and also that it is genuinely ancient. My Homer does not speak in your grandparents’ English, since that language is no closer to the wine-dark sea [a Homeric epithet] than your own.” What Wilson is saying is she translated the poem into plain language, and indeed, her version of The Odyssey is a breeze to read. “Translation always, necessarily, involves interpretation,” she says. (For more on Wilson, check out her terrific YouTube reads of her Odyssey, which further prove her point.)
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!
