Christopher Nolan responds to The Odyssey backlash and says the criticism is ‘irrelevant’

The director spoke to The Telegraph about the reaction to his adaptation of Homer’s epic, which has already divided people online over everything from the casting to the American accents and modern-sounding dialogue featured in the trailers.

Asked about the backlash, Nolan didn’t seem particularly fazed.

“Comes with the territory,” he said. “But look, these conversations that happen before people see the film, they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”

He also compared the response to what he experienced while making his hugely successful Dark Knight trilogy, explaining that fans always come into adaptations with strong opinions.

“I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman,” the 55-year-old said. “When I came on to Batman Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents.

“And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”

He added that audiences appreciated the sincerity behind those films, even if they weren’t exactly what every fan had imagined.

“So, when it comes to The Odyssey, all I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It’s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that’s what adaptation is.”

Nolan has also spoken about one of the biggest talking points surrounding the film: Its use of modern dialogue.

Speaking to Channel 4 News, he explained that the choice was deliberate because he wanted Homer’s story to feel immediate rather than distant or overly formal.

“When you look at the ancient world, people tend to view the ancient world in weird ways and there’s a lot of cultural prejudice, elevating it just because it’s old,” he said.

“When you go to the poem, what you find is something that’s really earthy, grounded and accessible. So, for me, in building the world of the film, what I talk to all the actors about is, I want to center it on that and make it feel very fresh for modern audiences and do away with some of those assumptions.”

Whether that approach wins over people who’ve already made up their minds remains to be seen, but Nolan clearly isn’t too concerned by the conversation happening before anyone has watched the finished film.

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Featured image credit: Universal/DIVYAKANT SOLANKI/EPA/Shutterstock