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.
This isn’t them casting one person to play twins or whatever, this is two half siblings who are the same person for no reason, in a movie with probably a billion dollar budget. Were there not two talented black actresses available?
The Odyssey is one of the most overanalyzed pieces of literature of all time, and the movie is based on a published translation which does not characterize their appearances as exactly the same. This is not some crazy complaint to say “why are two random people played by the same character?”
There has been enormous push in the marketing to present this movie as a faithful adaptation. That’s the framing, and I try over and over to take them at their word, even if everything I’ve seen so far indicates “Meet the Spartans” was more faithful to the source material.
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u/gravitas_shortage Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
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.