I watched "The Odyssey Trailer", and I have some thoughts.

I'm going to cut to the chase - a British man is making a film about "The Odyssey", with a cast stacked with Brits...and everyone has an American accent. So much to discuss.

British people, especially English people, have always been ingrained in Hollywood. It has always been a topic of debate how included we feel, or how much we feel the Isle is "selling out" to the Yankees. On my trips to Canada, I've heard much the same story – something of our sovereign identity gets lost as we try to work with the Americans. Often, our work gets sanded down into a shape that general American audiences can enjoy.

However, I remember a time when, on prestige projects such as these, you could at least have the Americans attempt a British accent (more on the elephant in the room in a moment). Why? Well, this film was not made in America, and it was not made by an American director, and it clearly wants to run for the prestige hills and give Damon and co. another crack at an Oscar. So much skill and thought went into the film (despite reports about scrapping accuracy), and it's no small feat to literally direct an Odyssey of this scale. Why do the Americans feel so out of place here?

OK, Elephant – in an ideal world, if we got super pedantic, everyone would be speaking Ancient Greek, so we're not going for realism here – and regardless, no matter whether it was an American accent or full Received Pronunciation, both would be rewriting history. At a time when Greek and Roman myths are being used to stoke the flames of White Fascism across the globe, the cast is conspicuously White and unabashedly American – and the two cast members that could have proven this wrong (Zendaya and Lupita) are, glaringly, missing from the trailer altogether. There is no accurate diversity here either.

The problem with Nolan is that, even if I believed he was making some kind of salient point here, which I don't – he's not one to ever land those messages gracefully, or even on ears that can hear them. He often swings for grand, bland messages such as "War is Wrong", but is so consumed with his own visual language and "Lawrence of Arabia"-esque feats of courage that he doesn't notice he's romanticising the thing by being so unstructured in his visual critique. One language tries to say no, but the camera's voice says absolutely.

For all his faults, Nolan is a titan, and a filmmaker I have deep respect for, despite not really connecting to any of his films. What he has achieved, how he has achieved it, and how he advocates for our industry are not to be dismissed. However, I cannot wait to send Nor García Grau to go and see this for us – our resident Odyssey expert – and start some fun discussions about how Nolan approached this material.

Other Elephant - this is a film funded by Universal Pictures. A major, blockbuster film studio looking for a major blockbuster film. They've executed on the formula, let's all be clear – major stars, American accents, big set pieces. This will not save it from its fate, however. Will this dazzle, or will it be a slog? I know what I am expecting from Nolan, but I remain open-minded – even a broken clock can get notes from the studio to cut the fat.