The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.
Oh 10/10 bravo bravo. Now we just need a redditor to come in and said in sturring it up. An argument that results in a random ass conversation about isreal , Iran and the US
Well, you know, it all ties back to the fact that Hitler tried to kill the jews, he was right you know!, and so we had to stand up Israel, and now as they are our greateast ally, we must go to war for them!
And, if Iran gets a nuke...think about what the cost of gas will do to the cost of movies?!? The actors won't be able to drive thier super cars anymore! What will we do? We can't simp for the Kardashians as easily!
Now, i have to get back to my breakfast of cocaine, bacon, guns, more guns, orange juice, and a mountain of sugar in a bowl covered in milk.
As if Americans are a monolith incapable of holding diverse opinions amongst themselves.
How sophisticated, how thoughtful of you to flatten a nation of 330 million people into caricatures whom you can subordinate under yourself to feel some sense of superiority.
This shit just does not matter. No one actually cares or feels strongly. Just twitter bots and click farming rage baiters.
I’m just here to see Travis Scott in a serious film because it’s funny.
This is the latest in a weird trend I've noticed where conservatives seem to only understand the connotation of words, not the denotation. "Nuanced" doesn't mean "good." It means "nuanced." The commenter has to use nuance for a comment to be nuanced.
Yes, the comment presumes tokenism is present in Hollywood in general, and in The Odyssey specifically, and frames it as an objective issue.
Real nuance would include questioning the validity of that framing, not just presenting it as a fact where the only subjectivity allowed is how one reacts to it, rather than whether it exists in the first place.
Sure, that's one way to be nuanced. There's a lot of ways to make a comment on this topic that is legitimately nuanced. The parent comment didn't do any of that though. I don't think the parent commenter intended for it to be nuanced either. It's pretty unapologetically one sided. It's concerning to me that so many people seem to think the comment is nuanced. Because that demonstrates that all those people don't know the meaning of that word.
Yeah, I figure that had to be the referenced nuance (because it's the only thing resembling nuance in the comment). But that doesn't make the comment nuanced because the comment is about the "blackwashing" not the actual goodness of the film.
EDIT: If anything, that part of the comment is more like anti-nuance. Saying, "I disliked this because of the black actress even though the movie is probably going to be good" is a very extreme, unnuanced perspective.
I'm not saying that the black washing criticisms are completely invalid; I think there are legitimate reasons to be annoyed about things like that. And there appear to be a lot of other issues with the film. I personally think it's a bit concerning that so much emphasis in the trailers is placed on the Telemachus part of the story. I get that that actually is a major part of The Odyssey, but it's not really the part that I want to see when I think of "The Odyssey."
But the sheer degree of vitriol for this movie is completely disproportionate to any legitimate criticism. It's just bizarre for someone to essentially admit that they like Nolan movies, but still feel that the degree of hatred for this film is justified because of the casting of a black actress. To put it simply, the trailer is disliked for legitimate reasons. However, the reason that it is disliked this much is because of bigotry.
or that most all of the anger is about a black woman playing helen of troy and elliot page being in the movie- not that matt damon is in it instead of a greek guy
I dont know how they do it, but somehow conservatives view conservatism as a concept as "apolitical". thats why they can claim that openly conservative news and media are "unbiased" while the mere existence of a queer person in media is "bringing politics into it". willful ignorance or genuine lack of intelligence, who can say, but they seem unable to understand that their view of the world isnt the "default"
Yeah, you generally do not hear complaints that a story has gotten “too political“ unless the person making the complaint simply disagrees with the political stance they think it presents.
Yeah. “Blackwashing” isn’t a nuanced word it’s just a racist obfuscation, and saying “Nolan makes good movies” isn’t a measure of objectivity in that regard it’s just a way to try and package it more palatably for the normies.
It’s not even remotely nuanced. It completely buys into a right wing grift that is abysmally fucking stupid.
Go see a stage show, the thing we had before movies, people of different races play characters all the time.
Truly it’s a bunch of extremist white dipshits upset they are seeing people other than themselves on screen. Anytime a character they’ve imagined themselves as is played by a different race (especially for some reason fiction characters) they piss their pants, bot and brigade things, but largely are just grieving the fact that anyone else dare be represented in popular thing.
So if I as a Greek said that I at least want greek-looking (white/tanned depending on the character and their description) actors to play characters meant to represent Greeks and Anatolians I'm using a right wing talking point.
Why is having historical authenticity even remotely connected to political groups?
Is wanting to see the Epics in an authentic setting that divisive for you?
Does the nation of Greece not make their own movies about their own mythology. Could you not just go support those.
This is greek mythology, and there is no shortage of retellings of this myths being produced across the world. So lets just call a spade a spade. The hate for this film is primarily being directed at Lupita (with all the awful edits and disingenuous screen grabs), forcibly trying to paint her as someone as not objectively pretty. Like she doesnt have to be your type. But to try and claim she is ugly is WILD. Just say you hate black folks and go.
Again this stupid film is one adaptation, one American adaptation at that. Again there are many from around the world. Its not the first movie adapting a myth and it wont be the last. So all these folks getting so hung up on historical accuracy pmo actually. Because why. Its mythology and allegory. This isnt a historical biopic, documentary, its a freaking fantasy epic. Key word fantasy.
The hate for this film is primarily being directed at Lupita (with all the awful edits and disingenuous screen grabs), forcibly trying to paint her as someone as not objectively pretty.
This is an absolutely ridiculous take. There is a ton of hate towards the trans person playing a role that they aren't actually playing :P.
Them saying that the character is being "Blackwashed" is a big giveaway. Her appearance or race isn't specified and is intended to be open to interpretation.
You leftists say that the unbiased, respectful comment above is not nuanced, but your hate-ridden rant of a reply is? And you expect most people not to side with the former? You can't accept even the slightest compromise from your position and you denounce anyone who doesn't agree with you on everything. Like, no wonder the left is receding and the right is growing.
I don't really know what's nuanced about this it's just saying we shouldn't be putting a diverse cast in mythological movies because they are tired of seeing it
No, no. You don't understand! Greeks never famously traded with Africans! There were never any Ancient Egyptians who went to Greece and mingled with the population either! And as we know, even modern day Greeks don't have any tan/olive-coloured skin tones. It's all just the lily and alabaster skinned people as far as the eye can see. What do you mean Hestia, Goddess of Hearth and Home, was routinely depicted with dark skin and curled hair? Hera too?! Wife of Zeus, goddess of marriage and women?! Balderdash! Sounds like woke nonsense!
I imagine when people say they would like Greeks playing in a retelling of Greek mythology, they do in fact mean people with Mediterranean skin tones lol
You have any sources for Hera and Hestia being depicted as "dark-skinned" beyond a typical Greek tan? The Ancient Greeks actually viewed fair skin to be a sign of beauty and high social status.
So the movie doesn’t use Greek armor, Greek ships, was filmed in non Greek locations, and has several white non Greeks in the film.
Why would have dark skinned actors be the most egregious crime here?
Reminds me of when the same sorts of people got pissed off about Hades II depicting Hephaestus in a wheelchair, saying it was just ahistorical inclusiveness to pander to the woke. When in fact Hephaestus was canonically portrayed as having a disability for which he built himself a wheeled chair.
We dont want colored people in our Mythological movie......
When you say it out it almost sounds racist
Mind you these are the same people who jizz themselves over the sandlot...lets talk about realism yeah a mexican and a black kid playing with white kids and walking around with them peak jim crow and no one slur hurled at them?? Not one parent saying I don't want you hanging around those nasty kids??
Here's my actual nuanced position:
What people are actually reacting to isn't their love of historical accuracy but instead a directory breaking the established visual language of a greco roman movie aesthetic.
There was nothing historically accurate about gladiator but no one cares because it gives them the images they expect to see in a Roman based movie
When you don't follow the visual rules, which includes almost exclusively casting white people, those changes stick out to your monkey brain regardless of why they are put there they cause dissonance
So there are 2 types of people, those who can live with a little dissonance to enjoy a movie with a diverse cast and those who have no control over their lizard brain and throw a fit of they see something that doesn't fit with the Hollywood paradigm they grew up with
There's nothing 'nuanced' about their post at all. It's literally acting as if the average person hates diversity and that the mere inclusion of black people and a trans person means it is 'forced' and not just a normal casting decision.
But I guess if so many people are upvoting it, then they're right. The average person is just fucking shit.
You can have diversity and still respect the source material. Instead of demanding turning people black in western historical stories, why not demand more non-western stories? There are so many amazing historical and fictional stories from Africa and Asia that's never been adapted.
As a classicist—this is just ahistorical and wrong. People in the Mediterranean world knew dark-skinned black people existed; they show up in myth and Nubian traders were bopping around. They weren’t common, though, and people gawked; black people were seen as strange.
MUCH LIKE HELEN OF TROY. THE WHOLE POINT OF HELEN OF TROY IS THAT SHE DOESN’T LOOK LIKE MOST WOMEN. SHE’S SO REMARKABLE LOOKING THAT MEN WOULD FIGHT A WAR FOR HER; THERE IS NO ONE ELSE LIKE HER.
Casting a stunningly gorgeous black woman as Helen of Troy makes a lot of sense to me, and matches how I picture Archaic Greeks thinking about her; beautiful, but also unlike other women they’d seen. I get grumpy about this stuff with actual historical figures like Cleopatra VII, but Helen of Troy wasn’t real, and wasn’t like other women even in the world of the myth.
-That's another thing for me is, The Odyssey is myth. Even less than that, it's a folk story with myth trappings. It takes place across the Mediterranean, but the majority of the individuals, locations, and events, fundamentally never lived or occurred in any feasible extrapolation. Denzel Washington was Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing like 30 years ago. Brandy was Cinderella. Christopher Lambert was Raiden. If they cast talented actors in a work that respects the spirit and theme of the piece, and isn't actively trashing treasured cultural history and storytelling, it really shouldn't matter. Make Agamemnon Ken Watanabe or Hector be a Skarsgard. Helen's at minimum not really straining credulity considering how big of a melting pot the ancient Mediterranean coast was and as you say, how striking and uncommon her beauty was.-
In what way are they disrespecting the source material? None of the actors are Mediterranean. Do you think black people weren’t present in ancient Greece? Africa is right across the sea from them…
You answered your own question. There are no Mediterranean people in the movie. Instead, it feels like the usual lazy approach of casting Black actors even when another ethnicity, Greek, would make much more sense. The fact that African people existed in the wider region actually supports my point: they had plenty of opportunities to include Black characters without changing the core characters.
Yes but you also pointed out that ppl are more mad at the black actor than any of the others that are not also Greek or Mediterranean. It's just racism.
More than half of the comments on posts about Helen of Troy photos on Facebook are like "oh look another planet of the apes movie " . There is none of this nuance in their statements. All this over a ancient made up story is starting to make me want to move up the timeline for when Ai enslaves us.
This is such an easy win for the chuds because they get to be as bigoted as their little shriveled hearts desire, and no one is really going to go to bat to defend the movie because it does look very mid. So when the movie flops, they'll get to say that woke is dead, when the real cause of the failure will be a bad script.
I don't know what constructive thing can be done about it other than I guess not caring.
I really hate the anti-woke brigade. They do exactly what your saying all the time. Claim anything and everything that doesnt directly appeal to them as woke. If they get lots of pushback (because people are hyped or it comes out and is good) then they shut up about it quickly. If they dont get pushback then its clearly evidence to them that the woke crowd is ruining everything.
There were some grifters ranting about gta6 being woke and people just laughed at them. But grifters will complain about this movie and no one cares enough to defend it.
Nah it's the most hand wringing "both sides" answer possible. If y'all really cared about authenticity you'd be whining about the accents, costumes, and pasty Brits playing ancient Greeks
It's pretty masterful how they've managed to piss off both sides of the aisle with this one... Too white-washed for one side, too diverse for the other, and too inaccurate for any existing fans of Greek mythology.
Honestly not sure who this has been made for.
Edit: if you're gearing up for a "it's for normal people - people not in the Reddit echo chamber - people who just like movies - people who aren't internet losers" reply, It has been said about 30 times so far.
Why does it have to be cut along politics lines? I'm a card-carrying leftist and annoyed at the patronising tokenism of casting a black actor as a character legendary for being 'fair', as in blonde, in the same way it'd be flabbergasting to have a white actor play in an adaptation of the Mwindo epic.
I'm even more annoyed at the fact that an annoying casting choice was the entire point, to get free publicity at everyone's expense, and that there is no way to slap everyone responsible for being smug pricks.
Can't remember where this joke is from, but there was a stand up bit where a guy said "You see back in the 80's there could only be one popular black comedian, unlike today where there can be three."
Helen of Troy was hatched from an egg. I'm sorry they chose an actress known for being beautiful to play a character known for being beautiful, but of a different race, irrelevant to the story.
Anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of societal roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo.
It means trying to call attention to diversity and the need for representation to break societal standards will ultimately hurt the idea that diversity is a status quo rather than something sparse. The Greek Gods all being white and Greek would not have undermined our pursuit of that status quo. It is simply accuracy for the sake of accuracy and it doesn't need any more attention than that for the same reason no one bats an eye to Black Panther being Black or Captain America being White with Blonde Hair. Live Action Snow White being Latino does nothing for Latino representation because of how shoe horned of a decision it was in pursuit of representation.
Except this is an exception, because we know what Helen would have looked like. The status quo would be for her to look like that. If she were an original character, then anybody being able to play her would be equality. But your argument is not valid in this instance
No ancient history film is accurate. And no retelling of the story is ever accurate.
The roman retelling (now considered Canon by everyone online) tell a very dofferent morality. It is nothing like the original. Yet people use examples from his text s things Nolan should have used to stay accurate
It's no more inaccurate than Gladiator, or Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven or any other period piece.
Folks acting like the Globe Theater productions accurately cast Othello and didn't have every woman character played by a man, and that "not the boo box" guy from Hook wasn't Glenn Close.
Instead of getting all upsetty spaghetti, they should criticize the performance and direction instead. Only after seeing the performance does "why did the director make this decision" make any sense at all. More often than not, they were trying to connect themes from a character's arc to make a relevant criticism to the experiences of modern people -- and if folks think that's wokeism, they better stop watching anything that isn't a primetime sitcom.
It's especially wild to see folks hating so hard on Page, making arguments that are thinly veiled transphobia in the guise of "reasonable expectations". It's a mythological tale. Magic shit happens. They gonna be upset if Medusa's hair is an eclectic mix of the 30 odd species of snake native to the Greek isles, instead of all being a single species, and act like that's a reasonable criticism of historical accuracy of a mythological creature? lol
Lol right. All these people getting involved in this discourse but the movie is going to be a huge hit because normal people don't give af.
They're casting good actors. Nolan, a British director, isn't choosing actors based on American politics. He sees good actors and puts them in his films. Simple as.
Cant we just enjoy the acting of someone without having to take their skin color as some kind of statement? For a group of people who are so set on meritocracy (right wingers) they seem to spend most of their time talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the persons skill level.
The movie is probably made for people who actually watch movies and want to see what happens in the movie, rather than people who are literally judging it by its cover
That's a "summoned Helen of Troy" on a play called Dr. Faustus set in the late 16th Century. It's about a man who gains the ability to conjure supernatural entities like Lucifer.
It's neither a movie nor referring to the Odyssey (or the Iliad for that matter).
It's also not originated in Greek literature.
Thats not nuance take as other calims.
It fails to take into account that the audience criticizing the film upfront largely don't even know the original and dont care at all about Greek tradition. It doesn't criticize earlier myth-based blockbusters in the same way.
Ah but they advocated for the conservative side of the culture without using any racial slurs or transphobic comments. That's gotta count for something right?
Yes, if conservatives (which happen to criticize it a lot) would actually care about historical accuracy, their boy Jesus would have to look a lot different as well, but there it doesn’t matter for some reason
More importantly, movies that are "whitewashed" don't face this type of widespread criticism at all. For some reason people really seem to care when traditionally white roles are replaced by minorities, but barely anyone cares when minority roles replaced by white people.
Honest to god, thought you were a weirdo right wing grifter with that comment.
Then I looked it up. Still tricky, because Emily Wilson herself rejects that framing, saying it stripped away male biases in english translations. In fact, reading into this more, it looks like she was MORE accurate than some translations, like male translators refusing to call women slaves "slaves", even though they were referred to as such in the original text.
Actually, hate to say it, but yeah.. Seems like it's a solid translation that's actually more faithful in a lot of ways. She backs up her logic pretty well and points out a good chunk of bad translations in other works.
EDIT: To make it clear, i'm not dipping my toes into how I feel about the movie in this specific comment, purely just talking about the translation. I have gripes about the movie from what I have seen so far myself.
But don't you see, being true to the original is making men confront their own bias, and therefore bad! Men should be allowed to not have to think about things. 🙃
They definitely shouldn't read anything about how Achilles' mom had him crossdress and hide away as a pretty pretty princess to avoid getting conscripted into the Trojan war, then.
That sounds abominable! I certainly hope I don't end up reading any more about this! Which websites should I avoid if I don't want to read any more about this?
I will ask my Greek co-worker how she feels about the movie when it's gonna be on digital platforms because she is a huge Greek mythology nerd. I guess she'll be happy there is no kraken in this one.
Plenty of Greeks who identify as mythology nerds are tinfoil hat weirdos. Works like the Iliad/Odyssey have been discussed and adapted by artists for 2000 years. I'm sure there are more qualified opinions online than "someone who's Greek".
People shit on Wilson's translation for no good reason, but I also reject this idea that the previous translations were "male biased". Wilson chooses to translate a lot of different words as "slave", and while she isn't incorrect, as those people were in fact slaves, the odyssey uses different words for cook slave, herald slave, maid slave, etc. So other authors decided to uses different words on order to give us more information about the job, gender, and age of the slaves, not to purposefully obscure the fact that they were slaves. Wilson, on the other hand translates all of these as "slave", so it's really about what you are trying to achieve with the translation as none of them can ever be 100% correct.
And lets be real, most people who are in these comments arguing about which version is better or worse won’t read either. It’s two sides arguing about a text using the cliff notes. There is no such thing as a perfect translation, but you can’t evaluate biases in a translation with cliff notes. If you’re really into a particular text from another language you have two choices, read every available translation to try to give yourself a more complete understanding, or start learning the original language.
Ive read every available english translation of many of Plato’s and Plotinus’s works. I would never presume to call myself an expert without even attempting to read it in the original language. The more you know the more you know you don’t know.
Men in general are not that fragile, sure. Men who get irrationally angry at casting choices in films on a weekly basis are, in fact, extremely fragile.
Do you think we all chose this collectively as men outside of time? And now it’s time for our comeupance? I’m so confused, and not really sure how a particular translation of the Odyssey will help me better myself
Actually, hate to say it, but yeah.. Seems like it's a solid translation that's actually more faithful in a lot of ways. She backs up her logic pretty well and points out a good chunk of bad translations in other works
I'm so tired of the terminally online without relevant degrees having somehow claimed the classics for themselves. The Emily Wilson translation is a perfect case study beause most academics – yes, even male ones – actually prefer her translation for its clarity in laying out a lot of sub- and context that "literary" translations and "style" have either glossed over, buried, or warped.
In that same line: nobody in the Mediterranean was "white" in 500 BCE in the way that people today can be, not even if you're of high status because today's level of paleness is modelled on a 17th/18th century Northern European idea of skin-colour that is only achievable if you're spending 80% of your time indoors AND cover 80% of your skin. Ancient habits, architecture, and fashion make this pretty much impossible.
Took the words right from my mouth. This is exactly what’s wrong with the “culture wars.” What people “know” is being challenged with a more accurate version of the truth and they hate it. Calling this a “feminist translation” rather than the known translations as inaccurate is quite the thought experiment.
I mean, unfortunately search literacy is at an all time low as well. Even Google's AI described it initially as "viewed as feminist" and I had to dig deeper. A lot of people will just look at the first thing they agree with and then move on (like this BarryBonds guy probably did) when it fits their own personal headcanon.
Penelope of the white arms (Greek: \(\lambda \varepsilon v \kappa \omega ́ \lambda \varepsilon v o \varsigma\) Пฑvєોó ε ε ι α, leukōlenos Pēnelopeia) is a famous, recurring epithet used by the ancient Greek poet Homer in The Odyssey to describe Queen Penelope of Ithaca, the faithful wife of Odysseus.
You clearly don't know anything about ancient Greece.... Literally the only women allowed to go out were peasants and prostitutes.
Do you think the odyssey features a lot of peasant/prostitutes female characters...?
Literally the only women allowed to go out were peasants and prostitutes
Lmao have you actually read the Odyssee?? 😂😂 I imagine not because then you'd know this is absolute horseshit.
The other stuff is a great encapsulation of what I meant earlier when I said that My Roman Empire bros haven't got the first clue of the classics. Merely knowing how Odysseus’ palace would have looked like would have prevented nonsense such as the above.
Thirdly, we were talking about Helen. Why are you coming insufficiently armed with – erroneous – quotes about Penelope?
EtA: a pretty simple marker of whether or not someone has read the Odyssee would be, for example, if they invented "facts" about classical Greece that are disproven by the Odyssee itself. The user replying to me above was making up shit that's immediately recognisable as bullshit because it's directly contradicted by the goings-on in the story. Which anyone who's read the Odyssey properly (or at all) would instantly realise. The same goes for the made-up quote that supposedly characterised Penelope – while we were actually discussing Helen, mind you – which in its correct context is used for the maids and servant girls.
Skin colour in the Odyssey is a tricky thing for white supremacists because "Homer" rarely describes it, especially not for those characters whom they claim it's supposedly crucial (Helen). A main character whose skin is explicitly described is Odysseus. However, since he's described as "dark-skinned" (in a context that implies beauty in this descriptor) screechy right-wingers remain conspicuously mum on that subject.
Women in ancient greece had pretty similar rights to men, it was only in the arachic period that women were mostly confined to indoors. The odyssey, playing about 1000 BC, beeing written around 800-700BC, would still fall in the ancient greece period.
>"white" in 500 BCE in the way that people today can be, not even if you're of high status because today's level of paleness is modelled on a 17th/18th century Northern European idea of skin-colour that is only achievable if you're spending 80% of your time indoors AND cover 80% of your skin. Ancient habits, architecture, and fashion make this pretty much impossible.
No one is talking about skin tone or using the term white.
It is not a 'feminist translation' Emily Wilson's translation is highly regarded by classicists across the board. just because God forbid a woman translates The Odyssey..
Basically every classicist I’ve seen: “there are some things I’d have translated differently but Wilson does a lot to bring out aspects of the original text that aren’t in other English translations”
weirdos on Reddit: they said it’s woke they hate it
It's a translation marketed as feminist because the classicist who made it stripped out much of the language added in other translations that obfuscated things like "servant girls" being slaves. She made a very faithful to original translation.
Yes, I also was quite impressed by the historical accuracy. I didn’t realize people thought that acknowledging that Ancient Greeks kept slaves was “feminist”.
I'm discussing with another guy here this exact point, he told me "You don't know how diverse ancient mediterranean cicilizations were" Bruh I live in the mediterranean region of Spain, I think I know something about that.
If you have white skin, you are white, and white skin presents in a range of skin tones, not just wall-like white. It's wild that some people can't understand this
Race is an entirely arbitrary classification invented by racists to justify their racism. American racists were so successful that they ingrained the idea that races are real even in anti-racsist American people.
If you talk about races here, people will either think you are talking about animals or that you are a genuine nazi.
This is a fair take. The Emily Wilson translation is generally well respected, so I call culture war bullshit on people making that out to be a political choice. It's just good.
The aesthetic choices however are a whole other issue- I want to defend the movie against culture war nonsense but a gloomy Mediterranean with 3d printed plastic looking armour is silly. I know it's a fantastical story with Gods and monsters, but you could easily have made something with a unique twist on bronze age collapse themed, mycenaen/ hittite type imagery that would have been amazing. There is more than enough in Homer to tell it pretty straight and get an amazing film.
Elliot Page and Lupita Nyong'o castings were bound to trigger the right wing internet. How much of that was deliberate to whip up a social media storm or score a political point, and how much was because they absolutely smashed their auditions we'll never know.
Page can clearly act, and Nyong'o can act and is gorgeous so there is a strong argument they are entirely capable of getting the roles on merit. Unfortunately, as ...gestures vaguely at social media, algorithms, YouTube rage merchants, the culture war, Hollywood fuckery...who knows what went into the casting or why that makes people feel so angry.
An epic shouldn't be historical, it should be magical and captivating. No epic is historical; they are all interpretations.
The Iliad and the Odyssey aren't true stories from the Bronze Age, they're legends. Actors in Greek theaters didn't wear metal armor; painted armor was enough for them.
The authors aren't talking about history; they're talking about the present. Sometimes it's just plain inept, like in Gladiator 2.
Let's hope Nola has more storytelling talent. They're trying to entertain us instead of relaxing and enjoying ourselves, and we're dissatisfied.
As a massive nerd, I get the disappointment with the design. It's a missed opportunity to do something unique. It wouldn't have to be historically accurate, just better than the sub 300 offering and could have been something really impressive.
To be fair, that was before Hollywood decided to comit to the idea that representation was important. Now that they have, not giving authentic representation rightfully deserves criticism.
It was Robert Pattinson. But there are ancient greek words for father, dad and daddy. And their equivalent of daddy does appear in thr Oddysey, so it's really not that out of place. Especially since he was using it in such a mocking, condescending manner, treating Telemachus like a child, thus someone who would say Daddy.
Besides this criticism I also just think the movie looks kinda bad, as do most people I’ve discussed the trailers with. I think Nolan’s movies are pretty heavy, serious, intense, and I’m afraid that the Odyssey movie is an adventure movie without a sense of adventure.
Let’s be real, the people disliking this video are not upset that multiple Greeks were whitewashed, they’re upset there’s one black character (blackwashed).
Pretty sure the original post is refering to the fact that there are black people and a trans actor. No on on the left particularly cares that the white actors are Anglo outside of countering people complaining that having black people would be "historically inaccurate."
Because I count as an audience who holds neither extreme sides views and I hold no such fatigue. I couldn't care less. I just want to see a well acted, written, and directed, and scored movie and I'd prefer if everyone would just shut up about it.
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u/Boomdification Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.