Christopher Nolan has some issues with today’s amateur film critics.
We live in a modern era of social media, where anyone can join the discourse of film criticism through videos on Instagram and TikTok, posts on X, and reviews on websites like Reddit, Letterboxd, and more.
While promoting The Odyssey, Nolan chatted with podcast host Zhong Shu and pointed out why he takes issue with amateur criticism.
“The criticism that’s often leveled at movies in general is, ‘Oh, the character has to be made sympathetic, so the character is manipulated in different ways or changed in different ways.’ And that’s a fundamental flaw of film criticism in a way, or storytelling criticism. Because to be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism.”
He’s not talking about just any critics out there.
“I’m thinking more of amateur criticism, because they feel they’ve identified the mechanism, they feel that it invalidates it. That can be true of certain elements, and film grammar, film language evolves with that. So when a trope becomes too familiar to an audience, then it has to be changed. But we do, as filmmakers, avail ourselves of that common language. We build on that understanding. Our audience has seen many films and they understand that language.”
The Odyssey has received generally glowing reviews, with a 94% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 97% approval rating from audiences on the website.
One person who did not like the movie was author Emily Wilson, who previously has translated The Odyssey.
Posted To:Christopher Nolan Movies
