Christopher Nolan has responded to backlash surrounding his movie The Odyssey using modern dialogue despite its 12th century setting.
The movie, which has an all-star cast including Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland, is set for release later this month (July 17), but has sparked conversation online due to its use of American accents and modern script.
However, director Christopher insisted that online backlash “comes with the territory”.
He told The Telegraph: “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.”
Christopher continued to say that he had a similar experience when he directed Batman trilogy The Dark Knight.
He said: “I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman. 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.”
Controversy surrounding The Dark Knight was heightened when it was revealed that Christopher had cast the Heath Ledger as the Joker – however the late actor went on to win a posthumous best supporting actor Academy Award for his role in the film.
The director added: “In the end, fans of the property — even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done — enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could.”
“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.”
As for the criticism of the dialogue in The Odyssey, Christopher told Channel 4 News: “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.
“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 centre it on that and make it feel very fresh for modern audiences and do away with some of those assumptions.”
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