Christopher Nolan’s new movie, The Odyssey, could have been a billion dollar summer blockbuster, but Nolan decided to go in a different direction. 

Every guy of my generation remembers the 1963 movie, Jason and the Argonauts, and the moment that Talos moved.  Sixty years ago, Ray Harryhausen used stop-motion special effects to bring Greek mythology to life.  Special effects are vastly improved, but Nolan is blowing it with cast and source material. 

Where the Black girl at? 

Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, should be on the poster.

The actress portraying Helen of Troy, Lupita Nyong’o, isn’t a little Black, like from Libya or Egypt.  She is South of Somalia black.  Interestingly, she is a citizen of Kenya, Mexico and America.  She likes to keep her options open.

There is the expected outrage for replacing White people with Black people, but the Greeks are going a step farther.

Greek City Times:  Nolan’s Odyssey Problem: Diversity Without Greeks Is Not Diversity

The Odyssey is part of the Western Canon, and is foundational to Western civilization.  The Greeks say, ‘not so fast’. 

Nolan is absolutely entitled to cast whoever he wants.

But once a production visibly embraces the language and optics of modern diversity politics, it becomes entirely legitimate to ask a simple question: if representation matters so deeply, why does a story rooted in one of the foundational works of Greek civilisation seemingly exclude Greeks altogether?

Not one prominent ethnic Greek actor. Not one Greek-American performer. Not even a symbolic acknowledgement of the culture from which the story originates.

Hollywood and Progressive media producers like the BBC, insist on identity casting.  To me, it gets dumb when the audience can’t tell the difference.  For instance, lesbian characters should be portrayed by lesbian actresses or deaf actors should portray deaf characters.  It’s called acting because the actor is a trained professional portraying something that he is not. 

The piece in the Greek City Times asks Hollywood to play by those rules.  There are plenty of actors with Greek heritage that Nolan could have used,  but he clearly doesn’t care about cultural appropriation or casting for authenticity.

Here are some actors with Greek roots.

I don’t think Nolan ever gave it a thought, he intended to provoke. 

Is there any other reason to cast Elliot Page in an adventure epic?   Obviously content creators are having good fun imagining Elliot Page in other adventure epics.  Page in 300 is a good example.

At 5′ 1″ tall, Ellen Page was a small, slender woman.  Now that she presents as Elliot Page, she looks to be a small, slender 39 year-old man.  Page would be suitable to play an elf or halfling in a fantasy epic, but it’s not clear what role in The Odyssey is suitable.

Nolan cast for controversy or to appeal to niche audiences.

The other issue is Nolan’s choice of source material.  Stories from antiquity were passed down orally long before they were written. and often have to be pieced together from several sources.  There is not an existing manuscript of The Odyssey as a complete work.  Modern authors translate the ancient Greek to get a reliable retelling of the stories.

A hundred years ago, Edith Hamilton started with primary sources to translate Greek mythology.  Here versions are well-regarded.  The Odyssey by Homer was an epic poem in ancient Greek.  Dumping that into Google Translate doesn’t yield a readable or engaging translation.  Scholars try to make the work accessible while retaining the critical elements.

Robert Fitzgerald authored what is considered the gold standard of 20th-century translations in 1961.  Nolan chose to go with the version authored by Emily Wilson in 2017.   , it is highly musical, lyrical, and praised for its beautiful, timeless verse

This Youtube video by Midnight’s Edge explains the difference.

It’s a shame.  There aren’t many good movies coming out.  Most movies are remakes or sequels, and the adventure franchises, like Indiana Jones or Star Wars, have been squandered.  Christopher Nolan is director with an outstanding reputation.  He could have made the movie that we have been waiting for, but instead, he packed full of modern notions.