‘The Odyssey’: Everybody Using American Accents Is Definitely a Choice
The Odyssey: Christopher Nolan‘s adaptation of Homer’s timeless epic set in ancient Greece. An operatic, fantastical tale of Odysseus, Telemachus, Antinous and Athena. “Not just a story,” as director Christopher Nolan declared at CinemaCon, “but the story.”
And also: Dude. Everybody sounds like they’re from Ohio.
On Tuesday, Universal dropped the latest and most footage-filled trailer yet (below) for the highly anticipated film. Fans are impressed by the film’s scope and compelling star-studded cast. They’re also a bit thrown by one choice: The characters sound American and use contemporary-sounding language — more Ithaca, New York, than Ithaca, Greece. At one point, Matt Damon’s Odysseus leads a battle charge by crying, “Let’s go!” Even stars Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, who are English, sound American.
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The choice is a striking departure from the unwritten Hollywood rule of characters in historical epics employing British accents — from The Ten Commandments to Ben-Hur to Gladiator to HBO’s Rome. Obviously, The Odyssey characters speaking the various dialects of Homeric Greek, Attic and Hellenistic Koine wouldn’t make for a very accessible film. But the modern British accent is traditionally considered universally pleasing and “just foreign enough” to convey a timeless quality (even though it’s only existed in its current form for 250 years or so).
The trope is so consistent and familiar that even fantasy shows set in other worlds, like Game of Thrones, use British accents. In perhaps the most amusing example of Brit bias, the English accent was used in HBO’s 1980s-set Chernobyl rather than subjecting viewers to five hours of Russian accents (the limited series’ director, Johan Renck, rather bluntly explained, “[The Russian] accent on film is tremendously stupid”).
But you know what also risks sounding a bit silly at times, if we’re being honest? American accents.
Some of the comments on the trailer so far, taken from across YouTube and Reddit, include: “People complain about the armor being historically inaccurate. But at least they nailed Odysseus’ Boston accent.” And, “That ‘My dad is coming home’ line just feels so out of place in a sword and sandals movie with this much gravitas.” And, “It sounds like they’re trying to have an epic conversation on the sidewalk outside the Starbucks.” Another countered, “I like all those old ancient Greek and Roman movies with British accents, but the cliché doesn’t make sense, it can be dropped.”
Given Nolan himself is British, the Oscar winner probably sees nothing remotely exotic about his own accent. Interestingly, Nolan’s brother and frequent collaborator, Jonathan Nolan, has an American accent (the two went to school in different countries).
Ironically, Nolan has long been given grief for having borderline inaudible dialogue in films like Tenet, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer, and now he’s being given some grief for dialogue that’s as accessible-sounding as possible.
Notably, one director has embraced ancient language dialogue for his big-screen efforts — Mel Gibson. Gibson’s 2004 hit The Passion of the Christ was in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew, and his 2006’s film Apocalypto was entirely in Yucatec Maya.
Here’s the latest Odyssey trailer. Check it out for yourself, bro.
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