First time seeing a filmed adaptation?
Which ones?
Please explain to me why in a sea on inaccuracies (armor, ships, weapons, a bunch of white men of northern european descent etc.) the casting of a black woman is when suddenly people start caring about faithfulness to a 3000 year old fantasy story.
And what even is the original text? Did you read it? Or did you read one of the countless translations based on other translations and/or retellings? The story probably went through countless revisions before it was first translated into a non-greek language.
And even more before it was first written down, considering the poem was more than likely told orally for a long time prior.
First time seeing a filmed adaptation?
No, this is based on how Nolan is promoting it, with everything based in either the text of the story or historical evidence.
IIRC, in Homer's time there were multiple versions of Greek around as well.
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I already asked if anyone has a better academic knowledge of Homer than I do. Have you heard Nolan speak about the film? He's been quite clear about why he has made the creative decisions he's made, and someone also referenced that earlier in this thread. So, why don't you go back and find out your answers for yourself instead of just being rude.
And? No adaptation is ever fully faithful to original texts that are entirely intact and easily found, let alone something like epic oral poetry from thousands of years ago. Moreover, even a feature film depicting actual history, rather than mythology, is never fully faithful to “original texts” or events—nor should it be. Slavishly following the “original source” would yield nothing manageable and rarely more coherent than bits of things strung together with far less actual connection than non-historians (so the overwhelming majority of humanity) think.
What’s important (though even this much is not required of an adaptation) are choices compatible with the broad themes of the source. In the case of Helen, she only needs to be considered very beautiful—enough to inspire the events in the Iliad. For that, the casting is excellent. It really is as simple as that.
Second time---I was responding to the idea that Nolan is touting research and how he based everything on the story or historical research.
If he did historical research it ended with him deciding the bronze age doesn't look cool enough because nothing seen in the trailer is period accurate.
This movie makes zero effort to resemble anything close to reality which brings me back to the question you refused to answer, why is the casting of a black woman the one thing many people complain about?
We all know the answer, it's racism, plain and simple.
And it changes nothing about my point. My MA thesis was about adapting historical events into feature films and how much the filmmakers should worry about “faithfulness to the sources”. More than for an adaptation of pure fiction, considerably less than many people think. Despite what any filmmaker says, including Nolan (one of my absolute favourites), “accuracy” (an already weakened notion for fiction) is always subject to be sacrificed for dramatic and/or aesthetic reasons. And that’s as it should be. He’s not making a documentary (a whole genre of film that gets far too much trust for accuracy than it deserves, in any case).
Historians get hired as consultants all the time for films dealing with historical events (or adjacent, like Homer) and, invariably, they are overruled on dramatic or aesthetic grounds.
This is a nothing burger that is mainly bothering the kind of people who don’t deserve to be catered to. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but…
It's Pavlovian. This kind of thing is done deliberately to provoke a response.
Now, there's a movie so utterly fascinating at how wrong it is at every turn.
Yes it is, but we weren't discussing people complaining about the casting.
I agree with what you are saying. I'm only referencing CN and asking if he's done what he's said he's done. What Nolan has said is that the movie and designs are either historically based on the period after the Odyssey was written or based on the period when the Trojan War would have taken place. That's how he justified his choice of ship and armor designs. What the initial discussion was, was
- Is it possible for a black woman to have been Helen of Troy? (I argued that it was based on my amateur historical knowledge and I asked if the description of Helen having white arms was always there in the written work or if it was something that had crept in over time. If it didn't, then my argument was that Nolan is wrong in his assertion.)
The discussion about the fleet and clothing designs was a different discussion but one I would hold up to the same scrutiny.
Is this a nit? Of course it is, that's what we debate on this board. The answer won't affect whether I enjoy the movie or not.
What, the cyclops' eye is the wrong color?
What, the cyclops' eye is the wrong color?
A Cyclops' eye is always hot pink.
I assume the characters are like the writer unless the writer says otherwise.
For example, when I read an Octavia Butler science fiction story, I assume all of the characters are black unless she says otherwise. And this fits with her being mad when the cover art for one of her books came out, and all of the characters were white.
This is the simplest approach for me. Start with the writer and then if they say that their characters are different from them, then go with it. This is exactly how I would approach reading the Odyssey.
But if you're going to get away from material, then the story better be good.
Interview with the Vampire the TV series is a great, current example of changing the race of one of the characters but then making adaptation choices to make it work. It wasn't a simple race swap. The story was changed to reflect the race change in the adaptation. This is the right way, in my mind, to do these race swaps.
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“Race swaps” only need explanation if there is a specific reason for the character’s race being important.
If a novel has a white character in the role of a journalist and race is irrelevant to the character’s behaviour, beliefs, etc., then casting a Black, Asian, Hispanic, Indigenous, or other person requires no explanation whatsoever. Same for a gender swap.
There are situations where either type of swap is probably less workable, but they are FAR rarer than many people believe. Especially with fiction adaptations.
Neither did he, allegedly.
