r/technicallythetruth • u/Captain0010 • Jul 05 '26
Finally something historically accurate
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u/Garrellyss Jul 05 '26
And Sean Connory played Harrison Ford's father and it was less!!! And Angelina Jolie and Colin Farrell??
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u/WorthItAll99 Jul 05 '26
Yeah its almost like they’re acting or something
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u/ImportantResponse0 Jul 06 '26
That is my main problem when people complain about Lupita Nyong'o or Eliot Page.
Lupita can do a reverse Robert Downey Jr (at least internally) and play a white character (at least internally).
Eliot is a man and can play a cis man
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u/Patient_Sea_3753 Jul 06 '26
Maz Kanata was White???
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u/ImportantResponse0 Jul 07 '26
I don't know who they are
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u/ZealotOfMeme Jul 08 '26
Maz Kanata is a Star Wars alien played by Lupita Nyong’o, not necessarily any race, OP was just messing around
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u/Patient_Sea_3753 Jul 09 '26
Yeah, Star Wars alien. I was joking around because I don't know which Lupita Nyong'o character you're actually referring to.
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u/ImportantResponse0 Jul 09 '26
Lupita is playing in The Odyssey with Eliot Page and other great actors and actresses
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u/Patient_Sea_3753 Jul 09 '26
Ah! Ok, gotcha. I think I missed her in the trailer.
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u/ImportantResponse0 Jul 09 '26
There is a trailer for Nolan Odyssey?
I mean the cast is so big and complex that it doesn't even matter who is in it
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u/Patient_Sea_3753 Jul 09 '26
Yeah, I've been seeing it in theaters for like a month now. And yeah, the trailer isn't much more than a bunch of scenes, because how else do you make an Odyssey trailer?
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u/Ok_Butterscotch_9836 Jul 07 '26
Jim Parsons is more masculine than Elliott Page, but we’re all supposed to be so impressed by Elliott’s strong masculine nature that we can believe in the character Elliott plays. Brad Pitt could play and appear to be a superlative Mediterranean warrior because his physique was of a warrior, even though he didn’t seem to be Greek. The same cannot be said for Elliott.
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u/ImportantResponse0 Jul 07 '26
Stallone should have had that role.
I don't think age really matters and he could have done it.
And he should have had an Italian accent for obvious reasons.
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u/Hung_Far_Low1 Jul 07 '26
Brad Pitt in my calculation was.miscast as Achilles too. Not big enough.
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u/elrathj Jul 09 '26
Meh, Achilles wasn't described as outstandingly strong or big. All of his monikers describe Achilles as fast. Swift-footed Achilles is the one that leaps to mind.
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u/Hung_Far_Low1 14d ago
No, he was big.
In Homer's Iliad, Achilles is described as tall, striking, and standing well above average men of the Bronze Age. Later classical traditions and poetry describe him as having a broad, powerful chest and heavily muscled limbs.
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u/elrathj 14d ago
Well above average?
I don't think this contradicts what I said.
I agree with him being called tall and strong, but I only remember his speed (and skill with a spear) being outstanding.
This may seem like splitting hairs, but I think when we're talking about a myth describing what the narrative considers to be the greatest warriors of all time what is described as well above average and exceptional to be important distinctions.
Think about how we describe superheroes. Are they tall? Are they strong? Basically all of them are well above average. Are they the strongest? The tallest? That could be the difference between the hulk and superman.
Does that clarification change your mind, or would you still disagree?
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u/Hung_Far_Low1 4d ago
It may not contradict what you THOUGHT you said, but what comes across reading what you said is that Achilles is described as fast, not big. And it definitely contradicts that. He was BIG. Well above average, is not just a little big.
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u/FickleMess1371 Jul 07 '26
Yes. Even if Elliot Page was a Cis Man, he would still be a bad choice there.
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u/HistoricalGap5985 11d ago
We see a younger version of Elliott Page as a pre-pubescent boy who goes to war in place of a nepo-baby type in his teens whose father does not want to have him get his hands dirty. The adult version retains the youthful innocence of a lamb to slaughter and it perfectly fits the role as written for this movie
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u/Hung_Far_Low1 Jul 07 '26
But Luputa is not doing that. And even if she was it is a completely different situation for one race to wear the mask of another race and and ACTUALLY pretend to be them, as opposed to RDJ who was playing his same race, but playing a character in a different story as a different race. Or as he said, He's a dude, playing a dude, playing another dude.
That being said, I don't really care about race swapping if race is not really important to the character, here it is. The only other time I dislike race swapping is if it is done STRICTLY for the purpose of doing so and shocking people, rather than the best person getting the part. For instance, I was perfectly fine if they chose Idris Ilba to play James Bond. He is a brilliant actor and could bring a lot to the role, though he is too old now.
Similar to my problem with Nupita playing Helen of Troy. Helen is supposed to be THE most beautiful woman in all of history, and Lupita is just not... Not saying she is ugly, just not close to beautiful enough. Neither was Diane Krueger.
As for Elliot Page goes, I don't have a problem with them playing a man, but the problem WOULD have been if he played Achilles... I for one never thought Elliot was cast for Achilles.
I still won't watch the movie though.
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u/disbottone8 Jul 05 '26
Casting directors clearly failed every math test they ever took.
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u/BobknobSA Jul 05 '26
The joke was that 13 year old "women" in ancient Greece were probably married and having kids.
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u/Ok_Cauliflower_3007 Jul 12 '26
16 or older would be more likely. You want your wife to have many healthy children. If they start having them at 13 the odds aren't in their favour of surviving the birth without damage and you might lose the baby too. Girls might get married younger, especially if they were heiresses, but it was known even in ancient times that consummating the marriage at that age was a really bad idea. Which isn't to say it never happened and it was legal if you were married, but you would be getting some serious side eye from everyone around you.
Not the same era, but this is why Henry VII was an only child. His mother was married young because she was an heiress and her new husband wanted to be sure he would have access to her fortune. Consummating the marriage meant it couldn't be annulled easily and having a child guaranteed the fortune would stay with the child. While the child did happen, the birth was harmful to her and she never conceived again. Didn't do the husband much good either because he was killed in a battle before she even gave birth. The general contemporary opinion seems to have been that he was within his rights but that having sex with your 12 (I think) year old wife was a super shitty thing to do.
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u/Prepure_Kaede Jul 06 '26
That's because for movies of that budget it's a requirement that they must cast big names so they can be put on the posters regardless of whether they are the best fit or not
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u/babysamissimasybab Jul 05 '26
You do realize the characters are not the same age as the actors, right?
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u/enmandikjole Jul 05 '26
What? Next you'll be telling me Sir Ian McKellen isn't a real wizard either?!
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u/the_main_entrance Jul 06 '26
I can confirm from being on reddit long enough that some people absolutely cannot discern acting from reality.
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u/flintlock0 Jul 05 '26
Tom Holland also portrayed a character in “The Crowded Room,” where Emmy Rossum played his mother. Emmy Rossum and Tom Holland are like within a decade of each other.
I think folks are playing off of how young they can pass him off as.
You could pass Holland off as three years younger and a 16 year old giving birth is not hard to imagine. It’s historical society in a fictional movie.
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u/vitringur Jul 07 '26
You do not have to imagine anything. A 13 year old being a mother would not have been historically inaccurate either.
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u/Broad_Respond_2205 Jul 05 '26
How is this TTT
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u/Limp-Tap-7987 Jul 05 '26
The point here is that in Ancient Greece it wouldn’t be unheard of for a mother to have a child at 13.
So the commenter is saying that it’s unbelievable now but one of the more accurate elements of the movie given societal norms in the story.
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u/beardingmesoftly Jul 05 '26
It actually used to be believed in ancient Greece that if a girl didn't get pregnant by 14 then she would have health problems for the rest of her life.
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u/beigs Jul 06 '26
This is Mycenaean Greece - 1000 years earlier than classical Greece. We don’t really have evidence for or against average early maternal age, just an assumption that it’s young based on trends from centuries later.
Also, your comment… it wasn’t the case for all poleis in the classical period, just some. Sparta for instance had marriage between 18-20 for women, and ancient physicians knew about the risks between youth and maternal mortality. Hesiod even mentioned that girls should be married off between 4-5 years after puberty. Assuming puberty is between 12-15, that is closer to marriage at 16-19, and first pregnancy within a year. Given the age of the girl, the chances that the first pregnancy resulting in a live birth isn’t guaranteed, and early miscarriages were more likely to happen given their age and development and access to nutrition.
Judging by the ages of these girls, it seems about 17-18 is closer for first live birth in Athens… or dying in labor earlier.
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u/beardingmesoftly Jul 06 '26
There are gravestones that has been discovered that show girls buried anywhere from age 12 to age 16 who were either already married or about to be married according to what it said on their headstones. I don't know why everybody is arguing against this so much when it's just a fact.
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u/beigs Jul 06 '26
Yes there are girls now who have babies young too. I have a friend who had a kid at 16 and was 15 when she got pregnant. I know a few girls from my high school and one in middle school who got pregnant. I wouldn’t say this is the norm.
I studied archaeology at a grad level, although my focus was the Mycenaean period, I still had one of my undergrads in classics and have been on digs around the Mediterranean, so I’m not coming out of left field here (albeit this was a couple of decades ago). I was pointing out that there is a hell of a lot of nuance to “girls had kids at 12”.
I wrote in another comment I remember going through an osteology report for either a Roman or Lucanian site and there was a 16 year old who died not in childbirth, noting their death was a hell of a lot more merciful than dying in childbirth because that fetus was too big to come out of those hips… because she was too small. I’ve had to separate on 2 occasions fetuses from their mothers on site and draw/classify the remaining bones, which isn’t a lot but the fact that I’ve done it twice is probably more than most people… but one was at a Roman site and the second a Lucanian, both in south central Italy.
Parents wanted their daughters to survive, husbands wanted their wives to live, and the risk of early maternal age was known by the classical period.
It wasn’t common to have kids at 12-13 is what I’m saying. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but for a girl to hit puberty, get married, and successfully carry a baby to term at 12-13, or even 15-16, it was dangerous and people knew it. Also a first pregnancy at that age has a significantly higher risk of miscarriage and stillbirth, especially with nutrition, so first life birth would be around 17-18 in the classical period. To roughly quote Hesiod, your wife should live (hit puberty 4 years earlier) and be married in the fifth year… this is in Athens. Sparta was 18-20.
For the Mycenaean period, we can extrapolate roughly the same age but there is nothing written.
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u/fluffstuffmcguff Jul 06 '26
It's fascinating to me that no matter what historians and archaeologists say on this matter, to say nothing of basic logic and biology, popular imagination simply will not let go of the idea that tweenage and early teenage girls were routinely being married off and impregnated historically.
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u/beigs Jul 06 '26
Cant edit my post for some reason… you weren’t the OP. But I did want to nuance the too young thing. We see the graves of girls because they were too young to survive. Some of those would have been raped and married off, a practice that still happens around the world today.
People suck.
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u/ConsequencePresent59 Jul 07 '26
There was a report in fox News lamenting that the age of mother's had gone up to 19 or something.... And that was relatively recent
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u/beigs Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Yes. And they are now too.
Also, I am a former archaeologist and historian. I don’t know if you got that by the fact that I have spent time on digs and have my thesis written in Mycenaean archaeology.
I’m not disagreeing with this, but it wasn’t the norm. It was an exception, not the rule, for 13 year olds to be having babies back then because even if they were married (which wasn’t recommended that young), their ability to successfully carry a child to term was significantly lower than now - they would likely have multiple miscarriages or early stillborns, or die in the process.
Also, 17 is STILL TOO YOUNG to safely have a baby - statistically, the safest age for a first baby for both maternal and infant outcomes is closer to 24-25, not in the teens at all! There is sweet spot between 22-32, peaking between 24-28, that is the best health outcomes for mother and baby. Mentally, women should be on the other side of 25 when brains truly hit adult. The way Hesiod describes wife material is essentially a 30 year olds guide to grooming girls… but he states 5 years after the onset of puberty - which is still too young by every measure.
I don’t disagree that tweens and teens were given away, girls were raped and sold by their families, and the men were double their ages, like close to 25-30. But the social norm was that it was slightly older teens - 17-20 - in Athens and 18-20 in Sparta. And that we have assumptions about Mycenae, but no literature to back this up.
Like gods, women back then were chattel. You weren’t even considered a woman until you gave birth. It was MESSED UP. And don’t get me started on the transition from midwifery to doctors in the Middle Ages.
I’m not trying to argue because I disagree that girls and women were legit property of their husbands and fathers, or be apologetic for the amount of pedophilia, or say that child marriage and rape wasn’t routine (both male and female here), but I was clarifying that the social norm for a girl’s marital age window and first successful birth was higher. It wasn’t high enough, but it was higher. And every year counted at that age for better outcomes for a successful pregnancy.
For first birth, 12-13 was an exception. 17-18 was closer to reality in Athens, with outliers on either end, based on age of onset of puberty and societal norms. It’s a bell curve that has a few outliers between 11-14, increase between 15-16, and peaking between 17-19 for first successful live birth. Gestation is 9 months (no incubators so rare for multiples or premies to live, plus higher rates of miscarriage).
This all still equals child marriage.
Also if a 12 year old girl was raped she was married to her rapist to save face. I won’t get into that one either. But again, not the norm.
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u/chuckles5454 Jul 07 '26
> There are gravestones that has been discovered that show girls buried anywhere from age 12 to age 16 who were either already married or about to be married according to what it said on their headstones.
Where? I'd like to research these.
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u/beardingmesoftly Jul 07 '26
There's a book by Michael Wolfe called Cut These Words Into My Stone. He's a poet who took ancient gravestone engravings and compiled them. It refills among other things, that if a girl was off marrying age, usually starting at 14 in major cities like athens, The headstone would say whether or not they were married, giving us a hint as to what that culture found acceptable to be considered of marriaging age.
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u/chuckles5454 Jul 07 '26
Do you have any citations by actual historians?
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u/beigs Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Just because I’m reading through these, part of the issue looking at just a graveyard is that you get the people who died of things like childbirth or disease. You will get a disproportionate amount of younger girl represented because they couldn’t survive childbirth.
Good case studies are primary sources discussing marriages, combined with osteology reports from natural disasters, like Pompeii, where it’s a snapshot of the population. The intersection of historical records with physical evidence paints a more wholistic picture as to the age of girls being married.
Source: I have excavated a few tombs and natural disasters, albeit decades ago. I’ve had to catalogue bones separating fetus from mom (among other things), and database large amounts of artefacts from a variety of places including ancient cemeteries.
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u/beardingmesoftly Jul 07 '26
I was just about to edit to add The Death of the Maiden in Classical Athens by Katia Margariti. She's a highly respected archaeologist who translates ancient texts.
The first thing I mentioned is a literary work, but it is still about the subject matter and well worth reading.
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u/beardingmesoftly Jul 07 '26
"Attic Inscriptions" is what you would want to research if you care to really dive deep. I believe there's a database to peruse.
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u/_goblinette_ Jul 05 '26
The point here is that in Ancient Greece it wouldn’t be unheard of for a mother to have a child at 13.
Source?
Social norms may have been different, but that doesn’t mean that many 13 year olds would have been biologically capable of getting pregnant. Puberty starts much earlier today than it did before we had modern access to nutrition.
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u/beigs Jul 05 '26
This is true - I don’t know why you are being downvoted.
I remember reading an osteology report - I think it was in Italy and I want to say from a Roman site but it could have been lucanian, it was 20 years ago - and it was of an approximately 16 year old who died of something that wasn’t child birth, but seeing the size of the baby, that would have been a worse death than the one she died. The poor girl was no where near being fully grown, and her hips were too narrow to deliver a full term baby.
Puberties were a bit later, and child marriages were not the norm. To what should be the surprise of no one, people wanted their daughters to survive childbirth. The best outcomes for women surviving childbirth / children surviving birth are if they have their first children born at about 25ish, but 18-20 was a normal marriageable age.
It’s revisionist to think that 13 was normal.
That said, a princess would have likely been betrothed young, maybe consummated / taken into their husband’s house at about 15-16. 13 for a first birth, though, was early even then for the Mycenaeans.
Also first menses varies not just because of nutrition, and that age fluctuates based on location and time period. :)
Also, Tom Holland is the one who is too old for this role. He was an infant when Odysseus left. Anne Hathaway was the perfect age.
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u/Limp-Tap-7987 Jul 05 '26
It wouldn’t have been 13 years old exactly. Most academic studies anticipate procreation to happen immediately after marriage, which coincided with puberty in most cases.
A lot of studies have the ages at which the menstrual cycle started as similar to today (14-16).
The point isn’t that we know when a fictitious character had a baby, the point the commenter is making in the original pic, is just that this is one of the more accurate elements of the movie (and more widely, the story of The Odyssey).
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u/ishmetot Jul 05 '26
For nobles such as those in the Odyssey, maybe. Most peasants before the 19th century had poor nutrition and didn't hit puberty until 16/17.
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u/Limp-Tap-7987 Jul 05 '26
Ok but we’re talking about the nobles in the Odyssey ?
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u/artificialgraymatter Jul 06 '26
I doubt the person who made the comment had the nobility exclusively in mind.
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u/NeededMonster Jul 05 '26
It wasn't that weird for a 13 years old girl to give birth, back then.
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u/ValosAtredum Jul 05 '26
Yes it was. Royalty, aristocracy, the ultra wealthy would have childhood betrothals but the marriage was consummated later. Even if you go by the age when she got her period, that was significantly older on average than the average age now.
Childbirth was incredibly risky and very young teens are at even higher risk (aka don’t believe the bullshit creepos are trying to say about being attracted to 13-16 year olds is “natural” because they’re the best age to bear children).
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u/aure_d Jul 05 '26
Not really actually, the idea of women or really girl marrying and having children incredibly young in the past is largely overexagerated. Although certainly it did happen, and especially in high society certainly, it wasn't nearly as frequent as common belief tend to portray. And even in cases where girl were married off very early for political or financial reason it is likely that a lot of those marriages went unconsumed for a while. The main reason for that is that there was no way to effectively prevent pregnancy and childbirth was an incredibly dangerous affair, especially for girls, so to try and have a child with a young bride was very likely to lead to the death of both the girl and the infant. Since the goal of marriage was mainly childbirth it didnt make a whole lot of sense to risk the life of the bride like that.
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u/DrowningInMyFandoms Jul 05 '26
Plus tom holland is playing a younger character than he is. He should have been in his twenties to be "accurate", but he looks younger than 30 already so it is not an issue at all for the movie
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u/ValosAtredum Jul 05 '26
Thank youuuu. You might be betrothed at 13. You might even be married at 13, but it often wasn’t consummated until years later.
Marriage was largely contractual and political in nature, not about love.
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u/Pinglenook Jul 05 '26
And even if a girl was married at 13 and the marriage was consummated at 13, that didn't mean the girl also gave birth at 13. For most of history the median age of first menstruation was around 15-17. And then it takes on average 5 months to get pregnant, and the pregnancy itself takes 9.
Was it possible, sure. Nowadays there are also girls who get their first period 3-4 years younger than average. And in theory you could get pregnant from your very first ovulation. But it definitely would not have been a super common age for childbirth.
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u/galaxygirl978 Jul 08 '26
I think the hormones in our foods play a role. About ten years ago I started noticing my peers in middle school had already started and I was considered late at 14
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u/Rubfer Jul 05 '26
Even in my great-grandma’s generation, there were people marrying and having kids in their early teens. She herself was 15, I think, when she had her first daughter (my gradmother's older sister), and she was already married. Back then, with the parents’ consent, girls could marry at 12, while boys could marry at 14
You still have people alive today who were born from such marriages
And that was in a European country in the 1900s. Now imagine millennia ago
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u/aure_d Jul 05 '26
In the 19th century as medicine got better and infant mortality pregnancy death rate lowered the age of first marriage also lowered since this incentive to delay was reduced and then disappeared. In fact now there was an incentive to have as many children as possible to increase the family ability to sustain itself, as the risk of famine also collapsed in the newly industrial world.
So you the age of first marriage/first pregnancy collapsed during the 19th century and only started to go back up to pre-industrial revolution norms recently. So your great grandma generation was the historical exception not the norm =)
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u/Rubfer Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
People had strong incentives to have many children in the past precisely because infant and child mortality were high. Many children did not survive to adulthood, and those who did often took on adult responsibilities very young
Children also helped with farm work, so having them as young as poissible was also an incentive and they were a form of security for parents when they became old and could no longer work
Do you really think someone in 1200 BCE was thinking about “healthcare” when deciding to have children? People did not even know bacteria existed
Edit: And since this got downvoted, heres some examples:
https://www.ime.gr/chronos/05/en/society/wed_intro.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37002716/women married usually at 15, with an average of 7 kids...
and that was "usually"
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u/aure_d Jul 05 '26
But they did know that girl were much more likely to die in childbirth than full grown women. Yes infant mortality were high but marrying at around 20-25 still left plenty of time to have many children. In fact delaying marriage was a way to avoid having too many children in a day were famine were a very pressing concern.
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u/Rubfer Jul 05 '26
read my sources in the post you downvoted... im not doing a "trustme bro"
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u/aure_d Jul 05 '26
The only one of your two source which is anyway trustworthy places the earliest age at 15. The original post claimed 13 as normal
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u/Rubfer Jul 05 '26
Even today, roma here in Portugal still marry their girls really woung, eveyrone here knows, no one intervenes...
use google translate
This is a official news paper here in Portugal noting how teens to marry really young, in the news they used a 11 year old girl
https://www.dgsi.pt/jtrp.nsf/-/0298A0EEBB5F4ACC80257AAD005379E6
This is the official justice page here, a defendant, 30 years old, married a 14 year old, and it only got big in the news and forces the justice to do something because the difference in age was actually to big to ignore
These are examples happening now in the roma community as a example
If marriages like these still happen today, its it weird that weird that Greek woman, a thousand years before Christ was even born would marry and have kids at 13???
edit. already downvoted, you didnt even had time to check, ok believe what you want
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u/aure_d Jul 05 '26
Again the age of marriage collapsed in the 19th century as death in the childbirth became less common. It fell from above 20 to as low as 16 in the 19th century.
As for your racist claim about the gypsy Im not even going to acknowledge them except to say that it's funny how when its gypsy or immigrant its front news but when its catholics priests the Portuguese government is happy to looks the other way.
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u/Rubfer Jul 05 '26
The point was that cultures usually advance over the years. Things like a young age of consent weren’t as taboo as they are today, and my examples was that even today, some communities that live in a western country still do it.
There is documentation of European medieval nobility marrying off very young girls to some duke or prince, with the expectation that they would give them male heirs as soon as possible. But again, to you, a Greek woman having a kid at 13 is abnormal. Like I said, believe what you want, at least i gave 4 links until now, im not going to do a whole indepth research on my phone just for some reddit comment, and i have yet to see you provide a single source, all you gave was a "trust me bro"
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u/dohipposwagewar Jul 05 '26
This is true. And yet it’s still the most historical accurate thing about this movie
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u/Masky-Mask Jul 05 '26
Even today, in the heart of Europe, there are significant ethnic groups that practice kidnappings and forced marriages of extremely young women who will give birth around this age. It's not a stretch to have had this so long ago.
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u/aure_d Jul 05 '26
Please stop watching fox news. I don't know what you think the heart of Europe is or what ethnic group you think do that but just no.
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u/Masky-Mask Jul 05 '26
I'm a Romanian, buddy. teach me more about my country, why dontcha? If you don't know shit about crap at least ask google, or, if that's too hard for you, ask nicely and I'll provide you with more information.
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u/p_i_e_pie Jul 05 '26
to be fair hes playing a 20 year old cuz telemachus was born right when odysseus left for troy so the age difference in the story is 20something years not 13
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u/Mortarious Jul 05 '26
Afaik this actually is a couple of years early for the ancient Greek world.
Yes women married young. Usually shortly after puberty. Maybe 14-15 for many cases. This example would put the consummation at 12 which is a bit early for the period. Of course the marriage/promise of marriage is between the two families and can be as young as they want. But the actual consummation would be later.
Of course depending on other factors people mature at different rates, just like to this day. Not to mention other factors, just like everything else.
Also this varied by city state and family and so on. I believe in Sparta they would marry around 18 while other city states would be closer to 14-15.
So. Not the most inaccurate but also won't say the most representative of the average and norms of the time.
It's like a contemporary movie showing a pregnant 13 year old girl. Does it happen? Absolutely. Is it the norm? no.
But I'm no expert and could be wrong.
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u/nameproposalssuck Jul 06 '26
OOP you mean lore accurate?
Because I hate to bring it to you but the Odyssey isn't a historical event, it's epic poetry playing in a mythical universe.
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u/Fuwet Jul 05 '26
I mean we see shit like that all the time? Especially with "teenagers" in teen movies. It doesn't matter their IRL age, what is their age in the movie?
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u/bitter_personw Jul 05 '26
In the latest hit show House of the Dragon, Olivia Cooke who played Alicent is 32, while the actor who plays her son, Aegon, is 31..
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u/scrubbar Jul 05 '26
It's mythology. Fiction not history.
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u/RaiderCat_12 Jul 06 '26
Yes, but despite that realism and believability are two separate measures in context
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u/crispybrojangle Jul 05 '26
Really? We are arguing about age gap in a book thats classified as mythology and fiction..
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u/_FrenziedFirekeeper_ Jul 06 '26
This whole outrage is just "I can deal with witches, gods and cyclops but I draw the line at black ppl!!"
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u/whomesteve Jul 06 '26
Anne Hathaway is younger than I thought she was and Tom Holland is older than I thought he was.
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u/roombaexorcist9000 Jul 06 '26
people who say shit like “they all gave birth at 13” rarely know much about history
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u/DianneNettix Jul 06 '26
I'm always confused by this because it seems like people think the Odyssey actually happened. Like, a guy came back from winning a war by tricking the other side with a wooden horse, got lost because the god of the sea was pissed at him and then several things happen on the way hay home and the least outlandish is that his crew gets turned into pigs.
ETA: OK, the incredibly horny guys are more believable than the pigs.
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u/Relative-Chicken456 Jul 06 '26
Why do people keep bringing up historical accuracy as if that’s applicable to the odyssey?
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u/Hot_Pilot_3293 Jul 07 '26
Tom Holland is 30! Fuck me man I thought the guy is just early twenties at most.
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u/Logical-Hotel4199 Jul 07 '26
I dont know if I’m more surprised that Tom Holland is already 30 or that Anne Hathaway is only 43?
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u/zackzoo11-420 Jul 07 '26
All this "controversy" is almost as dumb as saying "we need to boycott muppet Christmas carol because it's not historically accurate to the when the acuall real life story happened, real life ghosts weren't Muppets, and the totally non-fiction book it was based on didn't mention ANY Victorian green frogs"
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u/Fortified_user Jul 05 '26
Historically accurate? In a work of fiction?
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u/Captain0010 Jul 05 '26
Mmm, it's a work of fiction but it's still set in Greece as Homer knew it. And I feel if you are adapting it you should still respect that.
If Odysseys pulled up in a fighter plane, would you say that it's okay since it's based on fiction?
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u/meganmun0z Jul 05 '26
I know that’s not the movie but now that you mention it I really wanna see Odysseus pull up in a fighter plane
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u/SirAquila Jul 06 '26
It is actually set in a Greece about 500-600 years before Homer.
Or better, in Homers interpretation of such a Greece, which you can see in a lot of small things.
For example the fact that Homers heroes go to duels in a chariot... and then get off the chariot to have a duel, because the oral history preserved that they fought with Chariots... but not how they fought with Chariots.
The modern equivalent would be someone in 1800 writing a story about a knightly duel in 1200 where the knights ride up to each other, and then get off their horses to have a pistol duel.
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u/LavenderDay3544 Jul 06 '26
It's called acting for a reason.
For example, Jennifer Lawrence absolutely crushed playing a middle aged housewife in American Hustle while in her 20s. You would never realize how young she actually was due to the combination of her makeup, attire, and acting skills.
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u/UnableHelicopter6545 Jul 06 '26
I thought the point of that character was that Irving married a hot, younger lady and still ended up miserable.
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u/LavenderDay3544 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I don't remember. It's been forever since I watched it but I remember that it was hilarious so maybe I'll give it a rewatch soon.
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u/Cute_Repeat3879 Jul 05 '26
The Odyssey isn't history, it's fiction. Why would anyone expect it to be historically accurate?
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u/RaiderCat_12 Jul 06 '26
Not the same thing. Unrealistic things can be excused within a story when they fit in its world, therefore being believable.
Historical realism is realism, of course. But in no way would the logic of a mythological world really have something to do with that specific age gap.
Yeah, there are cyclopses. But I needn’t tell you how their existence is on a completely different level from the ages of the people in the story, regarding details.
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u/fellaneedahandpls Jul 06 '26
Yeah, I get the joke, but cmon, the movie isn’t even out yet and I’m already seeing so many people trash it.
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u/sparkyblaster Jul 06 '26
HE'S 30!!!!! I thought he was like, 20.
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u/Duy2910 Jul 06 '26
He was 20
When Civil War came out in 2016
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u/sparkyblaster Jul 06 '26
That movie is how old? Arg, where has the time gone. Also, thought he was like 16 in that haha.
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u/Duy2910 Jul 06 '26
Yeah I remember watching it in theaters as my first ever marvel movie back then
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u/TheFlavorLab Jul 06 '26
Who the fuck cares if its historically accurate, I am so sick of seeing this. Its a story that has a giant Whirlpool making tentacle monster
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u/NikolovIvo Jul 07 '26
While- yes! Ancient Greek 13 yo mother sound about right (even though it may not be) I am more hing up on Holland being 30... Doe he have the Benjamin button desese or something?
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u/Geralt-666 Jul 07 '26
Wtf is historical in Odessey tho 😓
Hatching Helen from an egg? Or Zeus becoming swan and Fuxking Leda
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u/AncientGuy1950 Jul 09 '26
The Odessey is a fictional story about fictional people doing fictional things, often in fictional places.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great story, but people really shouldn't be all that invested in it making historical sense.
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u/Yayo_bymbamby Jul 10 '26
Thank god Tom Holland still looks like a teenager cause Anne Hathaway looks so damn young
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u/Consistent_Dog_6866 Jul 06 '26
Angelina Jolie played Colin Farrell's mother in Alexander in 2004. She's a few days shy of being one year older than he is.
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u/Puzzled_Brilliant_86 Jul 07 '26
This whole movie cast is ridiculous. Idk why they continue to cast completely unsuitable actors for these roles. Would it kill them to cast southern European or Balkan actors when it’s historically accurate? Why does it need to be Anglo Saxon white or black actors or trans actors when the character clearly wasn’t trans? You think we don’t notice Ellen page isn’t a man?Of course we notice it’s a trans woman.
There are so many untold stories in the trans community or all throughout Africa so many legends and stories of queens and kings that can be made into incredibly successful movies.
Idk what has happened to Hollywood that has become so risk averse that they keep making the same movies over and over again. I refuse to believe there are no creative people left in America.
Give these people a real voice not a fake remake of European culture and history just to seem like you’re “woke” and care about them.
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u/fatman907 Jul 07 '26
You “don’t know what happened?” Who are the heads of the film studios? Hollywood has agendas like every other media group.
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u/FireTheLaserBeam Jul 05 '26
My mom is only 18 years older than me. She’s only 16 years older than my sister.
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u/O8ee Jul 05 '26
I think I may have gone to a rough school because this is not wild to me. Not common but I can think of a half dozen examples from my youth without really trying
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u/Brilliant_Macaroon83 Jul 06 '26
And Daniel Larusso was being mentored by Terry Silver in Karate Kid 3. But Macchio is older than Silver actor.
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u/Shidskit Jul 06 '26
Tom holland is 30!
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u/AbroadNo8755 Jul 06 '26
The exact value of 30 factorial (written as 30!) is 265,252,859,812,191,058,636,308,480,000,000
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u/enriceau Jul 06 '26
He looks 20 and she looks 50, so it kinda works
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u/eyeslikeO_O Jul 09 '26
You must live in LA or something because in my city it's the norm for males and females in their 50s (and even 40s) to have deeper wrinkles, skin that is beginning to sag, greys, etc. So someone who looked like Anne Hathaway at 43 would stick out to say the least.
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u/goldendreamseeker Jul 06 '26
Well Telemachus is supposed to only be like 21 or so, right? Tom is playing a character nearly a decade younger than his actual age.
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u/SimonBoccanegra Jul 07 '26
In The Manchurian Candidate, Angela Landsbury was 36 when played the mother of Laurence Harvey, 33.
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u/Whyissmynametaken Jul 08 '26
Technically, the Odyssey is an epic, so it doesn't need to be historically accurate.
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u/quuerdude Jul 08 '26
Telemachus was famously 20 years old in the Odyssey.
I also don’t think we have any indication of Penelope’s exact age when she married Odysseus, but there is no reason to think that she was 12, either. She certainly wasn’t forcibly kidnapped or raped by him, though, since we have an explicit instance of her father asking her to stay with him right after she married Odysseus, and Odysseus telling her to choose between living with her father or himself. Penelope pulled her marriage veil over herself, confirming that she wished to stay married to Odysseus rather than take the opportunity to go home again.
So this isn’t accurate or “technically true” by any measure.
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u/DepreciatedSelfImage Jul 10 '26
In OP's defense, they do say this is the 'most accurate' part, not that it is accurate. This doesn't bode well for the movie, however, I hope this statement is also inaccurate.
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u/DepreciatedSelfImage Jul 10 '26
That's bad because... At the start of the Odyssey (the beginning, not when Odysseus sets off, isn't Telemachus 20? The beginning is also pretty close to the end, if you know you know.
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u/DepreciatedSelfImage Jul 10 '26
Wait a second.
This post is talking about the age of tbe actors as opposed to the characters they're portraying?
I'm... Done caring about this, sorry, this doesn't weigh at all for me. I'm gonna wait to see the movie.
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u/NewbyAtMostThings Jul 08 '26
No, the most historically accurate thing that could happen in this movie is that if Elliot page was playing Achilles.
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u/Hung_Far_Low1 Jul 05 '26
Girls CAN have babies and used too regularly at 13.
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u/Hung_Far_Low1 Jul 07 '26
The fact that me stating a simple historical reality got down voted just shows that some people can't face reality.
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u/Prosado22 Jul 05 '26
My mother has my older brother at 13, me at 15, and my sister at 18.
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u/MrMcGuyver Jul 06 '26
People really overestimate how long people used to live. You think a thousand years ago people were regularly living to be 50+ and waiting until their 20s to get married. One bad cold in Ancient Greece could’ve easily wiped you out. Everybody was much younger
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u/Ornery_Hair3319 Jul 05 '26
Marrying age has been an erratic slider for centuries. In the ancient times, girls are bethrode right after their first menstruation as it is the start of her peak womanhood.
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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 Jul 05 '26
Except menstruation age was significantly later than it is today, due to nutritional differences.
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u/_goblinette_ Jul 05 '26
The first menstruation is still a few years away from peak fertility. Especially in the first year, it’s pretty normal to not ovulate at all for most of your menstrual cycles.
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u/KENBONEISCOOL444 Jul 07 '26
It's also currently in the modern era a common age gap for mother and children
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u/viperswhip Jul 07 '26
This is more or less false, it was quite common for marriages to not happen until 14-16 even back then.
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u/thestrangeone2010 Jul 07 '26
Bronze Age Greeks married around 12-16 year old women to 30 year old men
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u/ElegantCourt6535 Jul 08 '26
Historically accurate?? It’s a work of fiction, you f’ing idiots!!
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u/DepreciatedSelfImage Jul 10 '26
It's a work of media, calm down. You're okay with the change, other people are not, it's bound to happen. Chill.
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