She’s certainly beautiful, and that is Helen’s most notable attribute. But she was also Mediterranean, so to the extent that one can talk about “what she really looked like”, it wouldn’t have been like Nyong’o.
Which does not mean that it’s not a valid artistic decision to cast a black woman to play the role of a Mediterranean woman, if one has decided that her skin color simply isn’t a relevant aspect of the character. But it is, at the least, a noteworthy artistic decision.
Half-Mediterranean. The other half is either swan or Greek god.
Well, Helen was also canonically hatched from an egg laid by her mother Leda after being raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, so I think concerns about “historical realism” in Helen casting that focus only on skin color are kind of cherrypicking the issue.
Is there actually a canon of Greek mythos? I thought that it was unusual for extant sources to agree on the details, and that’s ignoring the fact that we only have a small fraction of contemporary sources. And never mind the original oral traditions.
Not quite pointless or a waste. It got on the news. It got mentioned in this thread. We’ve been trolled.
The carver may not have intended his 15 minutes of internet fame. But he got it.
Hell, that’s probably why they got thrown out. 
Which would surely put a twist to the whole Christian narrative…
Good point, AFAICT Homer himself doesn’t actually make the claim (which however is made in other ancient sources such as Euripides) about Zeus taking swan form and Helen hatching from an egg. Although Homer does refer to Helen as the daughter of the god Zeus, which is equally impossible for any actual woman in a historical human society.
In short, the anti-“woke” rightwingers who are making all this fuss about the perceived ahistoricity of Helen of Sparta being portrayed with dark skin, while taking in their stride her widely acknowledged divine origin and all the other literally mythical gods and monsters running around loose throughout the Homeric stories, are being wildly irrational in their highly selective claims to be defending historical realism in classical epic.
Which in my book makes them stupid MFers, for sure. There! Back on track with the thread topic!
(And that’s not even really counting the even stupider MFers like Matt Walsh who are basing their objections on the ridiculous claim that nobody could possibly consider Nyong’o to be the most beautiful woman in the world. ??? I mean, of course not everybody would agree that Nyong’o is the most beautiful woman in the world, that’s a matter of personal opinion on which it’s obviously going to be impossible to achieve universal consensus. But there is nothing at all absurd about opining that Nyong’o, who was literally designated the world’s most beautiful person by People magazine in 2014, is a good casting choice to play Helen of Troy on account of her remarkable beauty.)
Well, yes, but you forgot to include a couple of key words there that Walsh meant, but did not have to say; his audience heard them loud and clear anyhow:
(And that’s not even really counting the even stupider MFers like Matt Walsh who are basing their objections on the ridiculous claim that nobody White could possibly consider Nyong’o to be the most beautiful White woman in the world.
In their world, only White people are people. Everyone else is something other than people.
I sure hope I live long enough to see us put the fascism back under its rock. Preferably a very big rock so this time it’s not just hiding; it’s crushed.
And she’s a pretty decent actress, of course.
I’m starting to suspect that the rise of Trumpism was fueled in large part by people who had never heard of ancient Greece before they saw the movie 300 twenty years ago.
Nah, too gay for MAGA.
ITYM, not gay enough. There’s a reason they keep crashing Grindr.
Gay? Surely not 300, the tale of how the bravely heterosexual Spartans, with their racial purity and alpha male muscles, stood alone among the Greeks (who were democrats, you know) and defended “Western Civilization” against the (woke) multiracial Persians and their twink emperor who probably uses pronouns, and would’ve won if not for an ugly (and therefore evil) DEI hire who betrayed them.
(Honestly, I’m not sure if Frank Miller was parodying the aesthetics of fascist propaganda when he wrote the book, or whether he was just portraying it straight, but we’re talking about the same people who watch Paul Veerhoeven’s Starship Troopers and think the Federation are the good guys.)
Miller’s extremely brutal vigilante takes on Batman and Daredevil suggest to me he was okay with portraying fascist heroes in comics.
When the Wonder Woman movies came out, there were a lot of right-wing heads exploding over the question of whether Gal Gadot was white. On the one hand, she’s hot. But on the other hand, she’s Jewish. How can this be!?
Frank Miller is known for his… right wing tendencies.
Well, the character is culturally (ancient) Greek, after all. Plus, in current DC comics and DC movie canon, she’s Helen of Troy’s half-sister. 
Very true, although AFAICT Homer doesn’t actually give Helen (or her sister Clytemnestra, also played by Nyong’o in the forthcoming movie) much if anything to do in the actual events of the Odyssey. I think we see Helen only briefly when Telemachus visits Menelaus seeking news of Odysseus, and Clytemnestra is only mentioned in passing.
But it seems probable that the movie will take the opportunity to show Menelaus’s reunion with Helen after the sack of Troy, as well as the killing of Agamemnon, so it will probably add up to a fairly juicy (double) role for Nyong’o: I’m looking forward to it!
(Annnnnnd there goes the thread topic again, sorry. “I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out”: that’s the Pit for you, and especially when I’m around, apparently.)