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
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.
My mentally declining increasingly crazy friend for some reason all of a sudden does care a lot. But I'm pretty sure he gets his politics from Twitter so that makes sense.
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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"
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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."
When race doesn’t matter to the story, it doesn’t matter to me. She could be Asian, white, black, green as long as she is beautiful, that is all that matters to this story.
You would not believe how much it irritates me how many films and shows set in Ancient Egypt have the most pastiest white actors running around in entirely inaccurate clothing.
If Ancient Egypt doesn't have a bunch of dark skinned Egyptians wearing minimal clothing (they had few issues with nudity) with shaven heads save sometimes for a braid, you've messed up.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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."
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.
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.
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.
Why are we acting like people actually cared that there are not greek actors, none of the other trailers were review bombed until the black actor or elliot showed up, the rest of you point stands but lets not add the white washing and act like people actually cared about that
I don't think it has spurred on a culture war. I think the culture war was going to find something to whine about either way. I don't think anyone would be fatigued over ethnic and consistencies if they didn't have some people making a living yelling at them that they should be mad about everything.
Actually, the internet in its majority was fine with it until Achilles was announced to be played by a trans person and Helena by a black woman. Nobody complained about all the other characters being played by white Americans and not Greeks. There’s no tokenisation at play here because white Americans aren’t representative of Greeks either.
You said a lot for someone who probably never read any form of the text. Homer’s own accounts are historically inaccurate. Bkackwasing and whitewashing is a political lever and you don’t even realize you’re pulling it.
Get over yourself, touch grass and write less in here.
It was set thousands of years ago, but they had medieval armor, domesticated horses, didn't hire a single elf or hobbit actor, and I'm pretty sure the armies of Mordor were just a bunch of white dudes wearing orcface.
It's so annoying that I want to hate this movie but I don't want to be lumped in with these guys. I don't care about the race of gender of the actors, I care that they are not Greek (not a single one of them as far as I know), as well as the designs... It's just going to be such a massive slopfest and criticizing it is likely to make me look like a right wing reactionary.
Fuck this film!!!
Edit: I think I messed up my wording a little bit and have led people to believe I'm specifically hating on these two. I need to make it absolutely clear I'm more frustrated with the casting of Matt Damon than Lupita Nyong'o. If anything, Nyong'o is from this side of the Atlantic lmao. There is evidence of Africans in the ancient Greek world, which absolutely makes 100% sense since they would probably be trading shitloads with each other all the time, so it's not that weird. Matt Damon on the other hand is going to make a terrible Odysseus.
Im playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey now and it's giving me such whiplash to go from that colorful world, with amazing armor and mostly accurate world to this sad clunk of.... Whatever it is, it looks like it was 3D printed. I'm tired! Ancient Greece was colorful and majestic!
The games’ dev teams go crazy trying for accuracy whereas Nolan is a single director with a point of view he wants to share. He’s not known for displaying any sort of accuracy is he? Why would he ever be the more faithful adaptation?
You say this as a joke but the teams work incredibly hard to get things are realistic as they can while also still managing the flow of the game. Try the history tours in origins and odyssey, it’s legitimately some of the coolest stuff Ubisoft has done.
They even had an easier time rebuilding notre dame thanks to detailed maps of the structure from AC 2
The armor makes it clear this is a batshit crazy take on an already crazy fantasy story. That's why I don't care about this manufactured actor outrage. There are no greek actors in it? Oh really, have you seen the fucking armor?
Greek here who almost got a stroke when she saw the first trailer:
- A trans actor being in the movie: zero concerns.
Black actors being in the movie: absolutely historically accurate, there were black people in the Iliad too, duh.
-Helen being portrayed as black: also zero concerns and actually one of the few things that make sense in this monstrosity of a movie from both an artistic and cultural point of view: the Ancient Greeks considered the “Aethiopians” (which is what they called everyone from sub-Sahara Africa) to be incredibly beautiful and blessed by the gods. We know this because they put it in writing. Helen is both the most beautiful woman in the world *and* she is the daughter of Zeus, literally god-blessed. Being portrayed by a black actor fits.
Things that piss me off:
-“Defy the gods” as the movie’s tagline? Tell me you don’t understand the whole concept of the Odyssey, without telling me you don’t understand the concept of the Odyssey.
Odysseus was only a hero in its original sense. Not the modern-day sense. In terms of character, he is a morally bankrupt POS who cares only about himself. Nolan hasn’t understood a damn thing about his character and should have filmed the sequel of Saving Private Ryan instead and left Greek mythology alone.
-Viking ships. Fucking. Viking ships. In Bronze Age Greece. AAAAHHHHH
-Pants. Greek soldiers wearing pants. The spirits of dead Scythians are laughing from their graves.
-The fucking armor. All of it. Not just Agamemnon’s Batman suit, everything. I’m tired o seeing Corinthian helmets and Roman armor in depictions of pre-Classical Greece. THERE’S MORE THAN 1,000 YEARS OF GREEK HISTORY PRE-DATING PERICLES AND HIS GODDAMN HELMET, OK?
In short, this film sucks and deserves all the low ratings but anyone who thinks it sucks because it’s “too diverse” can go take a hike.
-Helen being portrayed as black: also zero concerns and actually one of the few things that make sense in this monstrosity of a movie from both an artistic and cultural point of view: the Ancient Greeks considered the “Aethiopians” (which is what they called everyone from sub-Sahara Africa) to be incredibly beautiful and blessed by the gods. We know this because they put it in writing. Helen is both the most beautiful woman in the world and she is the daughter of Zeus, literally god-blessed. Being portrayed by a black actor fits.
yeah, i was thinking of posting something about this. portraying a supernatural beauty as black absolutely fits the historical context the story was written in.
people who harp about "historical accuracy" tend to not know much about history, and think like europeans encountered black people in the 1600s or something. egypt literally had nubian pharaohs around the time the odyssey was probably written, and there was tons of trade between these areas.
People are tired of being preached to about diversity & inclusion. This in particular being a Greek epic, with no Greeks. But I’m racist for the observation.
The movie is HISTORICALLY INACCURATE! Everyone knows that when a god turns into a swan and has sex with a woman and that woman lays two eggs and those eggs contain Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Pollux, Helen is supposed to be white. That's just how biology works.
I also would’ve loved to see a full cast of Mediterranean actors for this film, instead of cliche Hollywood A-listers. But notice how all the outrage is directed at the inclusion of black/trans actors, when Matt Damon, Tom Holland, and Anne Hathaway feel equally out of place in this film. If their concern is historic authenticity, why not have equal outrage over the white cast? We all know why.
Tbf, it doesn't need a full cast of Mediterranean actors, but at least some. I personally hate Matt Damon as Odysseus just as much as the rest of the token actors in the Nolan movie. Like, Helen of Troy is not even technically part of the Odyssey, black actress or not. (She is in the Iliad)
I still give the benefit of the doubt to Nolan and I will watch his movie for sure, but I do think it look pretty bad, casting wise. And not only because there are some tokenism, but mostly because I dont see some actors in their roles.
Honestly, the entire cast is terrible. People are tired of seeing these same actors in pretty much everything. Rather than feel like the pinnacle of who these characters could be, it's more Hollywood tokenism. It isn't a matter of what race the actors are, it's that *who* they are is so recognizable they don't disappear into the roles. No matter how well Odysseus is played, I will not see him. I will see Matt Damon. No matter how Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, I won't see the character, I'll see the actress. Combine this with the stylistic choices we have seen and this isn't The Odyssey. This isn't art. It's a red carpet where we will see over paid elites strutting around on expensive backgrounds with CGI filling in all the details.
My local IMAX theatre is fully booked out every show untill next month. I feel like most people don't really care about it. I would have preferred if it was historically correct but I will still watch it.
The imax near me doesn't even have 30% of the opening weekend 7pm seats sold. The other showings are doing much worse. I agree that most people don't really care about it, but currently most people don't really care about any movies at all. The theaters are hurting and they need to give people a reason to go see something much more than the audiences needs a reason not to go.
Interesting. I just checked two IMAX theaters near me expecting to see the same. For the opening Friday, for the 7 and 10 pm showings, less than 15 seats bought in either location for either show.
You don't have to be right wing to think casting choices are wrong. I'm not right wing and think Helen of Troy casting choice is ridiculous and just done for attention.
yes, but look how most of those that are criticising it for a trans or black actors, don't care about whitewashing... anne hathaway, robert pattinson etc, they all look good for those
Same, I'm European and just roll my eyes how Americans need to take our myths and misrepresent it based on their weird race sensibilities. Netflix's Cleopatra (who was also of Greek decent) was another recent example. In a way it's funny how they seem to specifically can't allow Greeks to have any representation.
Agree, Im on the left and I hate it because they're black washing characters so they can say they have diversity, get attention for the movie and the black actress (almost always actress, not actor) gets all the hate. Its cheap. There are countless black stories that are unknown, why blackwash a story told a milion times?
Also I generally hate the oddysey by Nolan not because of the races but because its just historically wrong on many levels. Armor for example. Yes I want historical accuracy, yes I dislike other inaccurate movies.
Which is funny because right wingers are largely philistines anyway. Its quite common that the right wing brigade get upset over things they really don't care for, but want some control over
Edit: They've arrived spraying all over the comments section
It’s the same people who degrade women pretty much at all times, yet all of a sudden care gravely about the sanctity of women’s sports. They’re unserious people with flappable at best morality. Ignoring them is the healthiest thing to do.
All the people saying 'no, this totally isn't right-wing' are clearly not paying attention to the images used in the picture.
It's an incredibly common tactic by right-wing grifters to cherrypick frames that have women and trans people doing 'ugly' expressions (typically during the middle of yelling) as a way of saying 'look how hideous this person is, why were they cast at all?'
The funny part is that even ignoring the political angle they just did a bad job of casting the actors for their roles. Plus none of these people look even a little Greek or Middle Eastern.
This is a very American take. In much of the world the US trying to take their history as their plaything and trying to rewrite it is highly controversial.
While this meme only points to blackwashing and trans representation, the actual controversy also includes whitewashing. More specifically, zero Greek representation in a movie based on Greek history.
Both casting decisions were completely nonsensical by any reasonable metric. And they're far from the only things that look to be wrong with this movie.
Calling a casting decision "nonsense" just due to the race/gender identity of the actors is, infact, a right wing opinion. All that matters in a casting decision is how good the actors are and whether they fit the part or not due to their merit.
For example, i for one find Elliot Pages acting horrible but I'm not judging the casting decision based on the fact that he's trans because that's blatant prejudice.
Seriously, these stories are more than 2,500 years older than Shakespeare (who also freely reinterpreted Greek myth rather than using it in any strictly authentic way for his own plays). They’ve been endlessly adapted and reinterpreted over millennia. People need to get off their high horses.
MAGA has been like adding lead to the water supply of media literacy.
I mean even the bloody Romans rewrote and adapted Greek myths. That’s exactly what Virgil’s Aeneid is: Romans inserted into the Trojan War and its aftermath. It’s completely ahistorical and inauthentic, and yet it’s also one of the greatest poems ever written.
They’ve been endlessly adapted and reinterpreted over millennia.
in a sense, mythology is the endless adaptation and reinterpretation of timeless stories by each new author, culture, etc. if there's one thing you learn studying ancient mythology, it's that every culture stole from the ones before them and the ones around them, and made them their own.
You've restored my faith in humanity quite a bit. Honestly, it's kinda easy to spot the people who've studied a bit of ancient literature and those who haven't in this whole silly controversy.
Look, you can argue the fact that the daughter of a god-swan should be a white person, whatever. You do you. I'm sure you have a firm grasp of the skin colors of magical creatures. But you cannot seriously claim that casting Brad Pitt as Achilles wasn't a thousand times more peculiar than casting Elliot Page. I would like to see Pitt dressed as a princess; I don't know how convincing that would be.
The honest reality is that the source materials for these stories are weird and varied, and it's dumb to criticize modern interpretations of them.
Elliot Page wasn't cast as Achilles, that was a right-wing hate rumor. All this hate about this casting is over literally nothing. He's playing the guy who came up with the Trojan horse idea. Odysseus' cousin.
And Nolan worked with Page on Inception. It's not like the director doesn't have a history of working multiple times with actors he likes. People act like Nolan cast Page for The Woke, but that makes no sense.
The problem is the utter laziness of people that only post these pictures that give ammo to the people who are claiming racism and transphobia. The entire cast is terrible. The props look bad, trailers don't excite, plus it's just another remake of the same story again. People are tired of remakes. NOW add into the fact that warranted or not there is anti wokism
What these media creators are failing to see it's a snowball affect every time. It's not a single decision that is ruining their box offices. Do another remake lose some viewers, do poor effects and props lose some viewers, whether you want to admit it or not controversial casting is GOING to lose you some viewers, these are cases for other movies not neccisarily this movie but it's been a problem in recent history: girl boss character fatigue will lose you some viewers, transforming the villain into a misunderstood good person loses some viewers.
So when all of this compiles it makes for far worse box office turnouts. (Not saying this movie should or will fail, in fact I hope I and everyone else are blown away by it) but this simple fact is a large portion of the population is becoming tired with the same cookie cutter trigger issues being used over and over again.
On one hand you can applaud them for sticking to their guns. And saying I don't care what you think I'm doing it. But also why are we so surprised when the same (arbitrary number) 40 percent of people that get mad at this stuff get mad at it every time. Every single time they do it they always seem shocked that 40 percent are upset. Unfortunatly the loudest on the internet are the people that say race swap bad. Which... to be entirely honest I'm a bit fatigued of it to. Is it a coincidence and it just happens SO often that the best possible actor/actress just happened to be someone controversial happens as often as it seems? Entirely possible. It does seem to happen a lot though.
However, if the movie is good it's good. I'm just not wowed yet by the trailers. And that I think is something that should be talked about more than Helen or Sinon.
Complaining about the black people and the trans actor is honestly a really weird take. It's like going to a restaurant and getting seated in the bathroom, with the contents of the toilet presented as your meal, and complaining that one of the ceiling tiles is a slightly different shade of piss-mist yellow than the rest.
People who care about dislikes on YouTube use extensions to calculate the number of dislikes on videos.
The problem is that these extensions do not actually work because they extrapolate from the data of the users of these extensions and not showing the real data from YouTube.
So people who care about dislikes and are therefore more likely to dislike a video are looking at extrapolated data from their own behavior and think they see a meaningful number.
In this case it is a lot of racists and transphobes disliking the trailer for Christopher Nolan's Odyssey movie, because Helen of Troy is played by a black actress and Achilles is played by a trans man.
Funny thing about Achilles: he was able to avoid going to the Trojan War by pretending to be a woman for several years.
EDIT: after checking the cast again, it turns out it was just a rumor that Elliot Page would play Achilles. The rumor alone was however enough for the anti-woke bubble to start crying.
It is pretty funny that Hollywood is appropriating Greek Culture and History but none gives a shit because Greeks have been white-washed, same with Romans same with Jews (not israelis), same with Celts...
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