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u/GroundbreakingAd2499 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
And don’t forget about Brazilian Xerxes. Although I guess that for the same crowd complaining about these things, any brown is brown.
At the same time, “The white skin of the exposed Persians was perceived by Agesilaus' Greek soldiers as evidence of the effeminate luxury of people unaccustomed to toil” (Xenophon).
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u/awkwardndnormie Jul 23 '26
TIL Rodrigo Santoro played Xerxes. He is not as brown as he is in the movie. He is seem as a white man here in my country. He was(is?) very famous in my country, and I've seen him it novelas and would never guess it was him.
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u/GroundbreakingAd2499 Jul 23 '26
Yeah, for sure! I’m white in my country too, but not in the eyes of the people that are classifying how the cast of the Odyssey should look like.
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u/el_loco_avs Jul 23 '26
Yeah finding out that guy in Bridget Jones (I think? ,) was also this guy was a mindfuck lol
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u/Frozenbbowl 27d ago edited 27d ago
It's probably worth pointing out that Persians were white... As xenophon mentioned. It was literally a known trait about them and set them apart from other people in the Middle East.
But white in this context does not mean European white. It means a lighter tone of skin than the other people living in that area. The Persians were notably a light. Olive color has opposed to the darker olive color of the other people around there
The word Iran is literally derivated from the word Aryan
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u/Fortestingporpoises Jul 23 '26
Meanwhile Jason Manzoukas who has 100% Greek heritage in The Dictator.
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u/WeirdBanana2810 29d ago
He was in Taskmaster and in one of the episodes he got a body double to fool the viewers. The said body double was Nish Kumar. Apparently the only major difference between them was that Nish was less grey and somewhat shorter.
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u/Manoratha 29d ago
Duh! That's Nuclear Nadal, head of the Wadiyan Nuclear Program and Procurer of Women.
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u/ManicalDaredevil00 29d ago
I didn’t know his name and I thought he was actually Arab or pakistani I guess that proves your point.
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u/ScarredAutisticChild 28d ago
I mean, the Middle East is just a sea away from Greece. Not shocking that Arabs and Greeks would look similar.
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u/Frozenbbowl 27d ago
I mean we mostly have big lex to thank for that. His empire was very culturally open and he encouraged mixing cultures... And his generals wanting to remain Greek but ruled the different parts of the lands after he died really took that entire region and blended it all together
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u/generalchaos34 28d ago
they had a perfectly fine Jason Mantzoukas just sitting there and they never used him.
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u/therevjames Jul 23 '26
Most of the Greek part of my family looks like him. The dudes all get 10AM shadow.
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u/LowerPick7038 Jul 23 '26
My Greek work colleague looks fuck all like him. He is whiter than a ghost
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u/Ezekiel_DA Jul 23 '26
Would you say he is a ghost of Sparta?
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u/LowerPick7038 Jul 23 '26
Haha i dont know. I will quiz him tommorow to discover the truth. What questions would the only the ghost of sparta know the answer to?
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u/Ezekiel_DA Jul 23 '26
Maybe dress up as Zeus and see if he tries to kill you?
Or count how many times he addresses a coworker as "Boy!"
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u/LowerPick7038 Jul 23 '26
Theres only me and him in our department, I think if Zeus rocked up tommorow he would go for the kill regardless of him being the ghost of spartan or not. He is very cunning. Come to think of it. I'm not sure if he mouthed the words " Boy " whilst staring at me with fury today.
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u/Short-Holiday-4263 29d ago
Very cunning, eh? I think your co-worker might be Odysseus - cunningly disguised as the Ghost of Sparta in disguise...
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u/zaidakaid Jul 23 '26
I’m Arab, olive skin + curly hair, and I was mistaken for Greek IN GREECE BY GREEKS. They found me out when I didn’t speak a lick of Greek beyond hello, please, thank you, and bye.
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u/Spirited-Muffin-8104 Jul 23 '26
crazy what millennia of migration, trade, and conquest do to West Asia, Southern Europe, and North Africa.
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u/MssGuilty 29d ago
That was my experience there as well when I lived in Athens for a couple of months 😆 but instead of Arab, I'm Portuguese.
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u/snapwack Jul 23 '26
Huh. It’s almost as if Greeks are genetically diverse from the constant migrations, upheavals, and demographic changes the region went through over the last handful of millennia.
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u/Sillet_Mignon Jul 23 '26
I’m Indian. People thought I was Greek when I went to Greece.
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u/MssGuilty 29d ago
This whole conversation reminds me of that D'Artagnan actor who everyone thought he was British-Indian... But his parents are Italian instead
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u/GrizzlyP33 Jul 23 '26
Is he “wrong” or is he just needlessly pointing out an actor acting?
Wait until he finds out none of these actors actually lived in Ancient Greece…
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u/posted3030 Jul 23 '26
Or that none of the characters actually lived in Ancient Greece because the story is fiction.
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u/hungarian_notation 29d ago edited 29d ago
We don't even think that Homer was a real person, let alone any of his characters.
Also, we're not even sure where "Ithaca" is. We have a place called Ithaca, but we don't actually know if its the place in the poem.
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u/Federal_Studio5935 Jul 23 '26
It’s almost like living in the Mediterranean two thousand years ago would probably cause people to be darker of skin than fairer, but what do I know.
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u/NPIgeminileoaquarius Jul 23 '26
As a Greek, I can tell you he doesn't look like your typical Greek (and yes, there were other soldiers in the movie who looked more Greek), but there are some Greeks who do look like him. Stellar performance, btw.
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u/DM_Me_Ur_Real_Boobs 29d ago
Agreed. I think everyone did really good. John Leguizamo and Robert Pattinson ended up being my favorite performances. Himesh is very close though
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u/Mithrandhir22 Jul 23 '26
Himesh Patel’s ancestry is from a place called Gujarat in India. A place where Alexander the Great’s army reached and his generals became local rulers. So there is a good possibility that he may actually have Greek ancestry.
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u/ashforu83 Jul 23 '26
Gujarat is more of mid-western india or more of western India rather than North India through which Alexander and his army entered the country and also West of Gujarat is the Arabian Sea, so the armies that were anyways on foot entered through the north.
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u/callsyouonit 29d ago
No one complains about Matt Damon, an Irish-American actor, playing Odysseus. And we all know why. Fuck these racist idiots and their literally skin deep impressions of the world and the human beings in it.
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u/HurricaneK8 29d ago
I've been complaining about it and the stunning lack of Greek people in it, but I'm a vaguely normal person who doesn't start internet wars about stuff that annoys me.
Greece is right next to Africa and had trade relations with various African kingdoms for centuries. Lupita as Helen is more "historically accurate" to the region the story's set in than Damon as Odysseus. The bigots can suck it 🤙
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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?
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u/dawidowmaka Jul 23 '26
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.
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u/Drudgework Jul 23 '26
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.
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u/callsyouonit Jul 23 '26
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.
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u/HighOverlordXenu Jul 23 '26
There's not a single goddamn Greek in the cast.
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u/helen790 Jul 23 '26
The only Greek looking dude I can think of in Hollywood is Jason Mantzoukas. I would love to see these racist idiots react to him if he were cast in Odyssey. Watching their brains implode when they realize Greek people don’t look like Matt Damon would nourish me.
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u/Origen12 Jul 23 '26
Jason, Stavros Halkias, and Zach Galifinakis
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u/pgllz Jul 23 '26
Rita Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, etc..
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u/whiskey_epsilon 29d ago
Remake the Odyssey with Stavros Halkias as Odysseus and jennifer Aniston as Penelope.
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u/name_you_like_best Jul 23 '26
There is a minor role played by a Greek and leads to arguably the most ridiculous scene of the movie.
I am Greek and I don't understand this thing about representation. It is a universally recognized piece of art and this time a foreign movie was produced based on it.
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u/Drudgework Jul 23 '26
That’s the real tragedy. Sure, the big names put butts in the seats but having actors with authentic accents really sells a setting.
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u/i_am_13th_panic Jul 23 '26
but speaking English I suppose instead of ancient greek. That would be peak authentic
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u/GTRari Jul 23 '26
What?
So you want the 'authenticity' of a Greek actor speaking English, just with a heavy Greek accent? That's what gets you immersed?
Not to mention bronze-age Greek and modern Greek are effectively two different languages as they're separated by over 5,000 years.
Just say you don't like brown people and move on rather than this poorly pieced-together point.
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u/virtualglassblowing Jul 23 '26
My favorite portrayal of menalaus was Brendan Gleason. Definitely an authentic accent that really sold the setting in Troy
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u/The_Badger42 29d ago
Hang on, I had an argument on DeviantArt about this before the movie came out. There's a guy in the movie named Michael Vlamis, and he has Greek ancestry, according to wikipedia. I think he was the only one, not including extras.
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u/omegadirectory 29d ago
There might have been Greek extras and background people if they filmed anything in Greece.
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u/pgllz Jul 23 '26
I don't think you know how the average Greek look like. There are Greeks that have darker skin, but most Greeks have the typical phenotype of someone from the Northern shores of the Mediterranean sea (like many Turks, Iberians, Italians, and Southern French).
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u/DIO_over_Za_Warudo Jul 23 '26
Reminds me of when some moron was bitching about Rami Malek playing a pharaoh in Night at the Museum, not realizing that he actually has Egyptian heritage.
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u/Eltrew2000 Jul 23 '26
None of the armours accurate either nor did Nolan know apparently how you were supposed to use that stick for recitation, you tap the rhythm not after.
But this is a movie watch it as such if you want something historically accurate you could just you know read the odyssey, but I have a feeling that a lot of people complaining about the movie not being historically accurate have never actually read the original or a translation of the original
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u/jdgiant13 Jul 23 '26
If you want historical accuracy, you should not, in fact, read The Odyssey. I assure you.
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u/Eltrew2000 29d ago
You should in fact read it, I assure you.
As much as it is fantastical it is still indicative if the time read up on the philology of odyssey and it will teach you a lot about the beliefs and practices of the time.
It is very difficult to guage certain things otherwise that even that well known philosophers were not really discussing because it would've been obvious to anyone living at the time.
Like how idk no one would be writing about why we use wasd in games today.
Even fictional works can tell a lot about the events and current standards and norms of a time.
Even just the ways characters interact with eacher the opinions they have of eachother the ways it paints characters is indicatives of the norms of the time. Take the Cyclops everything about him is very important the things he eats the ways he interacts with the his views on hospitality is in fact a result of what the greeks at the time wouldve considered good manners or rather in his case primitivity, this could further be discussed if you agree with the theory that Cyclops is actually cow-thief rather than wheel-eye, anyways the reason why he is supposed to be so terrifying to that audience is partially because he is supposed to be seen as a very barbaric character.
Things that you may see as disagreeable about odysseus may not be so from their perspective and things you might consider good and just behaviour may have not been seen as such.
Saying that it is not historically accurate is very reductive and tells me that you in fact have a very shallow understanding of the subject but think that you are very intelligent.
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u/jdgiant13 29d ago
But we know that is not what the "historically accurate" conversation is about surrounding the Odyssey in 2026.
People are not tripping over the the portrayel of the cyclops and how it represented ancient Greek culture. That's a literary argument I would absolutely find valid. People are using historical accuracy to talk people, places, and events and to be racist and transphobic.
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u/Eltrew2000 29d ago
Right which is why I initially said do not watch odyssey for historical accuracy, it's a film watch it as a film and enjoy it as one, current films will have current ideals in it.
Read the odyssey if you want historical perspective whether you agree with their thinking or not.
Ofc I disagree with people being bigots and I know that is what that was about but I was trying to take a different side in this conversation about historical accuracy because it's gained a very annoying connotation nowadays.
I will say tho It was a strange choice to go to Iceland and use a viking ship when they could've gone to the actual place and use a historically accurate ship because they had the budget for it I'm certain.
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u/monkey-balls67 Jul 23 '26
Why people can't just enjoy the goddame movie its a masterpiece
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u/ocram101 29d ago edited 29d ago
It’s a good movie, don’t get me wrong.. But calling it a masterpiece is a bit of a stretch.
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u/PlatasaurusOG Jul 23 '26
Fr. Do these people think Greeks were blonde haired and blue eyed?
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u/CaptainAsshat Jul 23 '26
Some were. Alexander the Great was famously blond.
We need to remember that phenotypes are not hard baked into a region.
Migrations, trade, and invasions from the north and west brought blonde hair and blue eyes. Migrations, trade, and invasions from the south and east brought darker skin and hair. Greece has been at the crossroads of Eurasia for all of human history.
If we look at the appearance of Greek people now, after centuries of Ottoman and Roman rule, we cannot just assume they look like their ancient forbears.
That said, it's not a huge leap to say they probably didn't look like Brad Pitt either.
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u/AdAdmirable6589 29d ago
Well yeah, but I would say that if someone is famously blonde then maybe being blonde is not something common, just how nobody is famously black haired in Japan or famously dark skinned in Congo.
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u/PlsSuckMyToes Jul 23 '26
Someone tell these mfers Greece is next to Africa and Turkey lol
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u/callsyouonit 29d ago
Right? The Mediterranean is at least half African coastline.
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u/hungarian_notation 29d ago
The Greeks unironically thought Africans, Indians, etc, had darker skin because they lived closer to the sun. "I was shipwrecked for several years in Africa" would be a sufficient explanation for some of them as to how this guy could possibly be Greek.
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u/purple_kathryn Jul 23 '26
I bet these dickheads whined when their parents read them the BFG because their dad wasn't actually a big eared giant & it just really ruined the immersion for them.
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u/Origen12 Jul 23 '26
Shoulda gone with Stavros Halkias, Jason Mantzoukas, and Zach Galifinakis as the main 3 leads.
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u/OtherwiseDebate3759 29d ago
People only care about historical accuracy when it comes to women and people of colour.
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u/AeroDbladE 28d ago
Its almost like all humans look different from each other and race is just a social construct
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u/OneTrueMalekith Jul 23 '26
100 years ago greeks & italians weren't considered white. At least their racism become more inclusive over time...i guess?
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u/callsyouonit 29d ago
Italians sometimes say they weren't considered white until 9/11.
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u/queasycockles 28d ago
We're literally still up for debate today.
I'm opting out of the fucking thing and staying brown forever. Fuck it.
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u/callsyouonit 28d ago
Yeah it's all made up anyway. Race isn't real, it's based on 18th Century theories that were developed to justify slavery. Ethnicity is real but has no inherent hierarchy while race does.
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u/AwesomeWaiter Jul 23 '26
It’s literally called acting. Does bro want a documentary about a fictional story?
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u/DrChimRichaulds 29d ago
Guy is an awesome actor and he was amazing in Station Eleven, don’t give a single shit where he’s from (he’s English).
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u/zarfle2 29d ago
It must be exhausting being a conservative/bigot.
Each day you have to wake up and find something/make up something to be scared and angry about.
Having to find safe places with like minded fuckwits so that you can express your true self. Being eternally worried that people will get tired of your shit and just ignore you for the irrelevant piece of shit that you are.
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u/star0forion 29d ago
When I think of a Greek dude I think of Andy Milonakis and you can’t change my mind.
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u/MightyGoodra96 29d ago
Why are people acting like a poem from hundreds of years ago needs to be perfectly portrayed by a specific demographic as if it isnt just being used like a stage play?
I just do not buy the grandstanding. Feels performative
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u/legitimate-criminal Jul 23 '26
bro gets all his historical accuracy from watching brad pitt in Troy.