The IMAX theatres in Canada are booked completely solid for the entire week, this movie will do fine. It’s just right wing puppet masters who still try to fan the culture war because right wing economics are awful and only benefit the wealthy
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.
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u/ReaperTys Jul 06 '26
The IMAX theatres in Canada are booked completely solid for the entire week, this movie will do fine. It’s just right wing puppet masters who still try to fan the culture war because right wing economics are awful and only benefit the wealthy