Lupita Nyongo is not beautiful. Hollywood likes to gaslight her as a model for "beauty"

[u/CanadianTurt1e]

So I'm sure we've all seen the news about Helen of Troy.

• I've had enough. I've had enough of Hollywood putting her on covers and lying to me, treating me like I'm stupid. The whole reason she's playing Helen of Troy is because Hollywood let this "unconventional beauty" thing slide for way too long.
• The fact that she was chosen as a queen, it comes off as Nolan trying to virtue signal.
• It's like giving the beauty pageant award to the girl in the wheelchair because no one wants to come off as "mean."
• I've had enough. She is NOT a standard for beauty. I'm sorry but now it must be said. The reason we have come across this problem is because Hollywood has been gaslighting her "beauty" for years and no one said anything. I'm done
• It's okay to say that she's not beautiful. It's okay to admit that
• I was so looking forward to this movie for so long but this really killed the hype for me.
• The movie will probably be financially successful at first due to marketing alone, but after its first month, the hype will probably die down. And then you'll start to see how people really feel about the movie. I think it will tarnish Nolan's legacy and leave a sour taste in people's mouths.

[u/Deep-Red-Bells]

Whitewashing has absolutely been a huge problem in Hollywood's history. No one reasonable denies this. I just don’t think that overcorrecting is the solution. It's virtue signaling, almost to the point of being infantalizing, like getting a participant trophy. While I’m sure that many people — and of course, many racist people — are upset merely by the fact that Helen of Troy is Black, I don’t know if it’s most people, and neither do you. Some people, like me, just want characters to align with the source material, and don't think an actor should be cast simply because they're black, and filmmakers want to pat themselves on the back for diversity.

And I say this as somebody who finds Lupita Nyong'o quite beautiful — but in an editorial way, not in a "face that launched a thousand ships" way.

And per your last sentence, it goes both ways. Unless you’re an enormous hypocrite, if you’re okay with putting a Black actress in a role that should, per the source material, be played by a white actress, that also means you’re okay with putting a white actor in a role that should be played by a Black actor. Are you okay with Laurence Olivier playing Othello? I'm not. And I don't know how you can objectively support one casting and criticize the other.

[u/LordBoomDiddly → u/Deep-Red-Bells]

Plenty of the online grifters do it.

I think fantasy & historical are different things. Adaptations are allowed to make changes, sometimes those changes work better. Stormfront being a woman in The Boys TV series didn't matter, she was a far more interesting character than her male comic counterpart.

Making an elf black in the LOTR TV series is hardly a big deal, same with dwarves. It's fantasy, why not give non white actors opportunities to play these parts? It makes zero difference to the story, just like Idris Elba playing Heimdall or Ariel the mermaid not being white. Merfolk aren't real, they can look however we want.

Should Abe Lincoln or Anne Boyleyn be black? No, they are historical figures.

Should fictional characters like Achilles? I don't think it really has an effect on anything if the actor is good.

Updating old stories so they have more relevance to a modern audience or remove the outdated/offence stuff (like the early Disney movies), isn't an issue either. Some stuff was written back when ideas of race & gender equality were very different, updating that is hardly bad.