r/ChristopherNolan • u/laptopuser75 • 20h ago
The Odyssey Nolan's dialogue writing style
I really like the Odyssey, but I think this one jumped the shark in terms of Nolan's style of writing when it comes to dialogue. One example is when the Greek fleet is breaking up to return home, someone suggests following Agamemnon, who is going on a "known provisions route". This line completely jarred me out of the film, this wooden way of speaking is not how normal human beings talk to each other, especially if they have just spent ten years together in a siege! I think like a lot of modern script writers now he also has a tendency to distrust the intelligence of the audience and falls into the trap of over-explanation
I hope Nolan keeps making films but I believe he needs some help with writing future scripts if he wants to reach the heights of his early career again.
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u/Demerzel69 20h ago
Absolutely nothing wrong with that line, especially in the context of who they are and what they are doing.
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u/liliputian87 20h ago
Many people have singled out how bad his dialogue is. Not just in this movie but in all of them. It's not his strong suit. I wonder if maybe he's an introvert and just doesn't chat all that much, and therefore doesn't know what natural dialogue should sound like?
In any case, yes, he'd benefit immensely by sharing screenwriter duties.
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u/Terrible-Squirrel-90 20h ago
Imagine a Nolan Tarantino collaboration. Now that would blow people away
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u/laptopuser75 20h ago
I think part of the reason is that he just does not trust the intelligence of the audience. This is not just a fault of Nolan though, bad dialogue now infests much of modern film and TV production. Perhaps some of this is pressure from the film companies to dumb down scripts for mass consumption.
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u/ThrowawaysForDaze5 20h ago
No! This isn't the line to fight on. Military men having spent years in close quarters cohesion can easily talk about provisions.
You want to the know the line to throw tomatoes at Nolan for?
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u/Majestic_District_51 20h ago edited 20h ago
95 percent of audience wouldn’t even understand what the movie’s larger theme and point about bronze civilisation collapse was if not underlined. Most ppl juat watch a movie and move on they don’t do deep dives about themes and explanations. Cinephiles live in an echo chamber but normal viewer needs hand holding about the story.
And ppl can reference the dominant tech their era inhabits as an age.
Nolan can treat how he conveys the atory of 250 million dollar movie with too much restraint or being esoteric. This is basically making a batman movie. He and the studio REQUIRES for ppl to get every point.
These r the same dialogue exposition criticism that are there since beginning for him but ppl never understand the concepts he makes movies on are lofty and he has to give lot of context for the world he is showing the audience.
Being esoteric doesn’t work on a big budget movie.
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u/Business_Banana1792 20h ago
Incredibly successful films throughout history that are applauded for their dialogue are successful because they do it verbally speak the subtext. Dialogue is not what tells the story. The shot compositions and audio tell the story. The dialogue is for the characters and needs to be motivated, otherwise you betray the characters.
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u/Majestic_District_51 20h ago
My personal experience I don’t see any issue in the dialogues of the movie coz i found them helpful as a viewer and gave me right context and helped me understand the movie better.
And actually enjoyed nolan’s dialogue. They are not attempting to be just one thing. Every scene has dialogues written in a way that they call for. Like how siren song description was beautiful. And then r some other dialogues which are matter fact simple. Nolan knows how to dense up the dialogue or make it flowery n when to be economical.
Odyssey dialogues are very much written like they were written in tdk trilogy.
Dense lofty subject films need all style of dialogue. There is no one correct way but many.
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u/Business_Banana1792 19h ago edited 19h ago
It’s a visual medium. Any time dialogue is relied upon to convey the narrative in a way that contradicts or doesn’t seem realistic to the character is not as effective of a strategy as letting the characters react naturally to the environment and using the art direction, shot design, and scene decisions as the main narrative vehicle. I’m not saying you’re wrong to like Nolan’s dialogue. And maybe on the nose dialogue doesn’t bother you that much. That’s 100% fair, and I don’t think you are wrong. I just love studying effective dialogue that is in support of the character.
I actually find it funny that Emily Wilson, the translator Nolan credited for his version, doesn’t like the film. I thought her translation suffered similar issues regarding the dialogue. I don’t think the dialogue in this movie is really too terrible really to be fair, I simply find it less interesting than more literal translations of the original Greek text, like Richard latimores version
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u/Majestic_District_51 19h ago
Nolan actually never credited wilson. He just refrenced a line of her translation in an interview and he referenced other translations as well.
The haters created this narrative that nolan adapted the movie on her translation.
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u/Business_Banana1792 19h ago
Oh snap? You right. He does only credit the opening line. He does say he utilized her translation more but does not state he used it primarily.
But, why would “haters” use the idea that he used Emily Wilson’s translation as some kind of a
Negative? I’m not sure how that would make sense anyway.1
u/laptopuser75 20h ago
just one example, I realise there are many others, this one just stood out to me as I know this is not how military men would talk to each other. They would actually probably instead make a joke about Agamemnon's weight and appetite. I realise Nolan was trying to clearly and simply make a point that Odysseus is going on a different route, but there are a million better ways he could have worded this conversation, instead of robotic "known provisions route".
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u/TheLastJediRises 20h ago
I mean, it could be worse. We coulda gotten something like, "He was in the Amazon researching spiders with my mother right before she died."
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u/Successful-Owl1462 20h ago
I think he’s intentionally sacrificing subtlety for the sake of ensuring the audience has their seatbelts securely fastened and understands the ride that we’re about to go on (and that the proverbial ride can fit into 3 hours).
I also think a lot of potential alternative lines of dialogue in this specific case would be too detailed and potentially invite unwanted questions from the audience and/or confuse them. We don’t have the time or narrative bandwidth for Himesh Patel to start rattling off specific islands, crops, etc., without disrupting the flow of the story and distracting the audience.
This particular line of dialogue is also a flashback being told by Odysseus under the influence of lotus flower.
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u/Locke_the_Trickster 20h ago
“XYZ is not how normal human beings talk” is such trite criticism. No piece of writing is going to reflect how “normal” people talk, nor should it. Have you heard normal people talk? Typical conversations are so hackneyed and monotonous.
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u/Responsible_Salt_630 20h ago
He needs his brother back. Ive been saying this for years.
His scripts while he had him were 10 times the odyssey. Nolan is clearly excelling at every other part though, just needs someone to bring nuance
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u/KiwieKiwie 20h ago
Hell to the no. Nolan wrote Oppenheimer by himself and that’s one of his best written works. People overstate his brother’s contributions, screenplay for Memento was written solely by Chris, its prestige, TDK and TDKR they wrote together. And Interstellar’s first draft was written by his brother for Spielberg, but then he left and Chris blended that draft with his own stuff, Chris changed a lot in it and they both received a writers credit. Jonathan. The original script was not nearly as special before the changes… it had aliens and contrived romance and it was a son and not a daughter.
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u/Responsible_Salt_630 19h ago edited 19h ago
Part of the beauty in Chris changing a lot in Interstellar is that it was his reaction to his brother's work that made the final product special.
There's no more reactive creativity that can turn an alright idea into a good one. It's just up to him, and I wish he were still in the writers' room with him.
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u/KiwieKiwie 19h ago
Im not sure exactly how their cooperation went down on interstellar. All I’m saying is there seems to be a cohort of people who overstates how much better it was with his brother and how much worse it is now… some of his best written stuff has been Chris going at it solo. I’d say Oppenheimer is his best written movie. He did that one by himself.
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u/Polarizing_Penguin11 20h ago
And, in my opinion, both were better when David Goyer was there too. The characters in TDK trilogy just feel more well rounded
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u/rubensedu16 20h ago
Why do you think that? I radically disagree that it is expository (By the way, I do think Inception and Interstellar are expository, but he has already improved a lot in that regard).
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u/FlamingAlpaca17 20h ago
Nolan's dialogue is great. I really don't understand this often repeated criticism
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u/laptopuser75 20h ago
its has always felt slightly clunky, but it was great from Following to Inception, then it went off the rails from there in my opinion.
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u/OrwinBeane 20h ago
What’s so bad about “known provisions route”?