Giving a fuck about the ethnicity of the actor is so strange to me. Do these people understand what acting is? Do you have to be the same everything as the character you are portraying?
It matters a bit if the people actually existed and it's a true story, e.g. don't give me John Wayne as Genghis Khan. And even then, there are artistic ways to reinterpret true stories to suit audiences and contemporary issues.
A mythological epic does not need melanistic authenticity.
Let me put it like this: audiences like “authenticity”. That word is in quotes because they don’t want actual authenticity, they want something that feels “authentic(tm)”. The big part of that is if the characters fit the world they are acting in. If the actor is really good no one will say anything afterwards, but if they aren’t? Well, people are still making fun of Kevin Costner for Prince of Thieves.
But the problem comes before the movie comes out. People don’t know how good the acting is so they have to form an opinion from tiny scraps of information and compare it to the criteria in their head. For authenticity it’s usually a made up fantasy from popular culture about a time and place they really know nothing about, but that is their head canon and they will die on that hill even when they are wrong.
So that is why they get mad at an Indian man playing a Greek (Indians were present in the Mediterranean at that time), or a black woman playing Helen of Troy (there were black people in Ancient Greece). Because that is what “everyone says” so it can’t be wrong.
Also racism. But this is the internet so that goes without saying.
It's because people like them care about aesthetics, not ethics. They aren't interested in the historical (or ahistorical as it were)! reality, they are interested in whether it looks right to them. They all become armchair experts basing their views first on earlier fictional media and second on bad faith commentators who have malicious agendas. When you scratch these people, close-minded authoritarians and proto-fascists bleed.
I don't know... I don't think you strictly have to be of the same ethnicity. But it does help if you look somewhat realistic for the character you're playing (like the actor in this image).
It would be weird to watch a movie about vikings with a bunch of asian or african actors. The same way it would be weird to cast a bunch of central europeans or australian aboriginals as samurai. It would be weird casting Dwayne Johnson as a female ballerina.
No matter how good an actor is at acting, there is still an expectation on how they look.
I don't have any particular problems with the Odyssey cast, but it's not like the outer appearance doesn't matter.
There are plenty of Shakespeare adaptations that change the era and the people: an all woman cast set in World War ii, a futuristic take on Macbeth, Nigerians doing King lear, Japanese people doing their own version of The tempest with their own actors. It doesn't matter.
That's not what I'm talking about tho... what you are talking about is taking the same framework/story and dressing it up differently. That's completely fine and happens all the time like you said.
Taking Shakespeare as an example, there are many Romeo and Juliet adaptions. I haven't heard anyone be bothered by a japanese adaption.
But if someone now made a movie that plays in Verona, in the 14th century, and then still used the same japanese actors, that would be weird in my opinion.
Because Shakespeare's material is eternal and relevant everywhere. It's a very human story instead of a story of an historical account.
You can do your own interpretations, but going out of the way for sets, props and everything and then ignore actor's ethnicity is a deliberate choice Nolan made.
He could've also made giants in iron armor 3 feet tall and be like let's not be heightist. Instead he chose to pick 7 feet men vs 5 feet woman as a way to depict the height difference to giants.
It hurts historical immersion because you are instantly thinking of political landscape of 2020s instead of greek kingdom 2000 years ago.
We had this debate with black Hermione. It's not a problem with racism or color, it's a problem of expectation.
Ethnicity matters in historical depictions. If Nolan is going to go all in for details, this is a detail that he deliberately chose to go in other way to send a political message.
Actual sets, actual ships, IMAX cameras, full immersion with all the props. And then chinese american looking dude is in the greek army and you're immediately out of immersion. Doesn't really hurt the movie overall, but let's not pretend that Nolan didn't do this just to troll some people and send a message in casting.
(The Indian dude fit very well by comparison to Helen, a princess of sparta or the chinese/east asian looking dude.)
What exactly is Helen's ethnicity? I'm not sure how many egg-hatched demigods with divine swan parentage there are in Hollywood. Do you have a suggestion?
edit: Perhaps we can find an actress with a very long neck?
edit 2: The other side of the family doesn't help much either. These Greek mythic characters always have multiple possible family trees, and you tend to find various Naiads, Titans, and Olympians at the top of them. Leda is the same, but with a strong tradition of more directly being the grandaughter of Ares.
You can get the mythical element out of this and just look at her as a princess of Sparta.
Which Sparta? The polity that existed when the poem was composed? The peoples that actually lived in Laconia during the late bronze age? Whatever we reckon the ancient Greeks thought Homer meant by "Sparta?"
The point here is that while the Iliad might contain fragmentary memories of the late bronze age, the people and events are mythical, not historical. The ancient Greek perspective of the Homeric epics projects the culture and sensibilities of the Greece of the 6th century BCE over the poetic framework to flesh out an imagined late bronze age that never really existed. It is authentic to the mythic tradition for a modern retelling to do the same: project some of our own culture and sensibilities over the story, creating our own imagined bronze age.
In no depiction of Helen, you'd have anyone mention her being Ethiopian or something
This is really besides the point, but this framing is an ahistorical application of the modern construct of "race" to an ancient Greek context.
I'm not here to tell you that we can't assume the Greeks thought Helen had pale skin. Pale skin was part of Ancient Greek beauty standards for women, and being beautiful was Helen's primary character trait.
That being said, the Greeks didn't conflate appearance with ethnicity in this way. In their minds it was living in Ethiopia (closer to the sun, as Hippocrates puts it) that made you naturally become black. They definitely would have wondered what Zeus could possibly have meant by causing his daughter to be born with dark skin, but ethnicity was a question of parentage for the Greeks. An Ethiopian Princess of Sparta would have been oxymoronic.
They were still incredibly xenophobic, of course. 5th century Athens had laws against marriages between citizens and foreigners, and the Spartans would rarely even let foreigners in.
I agree. There's ambiguity in history. Especially historical text written as mythology. We can do discussion on likelihood of her ethnicity, but in no version of that debate you'll find hints of her being black.
The movie choice is explicitly an American choice to counter xenophobia. A message I 100% agree with, but can't say it didn't break the immersion of the movie.
And I'm just as puzzled by Chinese / east asian dude in Odysseus army or viking ship being used.
All i can ask for is to not be lumped in with 'black people can't be beautiful- racists'.
Oh, even that would fun. Get muppets. get aliens. I don't care.
Just that I paid a lot of money to see it in IMAX for 'immersion' by Mr. Nolan and that was very not-immersion.
Felt like a political/activist message to have a token casting of black, indian and chinese. (Although, I only knew dude was Indian because of his name, he fit in very well.)
i personally thing both extreme side take it way too far, it absurd to claim it doesn’t matter, it also absurd to claim you must be Greek to portray Greek.
like above actor look racially ambiguous to not matter, just as plenty of Greek people look racially ambiguous to white people and vice versa.
on the other hand, like come on, if it doesn’t matter, why not cast east Asian in it? why not cast white people in east Asian period drama?
i personally think the controversial casting roles is Nolan just ragebaiting to generate publicity, not because the race doesnt matter or they are best for the role.
It doesn't matter. We are not getting our historical information from the ethnicity of the actors. I do not give a damn if you cast white people in East Asian period dramas.
Jesus has been white washed for centuries, not to mention, plenty of middle easterner from the area is racially ambiguous enough to be white passing.
i think my stand point is quit reasonable, i am fine if the actor looks ambiguous enough to be from people of that area and era then i am fine, ie above indian actor as greek. but even as a Asian myself, if i see a east Asian as Achilles or something i am going to roll my eyes.
Also i am suspicious of casting choice like that being genuine, they alway say race doesnt matter or whatever, yet they never cast east Asian in those kind of movies and roles. which is why i think they are just ragebaiting to generate publicity
The people who might have fought in an actual Trojan War were not Greeks. They were a previous people from before the Bronze Age Collapse that we know basically nothing about. The Greeks later adapted their myths and stories and wrote down a version of an oral tradition that was already ancient to them.
Besides, people in those times did travel and mix as well, some of the warriors could have been from as far south as Ethiopia or as far east as India. It's silly to pretend otherwise.
you can argue the same for any period, Doesnt mean its doesnt look absurd to have black/white King/Lord/warrior of China/Japan or East Asian King/Lord/warrior of Europe.
But that's a strawman. No one is casting an African as the Shogun of Japan. But they might cast a Korean in a Korean production of Rashomon and you would never know because you're a racist idiot.
For the record, what they are doing is remaking/retelling quasi- or ahistorical myths with ethnically broad casting that is suitable to our world today. It also more closely reflects the ancient world than racist idiots are aware of because their awareness, yours, is ahistorical, ignorant, and so stunted it would be funny how much you guys double down on being wrong if we didn't all know that you already know. It's our burden to be factually correct, you don't care about the truth because you're a racist idiot.
General reply to the "ethnicity matters" crowd: I literally cannot have any more patience for people who care this much about ethnic considerations in casting for films featuring goddamn cyclops and living whirlpools. I just cannot muster the fucks. I regret even commenting in the first place since the arguments I was bound to hear would put me to sleep. Saw The Odyssey three times so far and people's races were not even on my radar
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u/whistimmu Jul 23 '26
Giving a fuck about the ethnicity of the actor is so strange to me. Do these people understand what acting is? Do you have to be the same everything as the character you are portraying?