Helen’s mother was a Greek and Zeus seems to be Greek in myths where he takes on human forms, so it makes a lot of sense for Helen to be portrayed as Greek
You could read it; it's really not that dense or anything.
Anyway, Odysseus and crew do swing by north Africa to "restock" (rape and pillage, the text is quite clear) on their way back from Troy. I do not recall anything there to say they looked different than anyone else.
What we have as most current versions of the Iliad and Odyssey was not written down it was passed down for hundreds of years which Ancient Greek versions of a bard would sing from memory and almost always add in improvisations. Whatever claim that anything in the poem refers to ethnicities may have been added centuries after the Poems creation and that is not even accounting for what is lost translation. The poem itself is also not that descriptive, at least when it comes to people specific physical features. It spends more on detailing their armors than it does telling you what Achilles looked like, other than making a point to say that Ajax Telamon was basically a giant, and Ajax the lesser was not( a lot, poor little Ajax) their identifying features are not that prominent.
It's mythology. It's different from fiction. The Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that it was real. In fact, the Epic Cycle of the Trojan wars was seen as an account of historical facts until the Middle Ages/Renaissance.
And even today, scholars debate whether those epics have some degree of historicity or not.
The Ancient Greeks and Roman’s believed that the Trojan war was real—they didn’t believe that the writings of someone they knew to be an epic poet, not an historian.
Hellenic scholars, Alexandrian critics, and Romans like Herodotus and Thucydides did not necessarily take Homer seriously, since they could look to inconsistencies in details pertaining to genealogies, topography, and so on.
The average Greek probably looked at it the way we look at the writings of Chopper Read: “never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.”
I commented in order to underline that fiction and myth are two very different concepts.
Besides, the historicity of numerous aspects of the Trojan wars has been debated even today by specialists that now much more about this than either one of us.
And the same can be said about the Bible, particularly about the New Testament. I'm agnostic, leaning atheist, and I don't really believe in miracles, but that doesn't mean I don't think that Paul, Jesus or Pontius Pilate weren't real people.
Well, I have read The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. Have you?
And mythology is indeed different from fiction. The cultural weight of myths is completely different when compared to a work of fiction. The relationship the Ancient Greeks had with their myths was completely different from our relationship with some fictitious reality, such as Harry Potter.
The GREEKS have right to decide which part of Homer can be taken with artistic liberty, not being lectured by yanks that not hiring Greek actors are important for artistic freedom
Also for.some.reason live action.One Piece dgaf about "artistic license" while choosing their actors to fit the author's vision on the cultures the characters supposed to be, so it's not an excuse for something related to cultural heritage that Americans and Hollywood had no say on it
Its the setting not necessarily the historical accuracy. You have dragons in Game of Thrones but that doesnt mean you can have fighter jets and nuclear bombs, it betrays the setting of the movie
Why does it matter though? It's a fictional story, Helen of Troy wasn't a real person, the Odyssey is just a story. It's all a fantasy. Unless a director specifically says they're going for historical accuracy then I don't care how historically inaccurate it is if that was never the point but doubly so for a piece of fiction.
It is an adaption of The Odyssey so you would expect it to be true to that particular setting. There is no indication that this is Christopher Nolans spin on The Odyssey and that he is loosely following the original but writing his own story, its just an adaptation. As an adaptation it has to be accurate to its original and thats what Ive been trying to say lmao.
Has he said it's going to be accurate to the original? The fact he's changed quite a lot of other things shows that probably wasn't his intention. Also, adaptions change things all the time, LOTR, Harry Potter, Marvel, The Boys, The Walking Dead. All different on screen Vs the source material. Some major changes, total different characters and plot points. Very few adaptions are accurate. Sure, some are but it's rare.
That Nolan guy never was and will be accurate. Sadly he will do what he wants..
But I'll take an example with Harry Potter latest issue with Snape.
Snape have been described as a tall white pale man with big nose etc etc etc, you can't change that character's attributes to whatever you want. If you will make anything related it must be a person having these exact attributes.
Now let's talk for Helen of Troy, Achilles etc etc.
If Nolan wants something different he should make all the cast black. I would accept that. But he will give us an Ancient Greek Black (which in history never had), a small skinny Achilles (which in books he was tall af), He gave Steel frickin armor in Bronze age... IN BRONZE AGE and many more incredible bad takes.
If he made a move exactly like the legendary Troy with Brad Pitt I would go with 1000% but now that's Raceslop as latest movies...
Greeks managed to stop a film production cause the actors were bad big time and I believe we can do that again.
If they want to make a movie it should be correct in all aspects adaptation or not.
But it's not a real story, it's a fictional one, there aren't mythological monsters in Greece or Turkey. Why does accuracy not matter there but it matters when it comes to the skin colour or someone? Where do we draw the line? Should they be a Greek actor or would a white Scandinavian woman draw the same amount of controversy because I highly doubt they would
Ok cool. Let's set Harry Potter in LA, make the hogwarts castle a single conference room, and you know, just destroy all the aesthetics of it. It's not real, so it's fine.
That's a much bigger change than just changing the skin colour of a character so it's not really a comparable argument but it would also be fine if someone did that, they'd be a bit fucked given they probably don't have the rights to make a Harry Potter story.
That's not what I mean. Coriolanus from 2011 is a great movie even though Ralph Fiennes is a Roman general with a machine gun. Only an idiot would criticize that movie based on it not being historically accurate because duh, it's not trying to be.
Seems only some things are meant to be historically accurate while others are thrown to the winds. So you cant really fault people for not understanding what was the intentions are when the process is all over the place.
Costumes used, the ship isn't even greek, introducing own ideas to the story, casting choices. It's obvious he's making a Nolan movie inspired by an old tale.
You can fault people for a lot of things here. I think it's pretty obvious that a story based on a Greek myth was never going to meet the threshold of "historically accurate".
A movie might just be loosely based on real events, or even apocryphal ones, but that doesn't give anyone the right to cast Jackie Chan as Martin Luther King just because it might not be meant to be "historically accurate".
And before you rant about "mythology, blah, blah, not real, artistic licence, blah", yes, is it mythology, set in the Mediterranean. It would be like casting an African actress to play Amaterasu from Japanese mythology.
You could definately cast Jackie Chan as MLK, or even better; a white person, if there is creative intent behind the choice and you aim to tell the audience something or provide a certain perspective by doing it.
No, Helen hatched from an egg, and Greek people don’t do that, but swans do, and Zeus was in swan form when he got Leda pregnant, so it makes no sense for her to look Greek.
It makes perfect sense for her to look like a swan.
But there’s a definitive narrative tradition. Just because Rome and Juliet aren’t real, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re medieval Veronans, making a depiction of Romeo as an Italian more accurate than one of him as Chinese
nuh uh he was a Swan when Helen was conceived so the fact that we they havent casted a half swan actress as Helen of troy is offensive to me. Justice for Swans!
And in the many Greco-Roman myths where a god impregnates a human woman as an animal or other non-human creature, the child is always a human, and almost always a Greek or Roman.
The term originated in the 1520s as a direct translation (or calque) of the Latin word semideus (literally "half-god"). The Roman poet Ovid coined the Latin term to refer to lesser deities, and it closely mirrors the ancient Greek equivalent, hemitheos (from hemi- meaning "half" and theos meaning "god"). No it existed before the books and has a greek equivalent
The modern conception of a demigod as a distinct species originates from fiction adaptations, earlier instances of hemitheos should be considered more like Homeric epithets
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u/Sagelegend 13d ago
Why would you hire a greek actress? Helen’s father was a swan.