There’s a key moment in the new Odyssey trailer where my heart sank

Watching the second trailer for The Odyssey today saw an unexpected wave of unease wash over me – and I’m devastated to feel that way.

Sir Christopher Nolan is the perfect person to tackle an epic rooted in Ancient Greek mythology for his keenly awaited next movie, reported to have a budget of $250million (£184.3m), and bring it to the masses.

Perhaps no one was more excited than me either: I’ve studied this text twice, including for my degree, and have even purchased the specific translation Nolan is using by Emily Wilson (my third) in anticipation.

I haven’t been bothered previously by the backlash in classics circles to the inaccurate period clothing and armour in the first look last year – it’s a Hollywood movie based on Homer’s 8th century BC poem, a man we don’t even know if he existed.

But to hear Tom Holland as Odysseus’s son Telemachus declare defiantly, ‘My dad is coming home’, in his best Peter Parker American accent, something inside me shrivelled up in what I think was horror.

What place does the colloquial word ‘dad’ have in this film, which aims to immerse audiences in a fantastical world set millennia ago? It sadly gave me flashbacks to Sam Worthington’s Sully calling Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri ‘babygirl’ in Avatar: Fire and Ash, a moment that made me cringe and seemed way too everyday slang to comfortably have made its way to a far-away planet in the 22nd century.

Matt Damon’s Odysseus shouting, ‘Let’s go!’ as he led a charge of soldiers also pulled me out of the ancient world I was happily trying to inhabit. It’s also not a problem I thought I’d ever have with a Nolan-scripted film.

And then replaying the trailer again to clock Robert Pattinson’s Antinous – one of the suitors sniffing around Penelope (Anne Hathaway) in Odysseus’ absence – heckling Telemachus with, ‘You’re pining for a daddy you didn’t even know, like some snivelling b*****d,’ and I realised I had another issue.

For the very British Pattinson was joining his London-born co-star Holland in an American accent. They are both great accents, but I fail to see how they’ve made their way to Ithaca.

Both Damon and Anne Hathaway as Odysseus’s wife Penelope have opted for their usual accents as US natives, so I can imagine Holland’s choice is for family continuity. But then Pattinson’s character, also from Ithaca, has been pushed down that path too – and it’s just a bit odd.

Elliot Page’s character, quickly glimpsed and covered in mud, is American, and Charlize Theron’s Calypso – a nymph, not even a human – is also American. And it’s not even like everyone needs to sound the same and American has been picked as the ‘Greek’ accent because during the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greece had cities and settlements of more distinct natures.

Travelling far and wide and engaging with these – as well as other cultures across the wider Mediterranean – was routine, and it just seems unnecessarily uniform, alongside the jarring language.

Nolan also insisted in an interview on US chat show The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night that Marvel and DC superheroes come ‘pretty directly’ from the Homeric epics, and while I appreciate that point I started to worry he’s been encouraged down a path of, dare I say it, dumbing down this movie in a bid to ensure its mass appeal?

He also added that ‘Homer, in a way, is the sort of George Lucas of his time’, which did not instill much confidence in me either. Trust me, for anyone who hasn’t read the original poem or engaged much with its creatures and characters, it is thrilling enough to sell itself on its own merits, the same as any Nolan film.

So I could be completely wrong – a large part of me thinks, and hopes, that I am – but a twinge of doubt has now embedded.

Trailers, of course, aren’t the full picture – by design and especially when it comes to a much-hyped prestige picture from Nolan, who wants to keep the full spectacle of The Odyssey and its in-camera effects largely under wraps.

The language issues also may not be that glaring in the context of the film’s full run-time rather than only 152 seconds, which is merely a drop in the ocean in comparison – and one which is not very dialogue-heavy.

Hopefully I’m just over-reacting and being reminded how much I care about this movie, which is, after all, coming from a three-time best screenplay Oscar nominee.

I also can’t wait to eat my words as the person who asked him about his next film in November 2023, ahead of Oppenheimer’s Academy Award-winning success, after his producing partner and wife Dame Emma Thomas told me he already knew what it was.

‘I get bored very quickly, I like to keep working. And it’s exciting to think about what’s next,’ he said.

No one would have been as delighted to find out it was The Odyssey on that day, in a Los Angeleshotel, as me. And I really hope that will still be the case.

The Odyssey will be released in cinemas on July 17.

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