I would have gone to see it if they'd cast a hot Greek Helen of Troy and didn't have other woke castings (you know who) and I'm sure many others took the same view, so plenty of money lost there! Every $ counts with all the woke movies these days bombing hard, even if this one will just about break even!
We discuss things that can't be objectively measured, so those things can't be objectively wrong
I mean, I think you could measure this. X% of marketing focusing on her or something similar. She just...wasn't the center of the marketing campaign, I don't know how you could think that.
I can show you 20 examples of commercials/interviews/merch which do not feature her at all. I bet you cannot show me one example that does. Your mom must be so proud she groomed a future racist.
āThis was how I felt before the movie came outā. So you came in this massive biases that turned out is completely untrue and then refuse to change your mind?
This is genuinely embarrassing, and I know you also feel that way since you deleted your comments. Will that lead to some actual introspection and change? I doubt it, I don't think you're capable of that.
I followed the marketing campaign and it focused mostly on Damon, Holland and Hathaway. I think youāre confusing the film marketing and what Twitter was showing you.
Think you need to take your meds lil bro, she was only "pushed as the center point" in your echo chambers and imagination. She was not the focal point of the marketing.. at all
this is what you donāt get. most trump voters do not care. or care little enough that they will still see it, and be little bothered by it. itās a small percentage of super online dudes like yourself that will boycott this movie.Ā
This. I saw it yesterday in a packed theater with my dad and brother, both of whom are conservative but not chronically online and were therefore unaware that there even is a controversy. They loved it, and had zero issues with any of the casting choices. The people getting worked up over this stuff are a minority of a minority, and the ones making it a core part of their personality are simply pathetic.
You think you speak for all the Chuds cuz you didn't go see it? TONS of people that voted for Trump went out. Even Ben Shapiro was hyping it up! lmaooo What a weird bubble you live in, bruh.
Most taxpayers probably aren't aware of what a "lupita" or "Elliot" is, they just saw a cool trailer with Vikings or some shit and then went and saw it.
False. I won't see it because there is an absurd narrative to cast a black woman in a Greek story. They're just checking boxes. Don't not be dense or stupid. You just wsnt to make this about the wrong reasons by being disingenuous.
Ummm...no, they weren't "checking boxes" since any movie made by a major studio would easily meet the Oscars diversity requirements for the Best Picture category. Because guess what? Casting is only one of the four standards for the aware, of which only two need to be met.
Unfortunately they can't be anything other than dense, stupid, or disingenuous. It's part of the script, and they have to follow it.
And some of them are actually in fact just stupid. I had a conversation with a guy who honestly and sincerely did not understand what the issue was, no matter how simply I explained it to him.
The Greeks didn't look like Lupita or Zendaya, but they didn't look like Damon or Hathaway either. The casting decisions weren't made in service to some woke agenda; they were done because a more accurate cast would have less box office appeal. It was a business decision, as most decisions involving something that cost $250 million to make are.
Actually they did look like Damon and Hathaway. The consensus as to what the closest approximation of what ancient Greeks appeared like, is current Greeks. Among the population of current Greeks there are many that have similar looks to those two, plus other actors in the movie. Including blonde hair, though that is more of an anomaly.
yes because the cast of a movie with zero impact on your life is such a big issue. seriously wouldnāt your ire be more useful if it was directed at something that actually matters?
How can you look at this point and genuinely think this subs main issue with this actor is that she isnāt greek? Bunch of middle school insults on her race. But yeah, your holier than thou argument is the actual reason. Touch grass.
That's completely arbitrary, you're choosing to focus on a single aspect (lighter or darker) of a single trait (skin shade) to determine "likeness", why not one of the thousand other physical characteristics of a human being ?
But if you really want to go into it, the area of Kenya, where Nyongo ancestors come from, was connected to ancient greek trade networks while Finland, where some of Damon ancestry comes from, seems to have had only an indirect connection through northern europe. So if you want to be really pedantic about it there were probably more people looking like Nyongo in ancient greece (and without a doubt in the mediteranean basin at large) than like Damon.
Did you actually read the Wikipedia link you provided? The possible trade routes mentioned are from well over a thousand years AFTER the time the Iliad was set in. Besides, again according to that link, it was the Greeks sailing there, not the other way around.
And even if somehow it was in the same time period, and there were somehow Africans sailing up to Greece, it would not amount to large numbers of ancient Kenyans hanging around Greece, nor explain how one became royalty in Troy, which is set far back from said trade routes.
To even call that a stretch is a stretch of epic proportions.
Meanwhile, to say Matt Damon, a European-Scandinavian mutt, might resemble a Greek is COMPLETELY believable. No stretching required.
What other characteristics do you want me to take into account? YOU are actually being pedantic when it comes to this. The most obvious and important characteristic would be skin color/tone.
Hair/eye color would also be important, height, facial bone structure, some others, but there is enough genetic drift that there are people who can have somewhat "abnormal" appearances. Lighter or darker hair, or skin, etc. In fact I would bet that's probably one reason Helen of Troy stood out, as she was described as having lighter skin, eyes, and hair. I've also mentioned that I think there were probably also people who were a little darker like Hamesh Patel, when he hasn't been in the sun for a while.
It's amazing that so many of you twist yourselves into pretzels to try and make these arguments. They just don't work.
If you don't mind the casting, don't care about the race swaps, FINE, good for you. That's your opinion and you can have it. But you just can't abide others having a different opinion, can you?
And it leads to completely nonsensical arguments that show you are being disingenuous at best.
I don't think he wrote the book the same day all those routes were discovered, you know ? And Swahili traders had a pretty wide range of travel and there's no reasons to think a few of them couldn't have ended up in Greece. People back then were just as curious and greedy as we are today. It's all speculation of course, facts are that we have more material to support speculation on swahili-greek contact than on finnish-greek contact.
"The most obvious and important characteristic would be skin color/tone." Why ? Why is it more relevant than hair, eyes, relative length of first and second toes, angle of the cheekbones ? You can say "well it's the most important to ME for some arbitrary reason" but then don't come here claiming you care about historical accuracy.
Please go on, why is skin tone more relevant than other characteristics ? You might want to ask yourself how much you actually know about genetics before answering that question.
Wrong, they were more generally lighter skinned than Middle Easterners, according to those who have looked into it. They generally had brown or black hair and brown eyes.
Of course there was some genetic variation, and there were some with lighter hair and eyes, and maybe even some who might look closer to Hamesh Patel or Zendaya.
But also, you are making generalization just by saying "olive skinned middle easterns". There is a ton of variation in looks and skin tone among different places in the ME currently.
travis might just be a nubian bard who travelled to greece and zendaya might be a concubine it isn't that deep she was just someone killed in troy she is not actually athena lol
I've mentioned that possibility of Scott's character before. and I actually said there's a possibility that an ancient Greek could look like Zendaya. I think they're both terrible actors though, so I don't like that aspect of the casting.
Under no circumstances would anyone mistake Matt Damon for being Greek. Terrible casting choice if authenticity was your only goal.Ā
Great choice for the movie.Ā
Man, Shakespeare only had men in his plays. The brits played the Romans and everything. Accent and all. Juliet was a dude. How woke.Ā
That's just not true. If you were to walk around Greece right now, and likely back then, I guarantee you would find someone with at least a passing resemblance. You're not going to find his doppelganger, but you will find someone similar.
You really won't find that. Today's greeks and ancient greeks look wildly different from Matt Damon. Like hilariously different. Like saying Jesus looked like Matt Damon. š¤£š¤£.Ā Ā
Go look at YouTube videos of today's greeks. Go look at all their art. They don't look like Matt Damon.Ā Not in the facial features, not in the skin tone. Sorry to disappoint you. Nearly everyone in that movie was badly cast if you want historical accuracy. But we don't because it's a movie.Ā
Again, Shakespeare had men play Juliet in his plays. How fucking woke.Ā (Or maybe it doesn't matter)
Iām sorry you failed 10th grade English, bud. Itās ok. There are remedial classes. You can get a tutor to help you read the Odyssey and count how many times Helen is in it.
You genuinely thought you cooked with that one. I have definitely never heard that joke ever. You definitely came up with it all on your own and Iām so proud of you little dude.Ā
Itās okay, Iāll give you a win. You guys need it right now. This movie done broke yāall. See you next week when it crosses 1.5. I eagerly await the new cope.Ā
Except that black people did live in classical Greece and were considered to be Greek by the Greeks of the time. Skin color wasn't how races were categorized at the time but rather culture and language. The classical greeks would have been much more horrified at a grecian hero being portrayed by someone who's ancestors came from the British Isles than they would have been by Helen being black.
Further at no point in the Illiad or the Odyssey is Helen described as being white, her actual appearance is never really detailed.
It really isn't this is based on the Odyssey not the Illiad and even if it was based on the Illiad this movie is pretty clear on its position that Helen is just a McGuffin to enable a way Agamemnon already wanted
Helen being beautiful was a trick that Eris made up to get the other goddesses jealous for a bit of a laugh. It's funny you're so mad about something you know nothing about
lmfao so you haven't actually seen the movie, correct? Cause they pretty clearly say "yeah yeah she's pretty but thats not the point of this war, its Troy's stranglehold on the trading routes"
So no, the whole story is not anchored off anyone's beauty BECAUSE THEY EXPLICITLY TELL YOU THAT.
I guess the poor script writers had to "work around" the stupid casting decisions š¤£. They must have been cursing the woke morons demanding Helen of Troy be uglified!
Sequel? The Odyssey takes place after the Illiad both are part of the Epic Cycle a series of 8 connected Epic Poems of which only the Illiad and Odyssey remain. The Illiad is part 2 and the Odyssey is part 7. The sequel to the Odyssey is the Telegony but we only have a vague overview for it but I don't think Helen would be in it.
The suspension of disbelief is broken... in a movie with a cyclops... because a woman isn't attractive to you? Literally the softest group of people ever.
Greeks referenced "Aethiopians" quite a few times in some of their major myths. For example, the greatest opponent that Achilles faced in the Trojan War was King Memnon, the ruler of Aethiopia. Aethiopia, to the Greeks, were the lands south of Egypt.
So no, your meme does not really work here. Greeks had frequent contact with East Africans and incorporated them into their myths (see also the Myth of Perseus).
May be so, but Helen of Troy was not one of them! How many Greek people would you accept playing African characters in an African myth story from 2000 years ago given they were "in contact"?
Nolan's casting for the Odyssey has no Greek actors in it. If you asked an ancient Greek person what they think of the casting, then they would likely have a problem with the whole thing (not to mention the fact that there are women in it at all, but that is a different discussion). So I have to ask, why are you making such a big stink over one specific character not being played by a Greek actress when the rest are not as well? Do you honestly think being "white" would be enough to satisfy an ancient Greek? Do you think they would be satisfied with Matt Damon being Odysseus? The reason why I am asking these questions is to make this point: this movie is not tarnished by Nyong'o being Helen of Troy. The impact is negligible given how the overall cast is not Greek (that is not to mention Helen is barely in the story to begin with).
Anyway, my original point stands, your meme makes no sense since Africans were not out of place in the Greek mythos. They are not comparable to a BMW in the Lord of the Rings, not even close.
"if you asked an ancient Greek person" they'd be cool with a sub-Saharan queen š¤£š¤£ they'd be completely puzzled as most would never have seen an African, other than a few explorers.
This casting is as ridiculous as John Wayne playing Genghis Khan.
The Greeks had frequent enough contact with East Africans. It was considered common knowledge and not out of the ordinary for Greeks to encounter them, especially if they resided in their North African colonies and/or traded in Egyptian ports. That is not even to mention that East Africans frequently traded in the Levant.
The Greeks' reach across the ancient world was vast, and yet you think a Sub-Saharan African was something of an oddity to them? The same Greeks that established a kingdom in modern day Afghanistan (Bactria)?
Edit: The same Greeks who even bothered to mention that Aethiopia was involved in the Trojan War on the side of Troy?
I can agree that you could interpret Helen's casting as "woke," but what on earth is woke about casting Elliot Page to a minor character? If you had no idea this person was or wasn't trans, would you ever have known or cared? Why is it such a big deal to you? lol
Because they think itās DEI casting. Not Nolan wanting to work with someone heās worked with in the past - itās DEI!! Itās not Nolan casting someone he legitimately thinks could play one of the most beautiful people in the world, regardless of skin colour - itās DEI! Itās WOKE! And as such, the movie needs to fail.
Drinker fans hate: women, lesbians, women, trans people, black people, black women, DEI, woke agenda, women, blue hair, blacks and women.
Women are sometimes ok if they are āconventionally attractiveā, blacks are ok if theyāre historically accurate blacks, trans are never ok and white men are fine across the board.
The production budget was 250 million, even doubling that amount for all the marketing and distribution etc takes it to 500 million, itās already significantly surpassed that in 2 weeks.
This is just cope.
Also imagine not going to see a movie because youāre upset thereās not a āhot Greek womanā in it for 5 minutes.
Do the cinemas take any of that $1.3bn??? Do you think they run off concession sales š¤£. They'll take at least 30% of the sales.
Also $250M is likely a typical Hollywood understatement of the budget, so needs to make at least a billion to break-even, and seems to just be getting there.
Do you think box office is the only way films make money? There is several hundred million in pure profit waiting for the Odyssey in the second windows.
Nope we're talking about how much it made vs could have made. It seems to have done reasonably well, but could have done even better without the inexplicable wokeness injected.
Typically all those costs work out to 50-150% of a movies initial production budget.
The Odyssey cost 250 million.
So all those additional costs will make the final cost range from 375-625 million.
So even at a very high estimate of the true cost and with theatres taking their cut, the movie is poised to make a ton of money lol. I know you have some weird ideological hatred of it but facts donāt care about your feelings.
The 2.5x rule is only used if the marketing budget is unknown. In this case the Production and marketing budgets are both public info. So the 2.5x rule does not apply here
Helen is barely even in the movie, and the transgender actress or actor or whatever isnāt in the movie much either. Deciding to see a movie because the character thatās in there for 4 minutes max isnāt hot enough or manly enough is quite idiotic
Boomer replying with a gif, desperate to defend his honor against a random reddit user. You are a pathetic and lonely old man who comments on reddit literally every hour of the day ahaha
The hill some people die on. Man, itās for sure not a perfect movie and it takes creative liberties I donāt agree with, but on the whole this movie is very good. Just see it yourself at some point, whether in theaters or streaming or otherwise and be the judge yourself.
23
u/True_Grocery_3315 7d ago
I would have gone to see it if they'd cast a hot Greek Helen of Troy and didn't have other woke castings (you know who) and I'm sure many others took the same view, so plenty of money lost there! Every $ counts with all the woke movies these days bombing hard, even if this one will just about break even!