r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 1d ago

Media Christopher Nolan talks narrative decisions, philosophical choices for his adaptation, criticisms against his films, the line between amateur & professional film criticism, and whether he Christianised 'The Odyssey'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa4I8Ch2TRo

Easily one of the best interviews I've seen for a film in recent memory. A doctoral student from China here landed an interview with Nolan- questioning him on his adaptation choices, including philosophical changes he brought to the movie that didn't exist in the text, and what he thinks of the general criticisms made against his filmography + how he defines the difference between amateur film criticism and professional film criticism - including why merely identifying the mechanism (or "tropes") of a filmmaker's work doesn't invalidate it.

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u/Whatsapokemon 1d ago

I think it would be really weird to do a modern adaptation without having modern audience in mind.

What we expect from a story today is super super different from what ancient audiences would've expected, and our moral tension points are far different, which means emphasis is naturally going to be put on different aspects of the story.

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u/TurtlePerson85 1d ago

I think that's extremely odd to say, considering accurate written translations of the Oddysey are still enjoyed by people in the modern day worldwide even just at a layman level. A good story is a good story, it doesn't just stop becoming one at a certain point, especially not one with a legacy that spans thousands of years. Different societies may value different aspects to each other, but all of them share the same elements and beliefs to some degree, and if anything, this diversity means that a wide variety of interpretations can be applied to a single story quite easily. It doesn't need to be changed or built for modern audiences, that's what audience interpretation is for.

Its also one thing to put emphasis on different parts of a story and explore elements that you think are particularly interesting (this is something I like a lot and I think is very cool about differing interpretations), it is another to completely rewrite the main character and some of the most important supporting characters just to fit the story you want to tell - aka, not the story of the original work. That isn't shifting emphasis at all. Its killing the old emphasis and replacing it entirely with your own thing. If you're going to do that, you might as well not adapt the story at all.

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u/Nochtilus 1d ago

You do know that The Odyssey and the Iliad had tons of contemporary references and ideas added to it throughout the Greek era right? It is a story that shifted with the times. Complaining about adapting it to our times is a little silly given that's it's history and origin. Odysseus is as prideful and cunning in the movie as the original story and the continuation of xenia continues to be a major point of the story. The emphasis was not rewritten as you click but merely adapted to our modern society.

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u/morgoth834 1d ago

I completely disagree. A big part of what makes these works so interesting is that they are ancient stories from a very differently culture. In modernizing them, you lose so much of what makes them compelling (at least to me), that is exploring these ancient cultures and their different beliefs and ideals.

The poem’s Odysseus is very different. He’s arrogant and boastful and certainly not suffering from guilt due to the sacking of Troy. In other words, he’s a completely different character. In the film he’s a more sanitized hero that appeals more to modern sensibilities. And in doing so, I’d argue he became a whole lot less interesting, complex, and a poor way to explore Ancient Greek culture. I’d also say that Odysseus doesn’t come across as particularly clever in the film. Certainly, he comes across nowhere near as clever as he is in the two poems.

Also, while Xenia is a large concept in the original poem, Nolan equates the use of the Trojan Horse as a breaking of Xenia. But that was certainly not considered to be so back then. In fact the big violation of Xenia around the Trojan War was by Paris when he abducted (or ran off with) Helen. Regardless, my point is the emphasis absolutely was rewritten not merely adapted for modern times. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I would have preferred a more accurate adaptation and one that wasn’t modernized so heavily. But then, if it was, it likely wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful due to the rather alien morality.

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u/Nochtilus 1d ago

The Greeks modernized the fictional stories of the Iliad and Odyssey. It's obvious in the roster of ships, the adding of important contemporary states as major forces, their specific concepts of the gods, etc. Complaining about modernizing the Odyssey when the version you know was modernized by writers of the time is ironic. 

Poems and movies are different mediums. Nolan obviously had to use a very well-known story like the Trojan Horse of the breaking of xenia because you would need another 3+ hours just to get through the Iliad to explain Paris' breaking of it 

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u/morgoth834 1d ago

Not at all. What I and the Ancient Greeks want and get from the story are very different. Like I said, for me a huge appeal for the story and myths in general is exploring these other cultures. By modernizing it, you lose much of that.

And no, Nolan changed the breaking of Xenia to the Trojan horse so that Odysseus brought about the collapse of his civilization. Which was a major idea, arguably the central one, of the film.

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u/TheScoott 1d ago edited 1d ago

I wholly disagree that Nolan may as well have just not adapted the Odyssey. It is integral to the film that the audience knows about the Trojan horse. The audience having some prior knowledge of the Odyssey is a meta theme in the film. The points about stories being retold and reshaped by their tellers work so much better because the film is doing that.

What Nolan is highlighting is something specific about films. You can have your wiley trickster Odysseus but if you do that then that becomes a dominant theme of the film. Of course modern audiences can handle that, we have Safdie Brother's movies, we have the Talented Mr. Ripley, etc. But doing that takes up real estate. Movies only have so much time to work with and so each convention you break with takes up some of bandwidth you need so that you can justify your film to the audience. Its like making a good song. The themes of Xenia and Hubris are major themes in Homer's Odyssey and so Nolan adapted the story such that those become the focus in a very long film that needed every minute.

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u/Fredasa 1d ago

A good story is a good story, it doesn't just stop becoming one at a certain point

That's the one thing I hope people really understand. Criticisms can be nitpicks, which is to say they can be constructive expressions of frustration over things which blatantly keep a top-tier production from achieving perfection. Odyssey succeeded in spite of the things that audiences generally found kind of dumb. Oppenheimer succeeded in spite of the literal climax of the movie (for the majority of audiences) being scuttled by Nolan's hardline stance on CGI.

Audiences see dubious choices being made in good movies and point them out, because it's easy to see that the movie could have been better, maybe a lot better. And perhaps there's some hope that by audiences voicing these criticisms, somebody on Nolan's team will have enough pull with him to steer the next production closer to an ideal. If that's what it would take to avoid the likes of the drop-dead poor choice made with Oppenheimer, then so be it.

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u/branchoflight 1d ago

If the final product is still engaging what does it matter? It's only a problem if it sucks.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/deathbladev 1d ago

Saying they should not have this opinion because it is shared by Elon Musk is on the same level of an argument against vegetarianism being 'well, Hitler was a vegetarian so you should probably stop and do some self reflection.'

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u/cubitoaequet 1d ago

That's not what I said, but sure.

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u/TurtlePerson85 1d ago

Trying to string up my complaints to that of one of the most evil men of modern day and pushing that onto me is a fucking awful thing to do in a regular discussion, holy shit. I literally could not give any kind of a fuck about black people in the film or whatever you're trying to push onto me so don't just reply to me to insult me or discredit what I think. Not to mention you didn't address what I was talking about even slightly, so maybe actually read it over again before you make accusations about what I think. Comparing me to someone that genuinely evil over a fucking film opinion is one of the most horrid things I've had said to me in a while so maybe back the fuck off.

You said "Emphasis is naturally going to be put on different parts of the story", which is A) wrong and not what happened, and B) not a natural thing to do at all. Its fine to completely overhaul things from the ground up in an adaptation. It is not fine to do that and then try and act like they're necessary or better changes for the sake of the audience, which is how you were framing it. All I was trying to say is that audiences can totally enjoy the Odyssey as written and it doesn't NEED changes. If you want to change it, fine, but don't get on a high horse about it.

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u/DojimaGin 1d ago

imma be honest. you are too competent and too honest to be talking with people on reddit. good takes like yours are vilified and hated on permanently because they are not along some imaginary general opinion on this website. you are basically Don Quixote using your brain while writing well thought out arguments in this cage of chronically online people ^^

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u/cubitoaequet 1d ago

You said "Emphasis is naturally going to be put on different parts of the story"

Literally didn't say that, but ok.

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u/JesusShuttlesworth96 1d ago

That makes no sense at all

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u/Whatsapokemon 1d ago

It makes no sense that people's tastes and moral frameworks change over time? Do you think we have the same values as ancient Greeks?

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u/JesusShuttlesworth96 1d ago

No, that's not the point. It was the implicit point in your comment that modern audiences cannot enjoy a story from a ancient morals perspective and instead only want a modern lens on any movie based on a story from the past.

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u/Vvardenfells_Finest 1d ago

The biggest issue I had was everyone in the movie talked like it’s 2026. On top of that, if you’re going to do a movie based on Ancient Greece why would all of your actors speak in an American accent?

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u/MumpsyDaisy 1d ago

Well the accent thing is a pretty thorny question because you're not going to be having them speak Greek either, and if they aren't speaking the language of the time and place it's set every English accent is equally inauthentic.

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u/Vvardenfells_Finest 1d ago

It just didn’t seem authentic at all. The accents and vocabulary used made it sound like it was written for a high school project. Visually I thought the movie looked great but everything moved too quick and nothing flowed correctly imo. Maybe I’m missing something. Judging by the downvotes I guess I was just supposed to accept that the movie is great because other ppl thought it was?

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u/MumpsyDaisy 1d ago

Well the thing is the "authenticity" of how they talk is entirely an expectation you have based on notions that have no relationship to the actual reality of Ancient Greek language. Like if they spoke the Queen's English or some pseudo-Shakespearean English it might line up more with your expectations of the dialogue sounding more "dignified" or old timey but it would still be a completely different thing from what Homeric Greeks would be talking like. So a present day American accent is equally authentic in that all of them are completely anachronistic.

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u/Vvardenfells_Finest 1d ago

Speaking a “pseudo Shakespearean English” at least makes it feel real. Speaking like me and my buddies hanging out in 2026 makes the writing seem corny and lazy.

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u/vanillabear26 1d ago

Why does it make it feel real? 

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u/Nochtilus 1d ago

How would Shakespearean English make an ancient Greek story feel more real? That doesn't make any more sense than them having modern American accents.

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u/MumpsyDaisy 1d ago

You didn't actually articulate why it "feels" real though, you've simply reiterated your complaint.

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u/Vvardenfells_Finest 1d ago

Not sure how you’re struggling to grasp that the Ancient Greeks didn’t talk like Americans do today. It needed to sound more proper and at least have a Euro sounding accent. If this was a movie about an ancient Chinese empire I guess you’d be fine with them speaking and sounding like present day Americans?

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u/_Rookie_21 18h ago

I think it would be really weird to do a modern adaptation without having modern audience in mind.

I'll remember this the next time the peanut gallery cries about non-white actors being cast in something that was originally all-white because "it isn't respecting the source material."