Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is drawing praise for its epic scale, but many viewers say one familiar issue is drowning out the experience.
Keep reading to learn more.
Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic journey in The Odyssey has generated plenty of headlines since its release, from debate over claims the film is “woke,” to online discussion about his artistic direction, including a Trojan horse buried in the sand that needed to be rescued from the waves.
But for many moviegoers, nothing has overshadowed a complaint that has followed the 55-year-old director throughout much of his career, the “Nolan sound problem.”
Viewers have long argued that dialogue in Nolan’s films can be difficult to hear, with voices sometimes drowned out by the soundtrack and sound effects.
Although The Odyssey is Nolan’s first film shot entirely with IMAX cameras, the criticism has followed several of his biggest releases.
Moviegoers voiced similar frustrations during Nolan’s 2012 film, The Dark Knight Rises, with many saying Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Bane was difficult to understand.
According to the Guardian, another fan joked after watching the film’s prologue: “The Dark Knight Rises prologue was really great, especially when Bane spoke the soon-to-be-classic line: ‘Mmrbl ffrmrff hmrbblfmm.’”
The conversation resurfaced with 2020’s Tenet, a time-bending thriller that left some viewers frustrated because the sound mix made it difficult to understand the dialogue. Similar complaints also followed Oppenheimer.
For Nolan, the sound mix is part of the storytelling. The filmmaker has said he intentionally avoids relying on Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR), preferring to preserve the dialogue captured during filming rather than having actors return later to re-record their performances.
“I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor re-voice it later,” the Oscar-winning director told Variety. “Which is an artistic choice that some people disagree with, and that’s their right.”
His longtime collaborator, sound designer Richard King, has also defended that approach.
On Reddit AMA, King explained that Nolan wants audiences to experience his films emotionally as well as intellectually.
“Chris is trying to create a visceral emotional experience for the audience, beyond merely an intellectual one. Like punk rock music, it’s a full body experience, and dialogue is only one facet of the sonic palette,” King said.
He continued: “He wants to grab the audience by the lapels and pull them toward the screen and not allow the watching of his films to be a passive experience.”
King then asked audiences to “let go of any preconceptions of what is appropriate and right and experience the film as it is, because a lot of hard intentional thought and work has gone into the mix.”
There was hope that The Odyssey might avoid the same criticism.
Because the film was shot entirely using IMAX cameras, Nolan worked with IMAX to develop a special housing, known as a “blimp,” to reduce the loud camera noise that can interfere with dialogue recorded on set.
“The wonderful thing about cinema, and IMAX in particular, is that you can take an audience to a place of immersion, feeling close to events like storms, turbulent seas, high winds,” Nolan told Time. “You want the audience to be on the boat with them fearing the ocean, fearing the wrath of Poseidon, the way the characters do. That to me is so much more powerful than any individual image you can have [of a god].”
Despite the effort of using technology designed to make dialogue easier to capture, many some fans say the problem hasn’t gone away.
“Mr. Nolan. Love The Odyssey. The sound mixing was so bombastic that a speaker fell out of the ceiling and sliced the screen in half,” the Redditor wrote.
Meanwhile, in the comment section, several online users jumped in to share their experiences.
“The voices were perfect. Everything else was WAY too loud. This is the sort of sound that makes one lose their hearing,” wrote one netizen, while a second said: “Honestly, it was pretty cool, even though I felt like my ear drum was shattered into pieces.”
A third shared, “Saw the movie today the sound was so loud it was like an earthquake.”
Another, however, explained they enjoyed the “immersive” experience, “I personally found it immensely immersive. The things that are expected to be loud, were loud. 95% of the time I found the audio to be fine,” the user told fellow Redditors.
Please let us know what you think of Nolan’s sound mixing in The Odyssey and then share this story with your friends so we can also hear from them!
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