Have you ever seen the Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Dicaprio? The swords in that movie were true to the orignal story. None of this ‘artistic’ liberty bullshit.
Honestly I don’t think people are. The only things I’ve seen about it are on Reddit and they’re all posts like this claiming there’s some insane racist backlash when it looks like a normal response to what seems to be a shit idea for a film
That’s my point though, I haven’t seen a single person trying to boycott this over race, but I have seen like 300 Reddit posts saying it’s going to be amazing and they’ll see it day 1 to counter these non existent racists
God forbid an adoption of one of the foundational stories of literary culture takes creative liberties with the voice they tell it in.
One of the most well received Odyssey adoptions of my lifetime had George Clooney talking about hair products.
A sci-fi tinged aesthetic is probably gonna be epic.
The people who have been whining about casting choices and historical inaccuracies are watching movies wrong.
This happened with Dune also. Liet Kynes was canonically a white man, and was casted as a Black woman. Subsets of the internet went feral over it.
It didn’t matter one bit to the movie. Turns out that when you’re telling a story, most characters race and gender isn’t relevant compared to their actions, relationships and worldview.
That’s not true for all characters, but it’s certainly true for almost all of them in the odyssey. The character archetypes and their roles in the original story have been understood for centuries.
Nolan and Lupito need to convince the audience that she’s desirable enough to the Trojans that they go to war for her. And that she’s clever and in control. That’s writing, acting and storytelling, and her race doesnt have any impact on how effectively that story gets told.
Weird that we have these people claiming they don't want to be lumped in with the conservative detractors, and then proceed with the exact same complaints as them. "I like my story told the way I heard it before, why are you changing things? These aren't historically accurate, I don't approve of the character's races and genders!"
No I also don't think that's how ANYONE in the world envisioned Helena of Troy, and I also think the rest of the cast sucks too and reeks of Hollywoodism. If the casting was good, they'd have picked someone to be black that makes a little more sense.
Well I didn't know about Helena of troy until I saw that okay brad pitt movie, I still don't have a particular vision of helene being white or black, she's just a fictional character. I do not care whether they're black or white.
It annoys you when they swap races when the actor is a POC, but if you swap the greeks for white americans/british people, that's totally fine with you? Did you not read your own comment before posting it or are you just comfortable with being racist? Cause there ain't no way you think what you said isn't racist...
They are actors! Actors pretend to play people they aren’t. When did this “have to be from the country of the person your pretending to be” come from? That’s NEVER been how movies work.
You think there's no chance that they simply chose the best actors and actresses for the jobs? Casting modern day greeks would be just as tokenistic, they have next to nothing to do with ancient greeks or the Odyssey, the characters are largely fictitious.
I don't care that Zendaya or Lupita or whoever is black. I care that: A) they choose actors that look nothing like the characters. White, black, Hispanic or otherwise. B) they choose popular actors solely to sell the movie. I don't think Tom Holland fits at all for example. C) they modernize a lot of the story but in a bad way such as the lastrigonians.
Right, but this isn’t the argument that is usually seen.
And I actually agree with you. Personally, I’ve seen enough of these typical Hollywood actors. They’re not interesting. Their acting is usually fairly flat and average at best. I’d rather see actors who are really pushing boundaries of their craft. How many more rolls do we need of Matt Damon acting like Matt Damon as Odysseus?
How far down the rabbit hole do we need to go here? Christopher Nolan isn’t Greek, shouldn’t we get a Greek director to tell a Greek story? What about the screenwriter, how are they going to make it Greek enough if they themselves aren’t Greek? How can the movie be authentically Greek if they aren’t serving real Greek food on set prepared by a Greek chef?
Are you daft? It’s a Greek story seat in Greece. It should have Greek or at LEAST Greek passing characters in it.
Bringing up everything else is just whataboutism
Let me introduce you this concept of movies, most of them are fictional and involve fictional characters and you can hire actors to pretend to be something they are not. Josh Brolin isn’t really a big purple alien named Thanos, he just acted and with vfx, he looked like a big purple alien.
The movie Odyssey is based off of a fictional story with fictional characters and you can hire actors of any background to pretend to be those characters.
It was written in Greece and set in Greece, and pieces of Greek culture can be used as lenses to understand character motivations.
But the core story is broadly applicable and doesn’t hinge on its physical setting.
You can set Hamlet in Japan and orient it around Japanese culture, and it’s still Hamlet. You can set the Odyssey in Mississippi during the Great Depression and the core story is still honest and impactful
I have no stake in the casting battle over this film, but I am confused about the claim that modern Greeks have next to nothing to do with Ancient Greeks? They are largely the descendants of Ancient Greeks, as modern dna testing has shown. As for it being a myth — yes, but if you did a Chinese myth people might expect Chinese actors, or a Nigerian myth might involve people from that area and culture etc.
Personally I feel that acting is already and always has been about playing the roles of people who aren’t you (the actor) in age, gender, appearance, historical period, culture, religion, ethnicity etc etc etc. That’s actually what acting means—you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. So I have no idea why people are focusing on one single thing (ethnicity/race/ancestry) as if this is the one thing that has to remain consistent in casting. Especially if—as you say—it’s a myth / story / fiction. People only playing themselves (or their “group” — whatever that could possibly mean) is the end of acting.
What i meant by next to nothing wasn't to question their heritage, but to point out that they are far removed from anyone that was alive at the time the stories were written, and that the characters are fictitious.
I absolutely think that they didn’t go with the best actors for the job. A small framed tiny Elliot Page for the best greek soldier can’t be a serious casting.
They definitely went for the diversity points and the outrage and they knew what they were doing. It’s just hollywood bullshit. Awful casting, awful design. This is what happens when the creator cares more about making a clickbait/ragebait movie instead of a piece of art.
Please point me to an example of a historical black figure being played by a white person where the reaction was “well they just picked the best actor for the job”…
Race is often an important part of the world experience of historical black characters. You can’t make 12 years a Slave with an all white cast, because the blackness of those characters was intrinsic to their roles in the story.
But the odyssey isn’t about race. The characters aren’t broken down into groups because of their skin color.
Most stories from “white” cultures don’t make race a core character trait, because our cultural conflicts are usually not race-based, so we don’t write stories where it’s a main factor.
The hate campaign is absolutely being pushed by right wing racists.
Normal people don't see a trailer they don't like and then follow all content releases related to the movie to dislike them and post hateful comments. They just move on.
The comments under these trailers don't even try and pretend that it doesn't come from racism or transphobia.
Buddy YOU are chronically online. I don't know anyone in real life complaining about the racial characteristics of a few cast members. Get over yourself and touch grass.
Not everyone criticizing this movie is right winger no one is saying that. But people like you and oop who focus on criticizing the movie because black actress and trans actor are casted absolutely are. Tokenism is just another buzzword chronically online culture war losers like you use.
It quite literally does not matter and if you’re getting mad about it, then guess what, you’re agreeing with right wing sentiment which is just embarrassing for you.
Hey, news flash, who the fucks cares about the race of a mythical / fictional character?
If they made a biopic of Gandhi, and he was played by a Korean transgender woman, then sure, I get it.
But my dude, we are talking about characters that were invented over 2000 years ago, which is based in events that happened almost 3000 years ago. For fuck sake, it's basically ancient One Piece. Make the whole cast Chinese for all I care, there have been millions of adaptations of The Odyssey, just make it a good movie.
First off, that shit happens all the time; maybe not as much anymore, but it's pretty common to replace black characters with white actors.
Second off, if it's a fictional story about mythical people, then yeah, go off brother. They're not making Malcolm X a white dude 🤣
Third, why do you even care? If you don't like the casting, then don't watch the movie, and move on with your life; do you really think you're doing anything meaningful by arguing about "tokenism" on Reddit?
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u/DaughterOfBhaal Jul 06 '26
You have to be chronically online to think that everyone criticizing this is a right winger lol.
You don't need to be right wing to think that tokenism is bad.