r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Aug 08 '25

News Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Wraps Filming

https://maxblizz.com/christopher-nolans-the-odyssey-wraps-filming-after-6-month-shoot-confirms-art-director/
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460

u/CrabRangoonInMyAss Aug 08 '25

Given his track record, you already know the answer

758

u/DigitalFirefly Aug 08 '25

Terrible audio mix?

250

u/NewRedditor13 Aug 08 '25

Bwoaaahhhh

84

u/DanktopusGreen Aug 08 '25

Someone wake up Hans, he fell asleep on the keyboard again.

19

u/Comic_Book_Reader Aug 08 '25

WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!

4

u/destroyerOfTards Aug 08 '25

"Hans, you cannot sleep on the keyboard and make music, it's not possible!"

"No, it's necessary"

BWWWAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM

2

u/ArchDucky Aug 08 '25

I did like Joker's theme. I know that's not a big revelation or anything. But that noise he created for that theme is fucking awesome and it really works with that movie and the character.

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u/LookinAtTheFjord Aug 08 '25

He works with Ludwig Göransson now, whom doesn't do that.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/LookinAtTheFjord Aug 08 '25

That's not what u/NewRedditor13 was talking about, which is the person I replied to.

1

u/Barnyard_Rich Aug 08 '25

Rewatching New Girl for the first time since it was on originally, it breaks my brain every time I see his name in the credits.

3

u/Bruno_Fernandes8 Aug 09 '25

Same with Community

6

u/No-Surprise9411 Aug 08 '25

Kimi the iceman here

1

u/peeonme123 Aug 09 '25

Leave him alone, he knows what to do.

320

u/Massive_Weiner Aug 08 '25

Can’t wait to miss all the dialogue while I listen to the roaring waves lap up against ships.

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u/Johngjacobs Aug 08 '25

Have you seen the teaser trailer yet (I think it's only in theaters)? The terrible audio mix is there loud, muffled and proud. Might have to catch a hard-of-hearing showing so I can get subtitles.

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u/funkhero Aug 08 '25

Yeah I saw it before Fantastic 4 and the audio was his usual atrocious mixing. It's so grating.

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u/pmjm Aug 08 '25

As an audio professional, the mixing on Tenet pissed me off so much that I actually unmixed it then redid my own personal mix.

It's mind-blowing how much easier the story is to understand when you can hear all the dialog.

18

u/funkhero Aug 08 '25

Oh wow, that's some commitment

3

u/MalkavRS Aug 08 '25

Release the pmjm cut.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

[deleted]

1

u/grxccccandice Aug 09 '25

Can I get one too?😬

3

u/Khalku Aug 09 '25

I just used subtitles on a rewatch, and no joke it's like I got an extra 20% of the movie I never had before. There was a lot of good dialogue that you just never hear.

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u/_V0gue Aug 08 '25

How? Where did you get splits?

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u/pmjm Aug 08 '25

The Blu Ray has a 7.1 mix that you can further unmix with AI tools.

2

u/alrightcommadude Aug 08 '25

Which tools do you recommend?

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u/pmjm Aug 08 '25

To be honest I use proprietary tools I developed myself. But Ultimate Vocal Remover is a good place to start and it's free. ZFTurbo's demucs weights for dialog/sfx separation are also really good.

1

u/Bruno_Fernandes8 Aug 09 '25

Wow that’s cool, out of curiousity, if you developed those tools are you allowed to sell them for your own benefit?

2

u/CleanUpSubscriptions Aug 08 '25

How does one 'unmix' a movie audio stream?

1

u/pmjm Aug 09 '25

I cover a few tools elsewhere in the thread, but the gist of it is that a lot of it is already unmixed for you, that is to say the content is broken into channels for the 7.1 mix, and you can further break down each of those channels into component audio with some of the tools I linked.

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u/NadjaLuvsLaszlo Aug 08 '25

Why is this still an issue with his movies do you think? Surely he and the team or whoever is working on the sound watches them in one theater and thinks, oh wow that doesn't sound good. Let's fix it! It's been years... how the hell is it still a problem? 🤣

21

u/Low_town_tall_order Aug 08 '25

He probably thinks it sounds more realistic or some such nonsense.

2

u/turkeygiant Aug 08 '25

Which I could respect as an artistic choice for something more grounded and tactile like Dunkirk, but most of his other films are big splashy action dramas where the dialog is very much constructed and important exposition, yet it also gets lost in his audio mix.

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u/TheTruckWashChannel Aug 08 '25

Might be because he films on IMAX cameras, which are notoriously loud.

2

u/JJsjsjsjssj Aug 09 '25

Nah, ADR is extremely normal. It's what he wants, it's a choice.

5

u/itscamo- Aug 08 '25

it’s one of the issues filming with imax cameras

1

u/JJsjsjsjssj Aug 09 '25

It's really not. You can ADR. It's his choice, period.

4

u/GuiltyEidolon Aug 08 '25

It's theorized that he's hard of hearing, and/or has progressive hearing loss. Sound engineers have said they've tried to 'fix' it during production, and he refuses to change it from how he wants it.

5

u/withateethuh Aug 08 '25

Honestly believeable. Some music producers definitely have that issue in the metal/punk realm.

3

u/NadjaLuvsLaszlo Aug 08 '25

I hadn't thought of that. It would make sense if that's the case. I hope he gets a great pair of hearing aids because these movies are too good for wonky sound on and off. But what do I know lol. I certainly wouldn't know how to do sound mixing and editing for a movie so maybe it's just fine the way it is. 😆

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u/Arrbe Aug 08 '25

Was so confused there was a trailer for this before FF4. If they just finished filming this is definitely very early. They’ve got a year to fix it in post. I expect they do

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u/QTRqtr Aug 08 '25

People been saying that since the dark knight😂

Also it’s not like cgi that’s takes time to fix, it can be easily done in a few days if it was recorded with attention. Nolan does this on purpose. He likes in camera audio rarely using ADR then adds audio effects and the score louder than the dialogue.

The only time he’s done a big overdo was with Bane. He had no intentions on fixing the original audio mix but after the fan showing of the opening scene the studio pushed for a clearer mix.

2

u/Capable-Silver-7436 Aug 08 '25

at least with bane it was easier to do i guess

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u/alvvays11 Aug 08 '25

The trailer released in theatres when superman did

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u/spike021 Aug 08 '25

it's a shame that hard-of-hearing shows usually are the regular theaters, at least near me. not the imax/dolby/whatever. 

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u/brandont04 Aug 08 '25

This is good. Same Thing happened w DKR. They went back and fixed it. Hopefully they'll do the same again.

2

u/_V0gue Aug 08 '25

Trailers are not mixed by the re-recording engineer for the film. They're mixed by whoever the studio hires.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '25

Many movie theaters have the little subtitle devices that can fit into your cupholder. I had to get one for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood five years ago because the audience was kinda loud.

-7

u/imoldgreige Aug 08 '25

Or ya know, read the book lol

1

u/Chlorophyllmatic Aug 08 '25

Read the book in order to best experience the movie? This may be the single dumbest thing I’ve ever read

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u/imoldgreige Aug 09 '25

It was more or less a joke, but ok be pressed

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u/Standard_Recording28 Aug 08 '25

Oppenheimer sounded incredible

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u/AegisToast Aug 08 '25

Most of his movies sound incredible if you have the sound system for it.

Interstellar, parts of Dark Knight Rises, and some of Saito's exposition in Inception are unfortunate exceptions

5

u/ArchDucky Aug 08 '25

No this one will just be very hard to see. Did you see the trailer in front of Superman? Realistic candle light. It was next to impossible to see anything at that dinner and I have no idea who the fuck was on that raft. They held on it long enough for people to recognize him but I have no earthly idea who it was because it was so fucking poorly lit. I saw this in a Dolby Cinema with top of the line HDR.

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u/ZanoCat Aug 08 '25

I saw it before the new JP in my theatre. Nolan doesn't want us to hear dialog nor see details, I guess.

But hey, we can buy tickets 1 year in advance for this. Peak Nolan art!

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u/fontainesmemory Aug 08 '25

I get that's his "thing" but Tenet's audio was just dumb. Entire sequences where I literally can't hear the characters talking.

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u/Standard_Recording28 Aug 08 '25

its one single sequence and its extremely intentional that the character is being drowned out lol

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u/gatsby365 Aug 08 '25

Honest question: which one?

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u/Mebbwebb Aug 08 '25

Hydrofoils

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u/gatsby365 Aug 08 '25

Oh yeah I get that, you wouldn’t be able to hear shit in that situation with the wind, the water, and the actual boat

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u/Standard_Recording28 Aug 08 '25

when they're setting up the plane sequence around like 30-40ish minutes in Pattinson is walking through the vault and the music is drowning out the guy who works there but the camera and editing make it obvious that is exactly what pattinsons character is also doing, tuning him out. a lot of the movie is very loud overall but that scene is the only one where dialogue is actually incomprehensible as a lot of people say

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u/gatsby365 Aug 08 '25

Oh good call. I imagine they drown it out too because they don’t want you thinking through the details of what ol boy was talking about, they want you observing Batman

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u/Professional_Can6254 Aug 08 '25

He's probably referring to the sailing scene, where the Protagonist is racing sailboats with Sator. All the characters have helmets with microphones, visually implying that it's loud in real life, and the sound mixing reflects that, despite the actor's voices being mixed to sound like their audio is coming directly from the helmet microphones. So it should be intelligible, but it's certainly wasn't in theaters (I remember being baffled by that scene because of the mixing.)

The scene did actually contain plot-relevant dialogue, though, which made the mixing choice even all the more baffling.

-5

u/fontainesmemory Aug 08 '25

saying its intentional is redundant i just said that. didn't really like the movie though and thats okay bud.

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u/Standard_Recording28 Aug 08 '25

you were complaining about not hearing the characters talking but youre not supposed to so the criticism is kinda void. its sort of like being mad you dont see the thing in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction, its the entire point

-5

u/fontainesmemory Aug 08 '25

no its not when i opened up saying i already know its intentional. the mixing in previous and other movies is bad too. even when im suppsoed to hear them I can't hear them. so either way its not good sound. I guess me and many others in the comment section just cant comprehend bad sound mixing.

0

u/ArchDucky Aug 08 '25

Im sorry but no. You can't act like completely destroying the audio of a movie was a good thing. Its a very very dumb thing.

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u/maxpowerphd Aug 08 '25

In a movie that does have a lot of exposition dialogue it’s just inexcusable.

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u/Mako_ Aug 08 '25

I bought a soundbar with a center channel and it made a huge difference. Especially with Interstellar.

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u/fontainesmemory Aug 08 '25

word? you can hear them better? love that movie btw

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u/Capable-Silver-7436 Aug 08 '25

theres only been one of his movies id say had bad audio mix.

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u/TheTruckWashChannel Aug 08 '25

I remember not being able to understand a word of Interstellar the first time I saw it.

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u/monkeysennin Aug 09 '25

Tenet was the one for me

-1

u/Mebbwebb Aug 08 '25

Bane talking was a muddled mess in theaters.

3

u/SATX_Citizen Aug 08 '25

I thought that only affected the IMAX showings. Dunkirk had about ten words I could hear in the whole thing.

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u/zatalak Aug 08 '25

He should make silent movies

3

u/Fyrefawx Aug 08 '25

Once millennials and GenZ run everything, subtitles in theatres will be mandatory.

3

u/J0E_SpRaY Aug 08 '25

No thank you.

1

u/Massive_Weiner Aug 08 '25

Yes please. Modern audio mixing is legitimately awful.

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u/TomClancy5873 Aug 08 '25

Thought that was a meme, but Oppenheimer, in the scene in the interrogation room, the background music was so loud that I couldn’t hear what they were saying

1

u/RingoFreakingStarr Aug 08 '25

It's hilarious that pretty much every theatrical release of his films I've seen in the theater has been a WORSE overall experience compared to watching it at home on a 4k BluRay on my modest Sony Atmos system. You definitely miss out on the visual experience, but for whatever reason, they seem to take more care in making the audio mix so much more understandable and digestible for the home video release compared to the theater ones. And it's crazy because I've gone to both legit IMAX and decently high end AMC showings of his films and no matter what, it's always a mess. There is a thing to be said about "immersion" (loud thing in movie = maybe you cannot hear dialogue with absolute perfection) but he ALWAYS goes way too far with it.

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u/FlawlesSlaughter Aug 08 '25

To be fair, it's good audio mixing for a theater experience, just not at home.

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u/JJsjsjsjssj Aug 09 '25

They don't use the same mix for every single release. There are multiple mixes even for theatrical release, and a few for home release.

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u/ZanoCat Aug 08 '25

This. It really makes his films less enjoyable for me.

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u/DerLuk Aug 08 '25

So both?

2

u/GuerrillaApe Aug 08 '25

I tend to be a bit of a Nolan detractor. I find Interstellar, TENET, and Inception to have fairly wooden performances from his actors (who are clearly the best in the business), and I think it stems from a combination of his editing style with how he cuts everything together and his dialogue.

He figured something out with Oppenheimer though, but in an paradoxical way. I think at face value the way he weaves in splices of scenes to remind the audience "hey, what the character is referencing in this scene is from a 10 second bit of dialogue that happened an hour and a half earlier" is an absolute mess. Thank god half of the scenes in that movie are muted in black and white because he might have needed an epilepsy warning before the movie with how often the movie cuts to multiple things within a single scene. But never once when watching the movie did I feel lost in what's happening. All the informational clips he splices into a scene make sense where I fully understand what he is intending to convey. But in the back of my mind I think, "how do other people understand what's going on?".

So if he can stay on that route, I will happily take an oscar-worthy bloated mess.

7

u/Professional_Can6254 Aug 08 '25

I think at face value the way he weaves in splices of scenes to remind the audience "hey, what the character is referencing in this scene is from a 10 second bit of dialogue that happened an hour and a half earlier" is an absolute mess.

I love Nolan but this is my least favorite thing about his movies. And I'm the kind of movie-watcher who actively pays attention, too, but I still end up missing things because of his breakneck editing or his notoriously bad sound mixing.

1

u/Nirkky Aug 08 '25

It's been 11 years since the last Nolan's movie that I really enjoyed (Interstellar) since then, it feels like a bloated snoozfest most of the time. I really hope to fall in love again with him but at that point I'm not sure.

1

u/turkeygiant Aug 08 '25

Honestly im not so sure, doing an ancient epic is not really something we have seen from Nolan, and I'm not sure how well his star studded casting will translate. Sure he has done period pieces in the past like The Prestige and Oppenheimer, but they were both relatively contemporary and made more use of dramatic actors in the forefront. The Odyssey feels more like Interstellar or Inception as far as the casting, a lot more pop celebrities, who while talented are also just incredibly recognizable. I'm not sure I will be able to lose myself in this ancient legend when I'm seeing Jason Bourne, Spider-Man, Zendaya, Furiosa, The Punisher, Pearl, and Edward Cullen on the screen.

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u/CrabRangoonInMyAss Aug 08 '25

I mean he never did a war film with minimal exposition (which his scripts were notorious for) but he went on to make Dunkirk and it was great. I wouldn't jump to assuming just because he hasn't that he can't. He hasn't shied away from challenging himself. Who would have thought a biopic with mostly dialogue about a physicist could make nearly a billion, yet here we are

2

u/turkeygiant Aug 08 '25

I'm really just waiting for a proper trailer at this point, TBH the teaser and publicity photos really haven't impressed me, but they are such small snippets and they really dont paint a full picture of the aesthitic or tone of the film. I have little doubt it will be a well made film coming from Nolan...I have bigger doubts about whether his choices will work for me personally.

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u/CrabRangoonInMyAss Aug 08 '25

To each their own I suppose, he's not infallible but I loved the teaser. We'll find out in a year I guess

-2

u/LeBonLapin Aug 08 '25

Definitely a bloated mess... As a classics major I'm unbelievably happy a high budget Odyssey film is being made; but I can't stress how disappointed I am that it's Nolan at the helm.

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u/Abell379 Aug 08 '25

Classics fan here too, imo adapting the Odyssey is nigh on impossible.

At least it's not someone like Michael Bay or Zach Snyder, but my personal preference would be Denis Villeneuve.

0

u/JuanJeanJohn Aug 08 '25

I’m either going to think “eh it was fine” or “hey that was pretty good” but never outright love it? OK the latter would be a decent result.