sic transit gloria mundi

NO.

DON'T DESTROY ME LIKE THIS. NOT THE TRUFFLE KITTY.

THAT'S IT I'M BURNING ALL THE SERVERS DOWN.

MOST of them, tbh. I think Anne Hathaway will do fine as Penelope, probably, and Zendaya has the chops to pull off Athena, but I've seen her in so many things by now that I'm concerned her level of exposure will make her portraying a goddess feel *too* grounded (I would have greatly preferred a lesser known actress for the role to emphasize the more aloof, untouchable nature of the Greek pantheon but I recognize that as a personal preference and not dogmatic). Honestly, my only real concern is that I think Zendaya looks a little too young to play Athena.

I think Tom Holland is just. not Telemachus. Like, sorry, but no. Matt Damon as Odysseus I'm also not a fan of.

I love Matt Damon. I'm probably going to rewatch The Martian this week. But if they weren't going to cast Greek people in ANY OTHER main roles, could they not have at LEAST cast Odysseus as a Greek?!?!

Robert Pattinson will probably be fine. He comes with anything Nolan does these days, and I like him as an actor, but he also suffers from the overexposure problem that most of the cast does. Charlize Theron will probably do a decent job as Calypso, and I haven't seen her as much in things lately, so other than Lupita Nyong'o, her casting is the one that I'm most okay with.

My problem overall with this movie (other than the fact that there are NO Greeks in the main cast for some reason???), though, is that almost everyone in it is just TOO famous. I'm not going to see Odysseus on the screen, I'm going to see Matt Damon. That's not Telemachus, it's Tom Holland. It's not that these are bad actors (far from it!), it's that most of these actors have been cast in VERY specific roles all their careers, and it's going to be jarring to see them play against type. Others in the cast like Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, and Jon Bernthal (who plays Menelaus), we've seen in a variety of roles, so we KNOW that they can inhabit the characters in a way that I haven't seen with Tom Holland, Matt Damon, etc.

If I walk into a Matt Damon movie, I know that I'm walking into A Matt Damon Movie. I see Tom Holland and I think Spider-man. I'm not seeing truly transformative actors the way I do with, say, Christian Bale or Ralph Fiennes.

And the more typecast members of the cast aren't bad actors!!! Again, I like them tremendously!!!!! But I haven't seen the evidence that they can transcend their own reputations for the type of work they are known for putting out, and unless you're casting them in that particular type of movie, the audience WILL be taken out of the narrative.

And yeah, while we're here, it DOES bother me that there's no one Greek in the main cast. This is THE ODYSSEY. It's one the FOUNDATIONAL stories of Greece. It would be like having an all Belgian retelling of King Arthur, or doing a French remake of The Godfather. I'm not saying everyone needed to be Greek. My personal favorite adaptation of The Odyssey is Oh Brother Where Art Thou? and it's not exactly an all-Greek cast, but in my estimation Odysseus at the VERY least should have been.