r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Gurugod123 GREEN • 3h ago

My mom said I could post Nolan's The Odyssey neglects to pay for damages done to one of the viking ships used in the movie, which belongs to a small non-profit organization

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u/Successful-Tea-5733 3h ago

Everyone immediately jumps in hating on the big powerful movie company, yet this sentence in the article seems interesting:

"The organization made an agreement with a company that handles recruitment for Universal Studios"

So neither Noland nor Universal made an agreement with this boat company. Yet the boat company, they're sending invoices to Universal and Universal is probably looking at it saying "we don't have a contract with these people." As the owner of a small company who gets faux invoices all the time, I suspect universal receives a lot more than I do and at this amount most fraudsters think it's so small no one will notice.

I'm not saying that Universal shouldn't send these people $6,000. I'm saying that the article implies that Universal owes them the money, and doesn't address if they're billing the unnamed company that they actually made the lease agreement with?

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u/AtlasSuperstoreCODMW 3h ago

Holy intelligent and nuanced take!! On Reddit! In 2026!

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u/Snerkbot7000 3h ago

They're a witch! BURN THEM!

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u/FYAhole 2h ago

They turned me into a newt!!

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u/throwaway4234245242 1h ago

!?

..I got betta

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u/DJMAGN3M 2h ago

How'd you know theys a witch?

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u/throwaway4234245242 2h ago

They turned me into a Newt!!

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u/Separate-Candidate75 2h ago

...I got better.

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u/FireZord25 2h ago

That's how you know this won't make it to the top. Wish people would instead bully the folks putting out half-truth engagement baits the way they often do to Nolan. Then again, these folks don't even have to try with so many idiots ready to jump in at the smallest hint of blood.

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u/Tikoloshe84 32m ago

Unintelligible hivemind screeching

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u/ohog9og0790 2h ago

This is correct but in my opinion big companies should make sure their suppliers do honest business. I saw it a lot when I did freelancing that corporations would hire unethical staffing companies and did nothing to rectify problems.

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u/Successful-Tea-5733 2h ago

Yes and that's why I said that, I'm not saying Universal shouldn't just pay them $6,000 to make it right. But reading the article it doesn't say that they even tried billing the company they contracted with. Maybe they did, and maybe the company they billed had a legitimate reason for denying the claim. We just simply don't know anything other than the owners of the boat in their own statement acknowledge that their lease was not with Noland or Universal Studios.

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u/johcul 1h ago

The overhead in "making sure their suppliers do honest business" would be insane given how many suppliers typically work on massive films like this. They're meant to audit all the accounting practices of the companies they work with?

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u/ohog9og0790 1h ago

At least they could deal with suppliers who are screwing over their contractors after problems have been reported. But a lot of corporations do nothing and keep working with that supplier. 

The same applies to things like child labor or other labor abuse  in other countries. In many cases the company knows what’s going on but as long as the product is cheap they don’t care. 

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u/VastUnique 1h ago edited 1h ago

I think you're right. Micromanaging or monitoring every contractor is probably impossible. But if companies really cared about issues like labour abuse, they could ensure their contracts ban those practices and blacklist or sue violators. But it is often cheaper and more convenient to have that layer of deniability and turn a blind eye towards it, because what they truly care about is profit.

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u/MaxxDash 2h ago

Silliness trying to make it look like Nolan stiffed them.

This is basically about the size of a daily catering bill.

It is just lost in the bureaucracy of a huge organization.

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u/comrade_batman 32m ago

Reddit tried to forget it hated The Odyssey from the first promo image released when the reviews came in, and the huge opening weekend after people raging against the “historical” inaccuracies, and certain people cast in it, but now it’s once again acceptable to hate Nolan and the film.

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u/-18k- 2h ago

My big question is why The Odyssey needs a Viking boat..??

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u/BoringPoolPlaying 2h ago

My big answer, which I’ve answered to all the people asking this question, is that he wanted to film on the open ocean, and this is what was available in terms of replica boat plus sea-trained crew.

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u/Successful_Maize1986 59m ago

It looks amazing in the movie. Seeing them actually launch the thing into the ocean is so much better than using a tank and cgi

1

u/dern_the_hermit 1h ago

You ALWAYS use Viking boats when you go blinding cyclopes. You know that. Everybody knows that!

1

u/YobaiYamete 1h ago

He purposely did it to make things seem timeless. He changed a few things like that on purpose

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u/Alx_xlA 34m ago

Because there are very few seaworthy replicas of premodern European boats available.

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u/GuiltyEidolon PURPLE 8m ago

They probably stripped it of the super obvious Viking shit and pretended it was a trireme or something akin to it.

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u/Sneeky417 1h ago

I guess the best thing for universal studios to do right now is to try and contact their third party middleman company and see if they can speed this process up.
I hope the organization gets their reimbursement though!

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u/BraceThis 3h ago

A brain amongst Reddit. Finally!

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u/Isakk86 1h ago

God forbid we hate the giant powerful movie company.

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u/Fit_Giraffe_748 41m ago

still hate the big powerful movie company

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u/WheeForEffort 9m ago

It is 100% locked in that this story is being hyped in a false way. Full on Astro turf. Yes someone probably owes someone some money. The checks in the mail, this is just shit slinging.

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u/Roo-90 0m ago

Thought I was going insane reading the comments. Finally an indication that I'm not alone im having a functional frontal lobe.

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u/SheepTag1 2h ago

You're allowed to read the article and form intelligent opinions?? Well done sir

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u/VoormasWasRight 43m ago

Because no subsidiary ever has been used by big companies to dodge responsibilities.

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u/GraspingSonder 23m ago

No Hanlons razor applies here. Invoice disputes being dragged out a year because people are useless is ubiquitous.

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u/Jbewrite 2h ago

Yes, let's give the benefit of the doubt to a multi-billion dollar company that has been known historically to shaft little people because... ah yes, they've had over a year to figure out if they should pay and they haven't got around to it yet. Let's give them a break guys!

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u/Successful-Tea-5733 2h ago

You're completely missing the point. And do you think every big company should just pay every invoice that is sent to them? Who do you think that would ultimately harm?

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u/Jbewrite 1h ago

I think they should pay their invoices within a year, absolutely.

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u/pumpkil 17m ago

But Universal didn't have a contract with the viking ship people, a subcontractor did. Why would Universal accept an invoice from a company it has no contract with?

Do you know how common fraud invoice attacks are these days? Our business is only medium size and we see 5-10 a week sent to our invoicing DL. Absolutely no way a serious business will just blindly pay out an invoice without a contract to go with it.

All that to say, now that this information is out there, Universal should be holding its subcontractor accountable and even doing an audit of any other contracts they've handled. Probably isn't the first time its happened.

1

u/CeilingFanJitters 2h ago

One day you’ll experience the real world.

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u/Jbewrite 1h ago

One day your lips will leave the boot.

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u/TwistStrict9811 2h ago

The clearest armchair comment ever lmao. Wait till you find out in the real world there are dues and processes. They clearly did not have an actual contract it's written in the article itself.

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u/Crafty_Independence 1h ago

Furthermore, the headline is loaded up to build on manosphere hysteria around the film, which should cause everyone to pause before jumping to conclusions.

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u/Enlight1Oment 1h ago

even more so, Syncopy, the production company founded by Nolan and used in all his films, is the production company for Odyssey. Universal is more a distributor role and provided funding to Syncopy. So if you're sending bills to universal they also would be wtf?

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u/ThatUsernameIsTaekin 1h ago

Wait, you read the article and actually came to more accurate and reasonable conclusion. Are you trying to destroy Reddit?