I’m so confused by this Odyssey discourse… like, people realize the story is a fantasy? A fairytale? A campfire story? A bedtime story? A poem? An over 2000-year-old fanfiction retold countless times by people of different cultures, ethnicities, and regions? That each time the story is retold it has the creative vision of the storyteller like any fanfiction would? If I remember correctly, which I probably am not, the story was passed down orally and isn’t solely credited to Homer since the story itself predated the writing of the poems, and some historians believe “Homer” wasn’t a single person, but was many writers of different backgrounds who were preserving the oral stories in written form. Shakespeare’s stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, and stories like Les Misérables have been adapted, reinterpreted, modernized, race-swapped, gender-swapped, etc., a dozen different times, in ways that make it less historically accurate, so why is the new interpretation of the Odyssey being treated so differently? The story is based in fiction and mythology? It has gods, witches, and monsters. Does it matter what race or gender the characters are? Does it matter whether they speak in modern American accents? Is it simply because it’s a Nolan film? Why can’t he take creative liberties like any other filmmaker of an adaptation of a fictional story? A version that is considered historically accurate with only Greek actors, the correct ships and armor of the time period, be in the original language should happen and exist! But why is Nolan’s version disrespectful when it’s just his self-indulgent, fancast, AU fanfiction? Maybe if he had made a completely modern version of the Odyssey people wouldn’t be so disgustingly racist and transphobic towards the cast? Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world and “the face that launched a thousand ships” couldn’t possibly be a dark-skin Black woman because of “historical accuracy”—that would be absurd, unnatural, and offensive, surely? I feel like I’m missing something? Please explain this to me because I feel like I’m going crazy.
Mind you, I’ve never read nor watched any version of the Odyssey (nor do I intend to), and I’m not an avid fan of Nolan, so maybe that’s what I’m missing?