This story originally appeared on Them.
Elliot Page walked the red carpet for the New York City premiere of The Odyssey earlier this week — much to the chagrin of right-wing transphobes sitting at home behind their keyboards. Unsurprisingly, Page enjoyed a seemingly lovely evening with his girlfriend, Overcompensating star Julia Shiplett, and a crew of friends including actress Peppermint, comedian James Tom, and ACLU attorney Chase Strangio. A hit movie, a beautiful partner, and a fun time with your pals? Looks like fun.
Predictably, though, some people online proceeded to absolutely lose it over clips of him in the movie that were subsequently leaked. Without spoiling the Christopher Nolan adaptation of Homer’s epic, the leaked clips appear to show scenes in which Page’s character, Sinon, is dehydrated and scrambling around a beach in a way that is apparently activating to conservative transphobes. Many complained that Page appeared weak and not at all like Achilles — which is probably good, because Page isn’t playing the mythological Greek warrior at all.
“how the fuck did they hurt achilles what,” one commenter wrote.
The initial controversy began in May when it was rumored that Page would play Achilles in the upcoming Christopher Nolan adaptation of the Greek epic. Avowed transphobes like Elon Musk took issue with the casting, as did Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty, who described Achilles as “most famous warrior in all of history” while criticizing Page. Mind you, Homer’s The Odyssey is a work of fiction and Achilles is a figure from Greek mythology — emphasis on the myth. There’s no such thing as “historical accuracy” when you are essentially adapting a glorified fable.
In late June, it was confirmed that Page would actually be playing Sinon, another figure in Greek mythology who is described in Virgil’s Aeneid as a conniving trickster who convinces the Trojan army to let in the wooden horse with the Greek warriors inside. Remember how actors do this thing and it’s called acting? If what you take away from the 10 seconds of leaked footage is that Page seems feeble, that means he’s likely doing his job. We’re pretty sure the guy with eight-pack abs can run with armor on if he wants to.
That said, transphobes are not exactly adept in parsing through facts, so regardless of how “accurately” Page portrays Sinon, some online commenters will never be pleased.
“How ANYONE could pay to watch this is beyond me,” one wrote.
Regardless of how confused conservatives are about the difference between Achilles and Sinon, or the difference between myth and history for that matter, we’ll be avoiding their spoilers and attending the film ourselves to watch Page kill it in the year’s most anticipated release. Apparently, so will thousands of others, as box-office projections for The Odyssey opening weekend predict a staggering $200 million global opening weekend.
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