Christopher Nolan has responded to the backlash over some of the casting choices in The Odyssey, calling it “irrelevant”.
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The director’s new film, which is released in cinemas on Friday (July 17), is an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, with Matt Damon starring as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who embarks on a treacherous journey home after the Trojan War.
The film also stars Tom Holland as his son Telemachus and Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope, alongside Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Samantha Morton and Mia Goth.
Some of the online backlash has centred on the casting of Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, while others have criticised Travis Scott’s role as a bard and Page’s casting as the Greek soldier Sinon.
Elon Musk was among those to criticise Nyong’o’s casting, accusing Nolan of being an “anti-white racist” who had lost his “integrity” for recruiting a Black woman for the roles.
Now, Nolan has addressed the discourse in an interview with The Telegraph, saying it “comes with the territory” when adapting a major existing work.
“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 said.
The director then compared the response to the fan scrutiny he faced when launching his Batman trilogy with 2005’s Batman Begins. “But remember, I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman,” he added. “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 continued: “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.
“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.”
Nyong’o has also previously dismissed the criticism, emphasising that the film is adapting “a mythological story”.
The comments come after Nolan recently explained why he opted for modern English dialogue in The Odyssey, saying he wanted to find “language that has emotional not intellectual meaning to people”, opting for contemporary accents and dialogue over a more theatrical approach.
Nolan also recently revealed that Samantha Morton’s performance as the goddess Circe earned an ovation on set that reminded him of Heath Ledger’s work on The Dark Knight.
The Odyssey had its London premiere earlier this month, with early reactions describing it as “a triumph” and “a crowning cinematic achievement”.
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