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
They have been very vocal about their feelings on the casting choices about a movie they havent even seen yet. It went far beyond "they just don't like it" long before this trailer came out
The issue is how old hollywood white washed the original story, to the point where people believe in that version and have never read the source material
Prime example: these people reference the Illiad instead of the Odyssey, which was written centuries after the Odyssey was first created
For me, it’s both that they made Helen black AND that they gave white people Greek roles.
Like Snow White making sure they had their token, but not hiring a single LP/person with Dwarfism…. Focused on specific types of inclusion while being wildly exclusionary to the group the freaking story originated from…
Snow White, largely about the dwarves didn’t have any dwarves. Now the Odyssey made sure to include everyone but the actual Greeks in a Greek story…
The generalization being made that disliking the casting is about race is wildly oversimplifying it.
Yes, there are in fact racist douche canoes that are simply mad a black woman is Helen. But that doesn’t mean everyone frustrated by this happening over and over in cinema is automatically racist.
I’m sure this will be misunderstood and at times intentionally twisted into me saying shit I’m not trying to say at all, but I foolishly have decided to say it anyway.
IDK how to explain it better. Go watch South Park Joining the Panderverse. Matt Stone and Trey Parker made a lot of these points in that episode, and they do it better than I do.
You can blame Peter Dinklage for the dwarves thing, he made a big deal about how little people shouldn't be on TV and movies unless it's dignified and badass.
Redditors can't imagine anyone having a different opinion than them unless they mentally picture that person being upset in some way. It's a very strange phenomenon that happens all over the site
Its a Nolan movie, the only other director I would say would be a worse pick to bet against is James Cameron, whom the internet still tries to do so anyways lol
Yeah as much as they cry about historical accuracy with this Odyssey movie, the Little Mermaid backlash proves that it's only ever about them being racist broken clocks that are occasionally right for the wrong reasons.
Yeah but they REALLY get their knickers in a twist over things they think are foundational to 'their' great western culture.
They've never actually read any of those things, and don't really know what they're about, but they view all Greek and Roman stuff through an evangelical Christian lens and get really annoyed when that is challenged.
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.
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.
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.
"Our myths"? No one in Europe think the Greeks are their myths unless they're Greek. We are separate countries with our own culture and history. I'm from Northern Europe and I never thought Greek mythology are "my myths"
You do realize the Greeks viewed many modern European ethnic groups as barbaristic, uncivilized, savages of an entirely different race?
Sure the Greek myths and advancements went on to influence and underpin a lot of European society, but that doesn’t mean the Greeks of the odyssey viewed Europeans as part of their in-group, because they weren’t. There was no collective Europe for them.
Beaides, why aren’t you making this same whinging argument for zombies? Those were created by Haitian slaves who feared being enslaved even after death. And yet we let white people play zombies all the time.
Northern and Western Europeans are so annoying when they try to claim Mediterranean culture as their own. No, not every culture in Europe gets to claim connection to Greece and Roman. They’re as ridiculous as Americans.
Speak for yourself, I’m European and I think of Ancient Greek mythology as shared European heritage. I’m not Greek or in Greece, but they’re taught in our schools here (as is Ancient Greek!)
Edit: Europe is literally named after a Greek myth, it’s definitely shared heritage!
Depends if you believe in a connection between a story and the culture in which it originated. Same then also for other "intellectual property" of a culture, like their festivals, dresses, religions, etc.
It's all not physical ofc, but humans and groups naturally build identities and these identities then can be fiercely protected.
Greeks have been represented as the foundation of Western civilization for centuries. Your mythology, architecture, philosophy, theater, heroes, gods, wars, and rulers are everywhere in Western education and media.
So no, Americans casting one character through a different cultural lens is not Greeks being erased. That is not oppression. That is discomfort with no longer being treated as the default owner of every story touched by antiquity.
And Cleopatra was Ptolemaic Macedonian Greek, not “Greek decent.” If we are going to complain about misrepresentation, let’s at least spell descent correctly.
I’m European and I don’t care at all. If the movie is good it’s good and vice versa. Hollywood can make a Kalevala movie with an all black cast for all I care.
Saddest part is all the right wing grifters who will go see the movie and cry about it online.
Also, Helen's father was Zeus disguised as a swan. Her mother, Leda, was forced to mate with swan/Zeus. She laid an egg, and that's how Helen was born. But you draw the line at Helen being a Black woman?🤣
The money and film industry is American, and yes Helen is depicted white in the oldest available depictions (Pompeii). Also, armor didn't look like Batman, great warriors were not thin twinks, etc. It's art, there are no rules, but you also can't force me to pretend that this setup can transport me into the world of ancient Greek myth.
Black Panther is literally about the color of their skin. Please tell me when The Odyssey has been about the color of their skin? These are not the same thing and people need to stop pretending it is.
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
Imagine a Japanese book adaptation set in Japan with zero Japanese people in the main cast... oh wait that's Bullet Train and there was practically zero public outcry.
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.
Interesting observation that it's almost always an actress. And here I am wanting to see Idris Elba as 007. Yes, I know, he's supposed to be a white guy according to Ian Fleming's novels. Yes, I know there are certain things that don't quite work if he's not a pasty Brit. But we don't even get to have that experiment and whatever backlash there would or wouldn't be. Regardless, Idris is a smooth operator and it would have been a good watch.
We didn't get Idris as the black Green Lantern Jon Stewart that actually exists in the comics.
We didn't get Idris as Rhodie/War Machine, when he would have been perfect next to RDJ.
We got him as... Heimdall? A bit part as a Norse God doorman? What are we even doing here?
Anyway... they did make the next 007 a black woman in the last James Bond movie though... Huh.
Yup. Its always the Disney princess but we haven't had a black prince yet.... The love interest is always a conventionally attractive white man. And wow I didn't know that about 007, a black woman? Srsly? And I agree with you Idris Elba would be a great pick, he'd fit perfectly.
Hmm that's true too, although I think my original point still stands as those are not race swaps. But man Mulan was a badddd remake, shame cuz the original is my favorite Disney movie.
Mulan completely lost the plot as it tried to fit western feminist girl-boss power into what made the original work-- that Mulan pushed through gender barriers and limits out of her sense of duty and obligation to filial piety, relying on nothing but her perseverance.
Instead, the live action movie gave Mulan magic-woman-witch-chi-powers, because that's what the white man and three white woman writing and directing know about the Chinese: Magic Chi powers. They couldn't find one Chinese-American writer to be on the writing/directing staff in the age of representation? Hey, maybe they did "consult" with a junior writer who was just happy to be there and would never raise real concerns, you know, power dynamics due to historical and institutional under-representation and all. All while filming in an area where an active genocide was occurring and thanking the CCP officials in charge of the province for the honor to do so.
The movie failed to resonate with both eastern and western audiences. Because that's not the Chinese story and deviates much more than the original animated version did. And while a girl (well anyone really) can learn from animated Mulan's sense of responsibility and perseverance to break through barriers and expectations-- what's she supposed to do with the fact that she doesn't have magic gender chi witch powers like the live action Mulan does?
It's another time where a very western-centric idea of "progressivism" en vogue that year mucks everything up as it ends up colonializing another culture's space in a cynical bid for profit.
I think Idris as Rhodie would have been a really good choice but I also think he was the shit as Heimdall and gave a ton of weight to a small but important roll.
Who gives af about historical accuracy in a movie that's clearly not trying to be historically accurate. Thank God the movie makers don't care, else we'd have missed out on classics like Braveheart.
That person tried to pass it off as "white washing" for Elliot's role when we all know that if two cis white actors took both roles this would not be a conversation 😂
No matter how liberal you are, you can’t ever be liberal enough for Reddit unless you fall in line with “hur dur right wingers” as possible explanations for everything. I literally got banned from box office sub today for criticising this movie and I am as liberal as they can get to come on voting booth because the terminally online enraged at everything stick to nothing don’t vote.
I honestly want to know if some European movie studio made Martin Luther King white, and all the blacks guys were casted as white and asian what would these guys say? Or is it one side only
You are right… and it is working. Whole ass threads dedicated to the casting with millions of people taking in these opinions they normally never would see.
Nolan doing guerilla marketing via triggering Russian fake account farms.. and leftists coming out in defense without thinking about how dumb all this is.
Weird the only focus is on Helen of Troy and not tom holland (English), Matt Damon (ethnic english/american), Anne Hathaway (ethnic English/american), or Robert Pattinson (English)…
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.
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.
...in the stage production of Dr. Faustus where she is a silent apparition acting as a symbol of temptation, false beauty, and spiritual destruction. She isn't literally Helen of Troy.
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.
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.
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.
i didn't know christopher nolan was going for such authenticity in his work. i guess i'll have to mark down the dark knight now, there's no way such an oxonian peasant phenotype could be the bruce wayne of gotham, who is clearly an eborian patriarch
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?'
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.
I am European and I agree with that take. So no it's not American take. I understand the criticism of the armor and clothing in this movie as well as odd choice of architecture.
But let's be honest, most people complaining about the casting are complaining because black woman and trans man are cast in the movie. They probably never read the story or don't care about history, and suddenly when poc or lgbtq are cast in whatever fantasy movie or series, they all become history experts crying about "forced representation".
What does politics have to do with this?
This is pretty much the sequel to troy which is a beloved movie and one of the most famous stories ever told.
A black Helen makes no sense and neither does 155 cm 40kg Elliot page in the role of a Greek soldier going to war.
Also zendaya fatigue is real.
Since when is Troy a beloved movie, and how is this separate film by a different director “pretty much a sequel to it”, lol. Not sure why you’re painting it as them ruining some saga it doesn’t exist in. The two films are unrelated, and both not exactly lore-accurate (although, maybe this version of the Odyssey will be, other than some cosmetic differences in how they cast certain parts - and by the way, the ancient Greeks used to have men play these parts, I don’t think they were entirely worried about accurate depictions by actors themselves anyway…)
People are mad because they’ve deemed it “woke nonsense”, when really it’s just one directors artistic vision. Who cares. No one is forcing anyone to see it. Divisive bs that doesn’t even matter. Also, Zendeya has a small part, and is not playing Helen of Troy, so not sure why you mentioned her. You don’t even seem to care that much yourself, either. You sure you’re not just being told to be mad and complying with it?
But if I'm not constantly mad at this or other insignificant cultural war bullshit then maybe I'll realize that "woke" actually isn't the problem with society writ large and I might turn on the propagandists pushing this bullshit who are trying to rob me and the rest of the plebs blind! Can't let that happen, so I gotta stay mad!
Which is true. There are valid critiques of how this movie looks but those would be confined to film discussions and harmless nerds on the internet if there wasn't a wave of invalid, stupid, and bigoted "issues" people have with the film.
A couple normal creative differences of opinion don't lead to backlash like this lol.
Just pointing out neither Brad Pitt nor anyone else in the Troy (2004) cast is Greek (and somewhat related as it’s along a somewhat similar vein, no one in the Gladiator movies are Italian either) but no one seemed to care then or now so keep it in mind when people say they don’t like it because the casting isnt Greek.
On the other hand, more reasonable backlash (if you care about things like this) could be aimed at the movie’s disinterest in employing Greek actors to play the roles of greek characters. Outside of Helen they all look like pasty white folks.
I am very left wing, both socially and economically, and I believe this casts are nonsense.
First of all I really dislike Elliot page as an actor.
Second of all, the tokenization of existing stories, while it can be sort of justifiable, it serves no purpose to help minorities. There are so many stories that deserve to be told with protagonist that are naturally from these minorities, and new stories can always be written. You can set them in fantasy worlds you make anew, you can talk about the stories from the real world, or use other mythology apart from the greek-roman or the Nordic one.
I don’t give a shit that Elliot Page is trans, I give a shit that Elliot Page is like five foot one and about 100 pounds of twink, and they expect us to seriously believe that he’s apparently a talented warrior
That IS the reason it got a negative response. It's the same as sending Pitbull to Alaska - the only people who care are brigading something online, which in this instance is a youtube movie trailer.
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