What’s with Hollywood making a character black even if it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. A black Roman Emperor? Really? The Romans were not that progressive. It feels so forced.
It’s like the producers heard emperor Macrinus was from Africa and they’re like “oh he was black!” No he was a Roman provincial born in Africa. He was not of African descent. It reminds me of that Cleopatra documentary. A complete ignorance of northern Africa and it’s ethnic populations, considering to this day northern Africans are not ethnically black.
Why not just make a movie about George Washington and hire Morgan Freeman?
Anyways, it’s weird when Hollywood race swaps. And as someone who loves roman history, the whole thing is really distracting.
I think for something that’s clearly not meant to be very historically accurate race swapping is fine. If we always have strict racial rules then vaguely historical movies are always going to be contributing to role inequalities for non-white people.
The first movie was historical fiction (if anything they toned down Commodus and his brutality in the movie) but once you do something like make the Emperor black, now it’s complete fiction. And it does matter, otherwise we wouldn’t have issues with white actors playing roles that should go to people of color.
It’s too jarring to my historian heart I think. Like a white as fuck John Wayne playing Genghis Khan
What’s with Hollywood making a character black even if it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. A black Roman Emperor? Really? The Romans were not that progressive. It feels so forced.
It’s like the producers heard emperor Macrinus was from Africa and they’re like “oh he was black!” No he was a Roman provincial born in Africa. He was not of African descent. It reminds me of that Cleopatra documentary. A complete ignorance of northern Africa and it’s ethnic populations, considering to this day northern Africans are not ethnically black.
Why not just make a movie about George Washington and hire Morgan Freeman?
Anyways, it’s weird when Hollywood race swaps. And as someone who loves roman history, the whole thing is really distracting.
I think for something that’s clearly not meant to be very historically accurate race swapping is fine. If we always have strict racial rules then vaguely historical movies are always going to be contributing to role inequalities for non-white people.
The first movie was historical fiction (if anything they toned down Commodus and his brutality in the movie) but once you do something like make the Emperor black, now it’s complete fiction. And it does matter, otherwise we wouldn’t have issues with white actors playing roles that should go to people of color.
It’s too jarring to my historian heart I think. Like a white as fuck John Wayne playing Genghis Khan
He’s acting like a white guy