One of the most common arguments I've seen today in defense of Nolan's The Odyssey is: «"Helen is a FICTIONAL character. She never existed! She's not real! She hatched from an egg anyway!"» Yes, for us, she is a fictional character. She never existed.
But!
The beauty standards admired by the ancient Greeks did exist. The ideals of beauty that Helen embodied did exist, otherwise she would never have been called the most beautiful woman. Just as beauty standards exist today —otherwise we wouldn't have beauty pageants like Miss [insert any country] or Miss Universe. Please don't act as though ancient Greek ideas of beauty never existed.
Now I'm going to bring up the most controversial point. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm completely overthinking this and the reality is much simpler. But I can't stay silent about it. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, Menelaus scars Helen's face in the film and then says something along the lines of her face now being worth not a thousand ships, but five hundred. Helen herself says that her beauty was never the real reason for the war, but rather people's desire for wealth. So... does the film itself deny Helen's beauty?
The Trojan War has already received countless adaptations. At least from what I remember, in most of them Helen is still presented as the most beautiful of women. Helen of Troy (2003), Troy (2004), Troy: Fall of a City (2018) and those aren't even all the adaptations. Even in the least historically accurate adaptations, Helen remains the most beautiful woman. Yes, the casting choices have often been controversial, and not everyone personally found those actresses beautiful. But the films still allowed them to feel like the most beautiful woman on screen. Yes, in Troy (2004), Briseis says, "The Queen of Sparta is only an excuse," but Helen still remains the most beautiful woman, and nobody in the film argues otherwise.
What does Lupita Nyong'o's film give Helen? Maybe five minutes of screen time at most, and even then she's mostly suffering. The film never lets her experience being the most beautiful woman. Honestly, it feels like it's trying to push her into the background. In Sparta, Lupita could have shone as queen, welcomed Telemachus as the lady of the palace, and comforted Menelaus as much as anyone could after the war, even if the scars of war could never truly disappear. Honestly? If I were Lupita, I'd be disappointed by all that lost potential.
Instead, there has been more controversy surrounding her casting than actual screen time for Helen. And that's after her interview where she jokingly sends Homer a message, basically saying, "How do you like how much screen time we've given the women you forgot?" Now, considering how little screen time she actually has... well... I'll leave it at that. I'm not claiming that I'm right. My opinion may change someday. But right now, I don't understand the people who call every critic of The Odyssey (2026) racist, because by the same logic I could accuse the film itself of racism and say that the first racist in the movie is Nolan's own Menelaus.
I'll end with one last point. For the ancient Greeks, Helen and Menelaus were absolutely real. More than that, they even had a hero shrine near Sparta dedicated to both of them together — the Menelaion. It still exists today. You can visit it. So when people say, "Helen is just a fictional character," and reduce everything to "who cares?", we're deliberately ignoring those facts.
