Tweet
I don't want to come across as someone who's actually offended by this in itself. I especially don't want to be associated with the OMG WHITE ERASURE crowd, that's just embarrassing. But ... well, what if he cast Peter Dinklage? Literally Peter Dinklage. I could argue that dwarves were known in antiquity--the mythical pygmies--and that Ancient Greeks, and Spartans in particular, famously liked to hump small males. Maybe all these ancient warriors gravely relating to a 4'5" male are just overwhelmed by their not-quite-awareness, rippling throughout time and space on a subliminal level, that they are talking to THE Tyrion Lannister. It's just a story, and Nolan was trying to convey an important thematic something-or-other. And absolutely none of that changes the part where I simply cannot buy Peter Dinklage as the unearthly beauty that ended the world. Broadly similar rules apply to Lupita Nyong'o. Your threshold of disbelief may vary, and I can buy that, but I can't buy that nobody can imagine why I legitimately find this daft. Like, you've got to be ****ting me here.
-
Of all of the details from a source that a live adaptation (film or stage) can choose to take artistic license with I'd have to say the personal appearance of characters will always be the least important in my eyes.
What did you think of Hamilton Elok?Comment
-
I don't know about Elok, and I have never seen Hamilton, but I thought that it was an appropriate artistic choice in that it showed the stark constrast between the words of the Founding Fathers and their actions wrt slavery and other social norms of the day.
No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.Comment
-
With Dinklage the movie would win on the grim humour front. No, I wouldn't buy him as Helena of Troy, unless it's indeed Mel Brooks' version.Originally posted by Elok View PostBlahComment
-
Dinklage is of course very conscious of his dignity and would never actually do it. Purely a thought experiment.
I think musical theater is such a damned and degraded form of art that verisimilitude is beside the point. They're all interrupting the action to start singing and dancing about what they're doing and feeling. Bah humbug and get off my lawn. If the whole cast is like that, though, and it's all deliberately re-interpreted through a modern hip-hop sensibility, then yes, it's been consciously thrown out the window in the first place. But when you have a situation where the whole cast is (to a first-order approximation) about the expected appearance, and then one character (two counting Athena but she's not even part of human society so whatevs) is black and no explanation is given, we're surely playing by different rules here? The director is making a deliberate statement with the casting. And if a statement is made, it can be critiqued, and my critique is that that sort of stunt is distracting and silly.Originally posted by Geronimo View Post
Bereta_Eder a question: it's not really appreciated in much of the US that, according to at least some of the ancient sources, Helen's beauty is almost beside the point as a reason for war. At her father's insistence, all her suitors swore to defend the winning suitor's claim on her should anyone abduct her. Even if half of Greece were not bound by oath to war, Menelaus's position of king of Sparta probably depends on his being married to the daughter of the former king of Sparta. Agamemnon would be obligated to help to avenge the insult to his family. And Agamemnon, as High King, presumably has some claim on the other kings for military service ... right? So while we talk about "the face that launched a thousand ships," and there's a long tradition of art critiquing the morality of war for one woman however pretty, but really she could look like a horse and the war would still happen once she was abducted. For very ordinary reasons of politics and social obligation. Is this how it's presented in Greece?Comment
-
well dinklage would have been thrown off a cliff as soon as he sawn his face in sparta. they weren't big on dwarfs and there were just olympics back then. nothing special about them.
first we don't call her helen of troy because she was not. simply beautiful helen. and yes many do think that no matter of that white armed lady was the most beautiful woman in the world, for an entire nation to go to war over her... well we are romatnic but to this degree? hmmm...
it's not just a tale. if you take out the gods, there are evidence of a city in where troy was said to existed. there is a big slice of opinion that says that not only trpy existed but so was the trojan war. because the homeric epics are just a fraction of the ancient literature that talks about it.
coming back to the film, unfortunately it is a holly wood fil and I say this with all the negative conotations that this entails. maybe I got worked up because I see this is a cheap shot by the dicrector (himslef the spawn of an advertiser and a flying hostess? anyway cheap) to rape greek culture in order to satidfy the woke crawd and get a useless oscar that noone cares for anymore to even watch.
that's about it.
you wanna have black people in anceint greece? I' sure there were, and they didn't suffer half the prejudism they had to suffer at the hands of anglosaxons and other barbarians.
but helen was not that. and neither was athena. you sacrilge my (ancient) religion you sacrilege my country you are a POS.
and it's not even a good film!!!!!!!!!!!!! if it did capture an inch of the essence of the odysesay make I would say , well ok. but no! it's spiderman with wtong armors!
Now, there is a little tale I read somewhere.
a donkey and a tiger had an argument. the donky kept saying the grass in pink. the tiger was saying, no it is green,
the argument went on and on and so much was the fight, that the two animals went to the leader of the animals, the lion, to settle the dispute.
the lion said: tiger I penalize you and order punishment for you.
but why, said the tiger? I was right, the grass IS green.
the lion replied, yes you were right, but a tiger should never even enter an argument with a mere donkey...Comment
-
bottom line, what irks me is the compeltel absence of morality. you throw things under teh bus (athena helen but other things as well) in order to make a buck.
you treat the odyssey like a tourist would say tzatziki sirtaki and think he knows greece. you are a POS
meanwhile all the locations in greece have been booked to the max (I think also because of the film) the cinemas are packed, I have started to learn things I never knew about the odyssey, have great books to read (have nothing to do with nolan's abortion).
as as we say in greek ουδέν κακόν αμιγές καλούComment
-
when that german director made troy he as way more decent than the english prck.
why? because first of all it named it troy! not iliad
was helen as german the same as a pig wanting to put lipstick on? maybe but it's its prerogative. Its choice. If it wants to do it let it. But it's not jiraffe. Seriously though even though a bit cold assed I'd boing the german helen. and she was true to homer. she had white arms. that's avbout it. and she was pretty maybe the german director wanted to make her blond as something rare in greece, same os homer said the greeks were seeing helen as something rare and beaitufl.
i'd roll with it.
he didn't make achilles boinging patroclus, true. and of coruse helen WAS ABDJUCTED, she didn't just follow legolas.
and the greeks were not the americans attacking iraq.
isnignificant details one might say...
troy was a better film but utterly flawed as well
nolan's odyssey doesn't even manage to crawl out of the toilet
i also like how cherlize theron or whats her name really is the perfect representative for a north african... because that's where calypso was, erm, conspoling odysseus
who btw in the end of the tale he didn;t just go west like frodo adn the elves.
but I keep stumbling on insignificant details,. so sorryComment
-
It's not a given that Dinklage would be in danger; the whole agoge system, including the eugenic stuff, is a classical Greek thing from centuries later, after Lycurgus (assuming Lycurgus ever existed). You can see this in the Troy story itself; Menelaus is the singular king of Sparta. Under the later Spartan system, they had two kings, a kind of assembly of elders, and some guys called ephors.
There's no point in getting mad at Nolan about robbing Greek culture; most modern American movies are going to be about America at the time they were made. Probably something similar is true of all art ever; the Iliad itself was written centuries after the events it describes and probably doesn't accurately reflect how the real Achilles (if he existed) would have felt about the conflict, etc. But there was a Ridley Scott movie a few years ago, called The Last Duel, set in the European middle ages. It was really about toxic masculinity and rape culture and other things of no interest whatever to medieval knights; it came out around the same time as the MeToo phenomenon, when women were stepping up to accuse sexual abusers en masse. So if we're doing it to our own cultural patrimony, I see no reason why you should be offended on behalf of yours.
An Iliad or Odyssey which attempted to be true to the values and mentalities of Bronze Age Greeks would be a tough sell to producers and audiences alike. I might be interested in seeing it, but I'd be in the minority, and it wouldn't make pleasant viewing. A reminder: the inciting conflict in the Iliad is that Agamemnon deprives Achilles of the civilian prisoner he intended to use as a sex slave (and domestic labor). The story explores how, by its own values, Achilles was wronged, but allows his anger to rule him even after Agamemnon apologizes, etc. At no point does it show any concern about the girl for her own sake. Tough sell!Comment
-
well dinklage would have been tossed off a cliff because he's a dwarf and spartans had no place for deformity. sorry but that;s how they'd call him. the cliif off where they threw the likes of dinklage and other deformities (even as babies) is called kaiadas. You can visit it if you want it's still there but luckily dinlkage is not in danger any more.
you are right I'm wrong to get emotional (but it's semi mickingly). i saw the last duel ( i think damon was stgarring there too) and i almost fell of my couch laughing. you are right and it is a very apt comparison with nolan;s absurdity to try and instill feministic values to PENELOPEEEEEEEE of all women. the best woman.
anyway. I also find it funny how the greeks in niolan's abortion have full cosncience that thety are in the bronze age and even say so. i mean, it's just ridiculous.
you are right, every era (and culture since obviously it isn't "just" a greek tale) adapts homer and I souldn't get worked up.
it's just the utter absence of moral codes (as I see it) that makes me.Comment
-
This is of course a silly argument, but your claim that Dinklage would be tossed off a cliff is based on the assumption that the Spartans of--what, 1200 BC or so?--would have shared the values of Spartans from six centuries or so later, when the whole way their society worked was different. This isn't really a given. England, for example, believes very different things today than it did in the year 1426.
(actually I have no idea if there even was a king of Sparta at that point or if it was an anachronism by Homer; Sparta might have been somebody else's property at that point for all I know, or the core set of little villages might have each had their own chieftains or something)Comment
-
Going tommorrow. Thanks Google for blocking QR codes when it feels like it (never did it before to me), I had to spend ages to figure out how to still display the ticket on my phone
BlahComment
-
well since you want to go , go but your compatriote made a hell of a better job with troy (that means it wasn't absolutely sht)
it has way better effects though and it is about the american spiderman and their race wars and 4th wave of feminism. but they named it odyssey.
it does have an one eyed gollum and a whirpool though, I'd give it that,.
also elok, (oh about spartsn, spartsn would kill dinklage for being short, being a freak how else can i say it to you?) it's a bit silly to pretend that somehow nolan had to rape greek history to make a masterpice that is not going to be remembered in two years
no, odyssey the way exactly as it was written, in the bronze age etc with all that this entals is 100%v superioer that's why it lasted 2.500 years.
don't affirm the sterotype of the uneducated and superficial americna with your comments.Comment
Comment