Tom Holland has defended the use of the modern language in The Odyssey.

The 30-year-old actor plays Telemachus - the son of Matt Damon's character Odysseus - in Sir Christopher Nolan's big screen reimagining of Homer's ancient Greek epic, which has come under fire over its modern-day interpretation of the classical text, and Holland has hit back over the use of the word "dad" instead of the more formal "father".

During an appearance on Channel 4 News, Tom explained: "Because I wouldn't have even said 'father' back in the day, would I? It would've been Greek. So it's no less correct."

The director backed him up, adding: "When you look at the ancient world, people tend to view it in weird ways. There's a lot of cultural prejudice. There's a lot of sort of elevating it, because it's old, you know, whatever it is. I just wanted to make it feel fresh for modern audiences ...

"When you go to the poem, what you find is something that's really earthy and grounded and accessible.

"And so for me in building the world of the film, what I talked to all the actors about, I just want to centre it on that and make if feel very fresh for modern audiences and do away with some of those assumptions that aren't based on anything logical, they're just, as I say, cultural prejudices or things over time ... "

The film has been criticised over its use of language as well as American accents despite its 12th century setting and director Christopher recently shrugged off the backlash by insisting it "comes with the territory".

He told The Telegraph newspaper: "Look, these conversations that happen before people see the film - they're always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet."

Christopher continued to say that he had a similar experience when he directed Batman trilogy The Dark Knight. He said: "I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman.

"When I came on to Batman Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents.

"And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can't worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can."

The director added: "In the end, fans of the property - even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done - enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could.

"So, when it comes to The Odyssey, all I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It's very different from how anyone else would do it, but that's what adaptation is."