We’re inching closer to io9’s most anticipated genre movie of the summer; before long, it’ll be time to sit in front of a gigantic screen and have all our senses blasted by Christopher Nolan‘s take on ancient Greece. But just because The Odyssey is coming from the Oscar-winning director, features innovative filmmaking techniques, and is stuffed with major stars doesn’t mean it’s been free of controversy. In a new interview, Nolan talked about some of the things that fans are getting bent out of shape about before they’ve even seen the movie.
Speaking to Time, Nolan explained the depth of research that went into planning The Odyssey‘s production design. That includes the armor worn by Agamemnon (Benny Safdie). After it was glimpsed in the film’s trailers, some viewers thought it too closely resembled the armor worn by another familiar Nolan character: Batman.
“There are Mycenaean daggers that are blackened bronze. The theory is they probably could have blackened bronze in those days. You take bronze, you add more gold and silver to it and then use sulfur,” Nolan said when asked about the “that armor looks like the Batsuit” complaints.
“With Agamemnon, Ellen [Mirojnick], our costume designer, is trying to communicate how elevated he is relative to everyone else. You do that through materials that would be very expensive.”
He continued. “The oldest depictions of Homeric characters tend to be depicted in the manner of people living in Homer’s time. So there’s a pretty strong case there for portraying things that way because that’s the way the first audience received the story.”
But he also understands there’s no way of achieving absolute accuracy—much in the same way he approached one of his earlier films, in the context of a completely different setting.
“For Interstellar, you’re looking at, ‘What is the best speculation of the future?’ When you’re looking at the ancient past, it’s actually the same thing. ‘What is the best speculation and how can I use that to create a world?’”
He hopes even ancient Greek scholars will have a good time with The Odyssey, “even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar. But you just don’t want people to think that you took it on frivolously.”
Another Odyssey controversy that Nolan briefly discussed: the casting of Travis Scott, a rapper who’s no stranger to controversy himself. He plays a bard, and “I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap,” Nolan said.
Head to Time to read more from Nolan, as well as Odyssey stars Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon, about the director’s intense commitment to detail, both historic and technical, even during the film’s difficult location shoots. The Odyssey hits theaters July 17.
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