Your words, not mine. Not once, ever.

I didn't know Helen of Troy could generate so much conflict.

— Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs) (@agraybee) May 18, 2026

That's not "splitting hairs."

That's the whole thing.

A character who is DEFINED by their race - meaning their story/importance/popularity exists BECAUSE of their race - should not be race swapped. That would be asinine.

But a character whose story/importance/popularity isn't defined by their race? Who cares? Race swap them all you want. Re: Tenet, I literally just got done saying I'd swap out John David Washington, a black man, for a bigger movie star, i.e. any black - or white - movie star who would have had more gravitas, done a better job, etc.

Ghost of Bisbee said:

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What has happened is it's becoming increasingly clear that Nolan is pandering to diversity, unless these are all farfetched lies. Which, they would have been debunked by now I believe if they were not being cast.

pic.twitter.com/JHLepGxDHu

— Around Town Memes (@chuckdpete) May 17, 2026

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Leguizamo should be on that poster

TCTTS said:

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I didn't know Helen of Troy could generate so much conflict.

— Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs) (@agraybee) May 18, 2026

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Ok, that's actually clever, its the best one you've posted yet.

YouBet said:

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SteveA said:

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Helen of Troy is a fictional character and was born from a magical egg, because her mom was screwed by a swan, who was actually Zeus. Not sure why casting of this character is a hill anyone wants to defend. But, it's been fun reading...

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I don't know that I'm going to die on Mount Olympus over it, but it's a nonsensical pick for obvious reasons:

1. Black Kenyans have nothing to do with Ancient Greek mythology regardless of Zeus's penchant for raping women in various animal forms.
2. There are 5 women of note in this film and she's the fourth most beautiful one which puts her one above the woman who now says she's a man.

(If I include Samantha Morton, who I don't know, then that knocks her down further. However, I would put her above Mia Goth so that makes her better looking than a gender confused woman and Mia Goth.)

Fun thread though!

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I'd take Mia Goth

The Unforgiven said:

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Your point on Tenet isn't the same the Odyssey. Nolan conceived, wrote, and directed Tenet. It was his story he created it from scratch. He could do whatever he wanted with it because it was his baby.

He didn't conceive nor wrote the story of the Odyssey. Everyone knows Homer didn't write Helen of Troy as a black woman. At that time his audience would have never paid attention to it if it was about black people. If he did create her as a black person, it would have never been passed down because he would have been laughed at because people were like 1 million times more racist back in those days.

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Dude, you're straight up talking out of your ass.

Here's what just a bit of surface-level research will tell you on that topic...

Quote:

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- Ancient Greece was never a pure white-European fantasyland. The Greeks imagined themselves inside a much older, wider Afro-Eastern Mediterranean world, and they knew it.

- Homer calls the Ethiopians "blameless," a phrase of real reverence, and has Zeus and the Olympian gods leave the Trojan War behind for twelve days to feast among them. In Homer's imagination, these dark-skinned peoples at the far edges of the known world were not degraded outsiders. They were exceptionally pious, favored, and close to the gods.

- Herodotus says the Ethiopians were reputed to be the tallest and most beautiful people on earth, and he associates them with extraordinary long life. Not exactly the vibe of "inferior barbarians."

- The Greeks also treated Egypt as impossibly ancient and profoundly wise. Herodotus records Egyptian claims of extreme antiquity, credits Egypt with the origins of geometry, and lingers over Egyptian temples, priests, medicine, customs, and sacred knowledge with obvious fascination. Plato, too, staged Egyptian priests as keepers of ancient wisdom, the people who have records older than anything the Greeks can remember.

- Greek myth is packed with African, Egyptian, and Ethiopian royalty. Zeus fathers Epaphus, tied to the kingship of Egypt. Memnon, the Ethiopian king, comes to Troy as a legendary warrior worthy of Achilles. Andromeda is an Ethiopian princess who marries into the Greek heroic line. These figures are not marginal footnotes. They are woven straight into the mythic architecture.

- And the Greeks openly credited eastern peoples too. The Phoenicians gave them the alphabet. Cadmus, a Phoenician prince, was remembered as the founder of Thebes, one of Greece's great mythic cities.

So no, the classics were never a pure white-European origin myth. The ancient Greek imagination was ethnocentric, hierarchical, and full of stereotypes, absolutely. But it was also deeply indebted to Africa and the East. Greek literature admires Ethiopians for piety, Egyptians for antiquity and wisdom, Phoenicians for letters, and eastern peoples for knowledge and invention.

The ancient world was connected, mixed, borrowed, argued-over, and weird as hell. Anyone trying to turn Greece into modern white-supremacist cosplay is not preserving the classics. They're bleaching them.

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The Unforgiven said:

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you do love splitting hairs.

You would never go for a white guy in place of a black person for any African mythological story.

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I will agree with you to a point if this movie was an actual representation of Ancient Greece, which it is not. This is la la land Greece with American accents and space age armour. With the trailer that we were given, I don't think race matters, as I don't think this is a movie that is set in any real actual universe. It's a retelling of the story in some made up alternate Greek like universe. If Black Panther was cast as a white man, that would be dumb. If the basic story of Black Panther was taken and set in an alternate universe or even freaking Ireland, casting a white guy would be fine.

Another manifestation of this meme coming true, where anyone honest with themselves knows why Nolan cast this movie how he did, but certain people will do mental gymnastics instead of just admitting that the golden trophy people made up new rules if you want one.

Bruce Almighty said:

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The Unforgiven said:

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you do love splitting hairs.

You would never go for a white guy in place of a black person for any African mythological story.

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I will agree with you to a point if this movie was an actual representation of Ancient Greece, which it is not. This is la la land Greece with American accents and space age armour. With the trailer that we were given, I don't think race matters, as I don't think this is a movie that is set in any real actual universe. It's a retelling of the story in some made up alternate Greek like universe. If Black Panther was cast as a white man, that would be dumb. If the basic story of Black Panther was taken and set in an alternate universe or even freaking Ireland, casting a white guy would be fine.

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Thank you!

This is what has been obvious via the trailers, and essentially what I've been saying, for months now.

Nolan isn't depicting *our* Ancient Greece.

Rather, this is some alternative-universe, fantasy-land Ancient Greece.

This is Game of Thrones meets pop modernism Ancient Greece.

I mean, neither the costumes nor the set designs look anything like our Ancient Greece, which is so obviously intentional.

And if someone doesn't like what they've seen so far... fine. I have no issue with that. It's totally one's prerogative to want a more "respectful" telling. I personally think it all looks cool as hell, and will express as much, but if you don't, great.

I just seems so stupid to me, given the above context, months before the movie is released, and we understand the full context, to use "historical accuracy" as the reason to ***** about "race swapping," when historical accuracy simply doesn't apply in this instance.

Cliff.Booth said:

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Another manifestation of this meme coming true, where anyone honest with themselves knows why Nolan cast this movie how he did, but certain people will do mental gymnastics instead of just admitting that the golden trophy people made up new rules if you want one.

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Then why didn't he do the same thing in Oppenheimer? You still haven't answered that. Why did he insist on casting the whitest blockbuster of the decade then, enduring the cries of the hysterical left for months, only to be rewarded for doing so ten fold in the end? But then, suddenly, he "went woke" here? What possible motivation would account for that? Please explain.

TCTTS said:

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I didn't know Helen of Troy could generate so much conflict.

— Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs) (@agraybee) May 18, 2026

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I'm the one guy that is somewhere already sick of her *****

That's why I said about 10 pages ago that I would kind of get that as long as he goes balls to the wall to make it weird as ****. What I'm seeing from the trailer is just who's who of inclusion casting, murky colors, inauthentic armor but aesthetically uninteresting, and somewhat modernized language. I'd rather he gone more extreme in either direction. Maybe the full movie does, but the trailers don't show much indicating that.

Cliff.Booth said:

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The Academy announced the new diversity and inclusion guidelines in September 2020, but they didn't become a mandatory requirement for Best Picture eligibility until the Oscars in 2024. Oppenheimer was released in July 2023, meaning it was produced and completed ahead of the active enforcement period. So, it basically just got grandfathered in. Plus, I think he got nods for DEI on production-side. Plus, it was just a great movie.

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Maybe get your facts straight first, because this simply isn't true...

Quote:

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The inclusion standards were announced in September 2020, and films had to submit confidential inclusion forms for the 2022 and 2023 Oscars, but the "must meet two out of four standards" requirement kicked in for the 96th Oscars - the 2024 ceremony honoring 2023 films (of which Oppenheimer was one). The Academy's own announcement says: "For the 96th Oscars (2024), a film must meet TWO out of FOUR" standards to be Best Picture eligible.

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Also, in retrospect, are you aware of how many Best Picture winners in the 98-year history of the Academy would have qualified for today's Academy inclusion standards?

Every. Single. One.

Not just winners. Nominees.

All of them.

Literally.

That's how low the bar is.

Given that fact, should there even be a bar?

No.

As I've said before, the inclusion standards are ridiculous.

However, the point is, literally ZERO diversity effort gets one nominated. Thus, pinning this ridiculous "woke" motivation onto Nolan - a director who has never once "gone woke" - is just breathtakingly dumb.

AGinHI said:

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TCTTS said:

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Bruce Almighty said:

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The Unforgiven said:

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you do love splitting hairs.

You would never go for a white guy in place of a black person for any African mythological story.

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I will agree with you to a point if this movie was an actual representation of Ancient Greece, which it is not. This is la la land Greece with American accents and space age armour. With the trailer that we were given, I don't think race matters, as I don't think this is a movie that is set in any real actual universe. It's a retelling of the story in some made up alternate Greek like universe. If Black Panther was cast as a white man, that would be dumb. If the basic story of Black Panther was taken and set in an alternate universe or even freaking Ireland, casting a white guy would be fine.

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Thank you!

This is what has been obvious via the trailers, and essentially what I've been saying, for months now.

Nolan isn't depicting *our* Ancient Greece.

Rather, this is some alternative-universe, fantasy-land Ancient Greece.

This is Game of Thrones meets pop modernism Ancient Greece.

I mean, neither the costumes nor the set designs look anything like our Ancient Greece, which is so obviously intentional.

And if someone doesn't like what they've seen so far... fine. I have no issue with that. It's totally one's prerogative to want a more "respectful" telling. I personally think it all looks cool as hell, and will express as much, but if you don't, great.

I just seems so stupid to me, given the above context, months before the movie is released, to use "historical accuracy" as reason to ***** about "race swapping," when historical accuracy simply doesn't apply here.

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I'm not so sure about that.

From his Time interview (the first sentence obviously stands out in stark contrast to what you said above);

Quote:

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He's obsessive about veracity. In 2014, he told this magazine what it took to get Interstellar's physics right. He brought a similar ethos to The Odyssey. "For Interstellar, you're looking at, 'What is the best speculation of the future?' When you're looking at the ancient past, it's actually the same thing. 'What is the best speculation and how can I use that to create a world?'" He knows the approach won't satisfy every classicist. "Hopefully they'll enjoy the film, even if they don't agree with everything," he says. "We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar. But you just don't want people to think that you took it on frivolously."

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Also, as I was able to visit Pompeii earlier this year, here is a 1st century fresco from Pompeii of Perseus rescuing Andromeda (retrieved from Wikipedia)



So whatever your quick search has provided about Andromeda looking like an Ethiopian princess, suggesting Sub-Saharan black, as one example, hasn't been the case for over 2000 years and is oddly juxtaposed with Nolan's obsession about veracity.

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1st century? So... roughly 1300 years after said event happened?

And then let me get this straight...

You believe that cyclopses, sirens, krakens, etc, along with literal Greek gods, existed in our ancient past? On this Earth? In our current timeline?

Otherwise, Homer's/Nolan's Odyssey *is* an alternate universe/fantasy story. There's literally no other way to interpret it.

The Unforgiven said:

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you do love splitting hairs.

You would never go for a white guy in place of a black person for any African mythological story.

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Maybe this might help coming from someone who is probably more on your political side of the aisle.

If Beverly Hills Cop was re-booted, no one should have any heartburn with say, Glen Powell, being cast as Axl Foley. Foley is a fictional character in a cop action/comedy. Being black doesn't define the character.

You could likewise say the same for Han Solo or Lando Calrissian. Why would it really matter in a Sci-fi action/drama in a galaxy far, far, away.

The same would not be true for Indiana Jones. The notion that a black male from the US states held a Phd in Archaeology, taught the subject at a university, spoke multiple languages, and traveled the globe is search of artifacts, in the 1930's, is laughable (for better or worse).

Black Panther is literally defined by being black. No different than Thor being literally defined as being white (Scandinavian).

I could go on.

For the record, I think Helen of Troy being black is kind of silly but given the fact that it appears that Nolan is going pretty hard in the paint for a new take on mythology, not such a deal. The same would not be true for 2004 Troy.

Wouldn't it be interesting if her race was addressed in the movie and it added to the storytelling in an interesting way….almost as if Nolan knows how to tell a story…as he has more than proven over the last 26 years. Or maybe the part plays to her strengths as an actress (when she is good she is really good) and he cast her for that reason. You know…to make the movie better…

But I could be wrong. The man, who already has an Oscar, could be so obsessed with winning another that he has compromised the movie he has been wanting to make for 30 years (when he got carte blanc to make whatever he wanted however he wanted) and decided to bow to DEI like he never has before. That makes more sense….

I think it's fine to hate the casting. I think it's silly to layer your own politics onto someone who has proven time and time again to be apolitical in his filmmaking.

I think the correct answer is the most obvious one and has been around for a long time now.

Given the changing demographics of the western world, make some reasonable attempts to appeal to a broader audience. Pretty 101 type of stuff.

Right, he essentially has a super star from every demo in this movie.

Right. And if anything, it's right-leaning, based on the politics of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. But that's another data point everyone's choosing to ignore.

Nolan's own personal odyssey was to shoot an entire movie in IMAX 70mm, a few personal sacrifices had to be made to complete that journey.