Elliot Page walked the red carpet at the New York City premiere of Sinbad Odyssey earlier this week. Julia Shiplett was there with him, and so were Peppermint, James Tom, and Chase Strangio. The arrival kept the focus on Page’s role as Sinon while the film heads toward a projected $200 million global opening weekend.
Sinon, not Achilles
In May, the backlash began when Page was rumored to be playing Achilles in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. By late June, the role was sorted out: Page was playing Sinon instead. That shift matters because the controversy had been built on the wrong character altogether, turning mythological confusion into a target for transphobic reaction.
Sinon is the figure tied to the wooden horse in Virgil’s Aeneid, not the celebrated warrior some commenters had assumed. The distinction is plain on the page and on the screen. Page’s casting was never about Achilles, yet the rumor gave critics a simpler fight to pick.
Leaked clips, bad reading
Online commenters then latched onto leaked clips that appeared to show Sinon dehydrated and scrambling around a beach. One anonymous commenter wrote, “how the fuck did they hurt achilles what”. Another wrote, “How ANYONE could pay to watch this is beyond me”. Those reactions were aimed at footage from the role, not the finished film, which is why the conversation kept sliding off the actual character Page is playing.
The footage also seems to have compressed the character into a few rough seconds, which is enough for bad-faith reading and not much else. A 10-second clip can be turned into a whole argument when people decide the wrong mythological figure is on screen.
New York City premiere pressure
Earlier this week, Page still showed up for the premiere in New York City. That public appearance put the casting dispute beside the film’s launch instead of letting it live only in comment threads. For a release projected to open globally at $200 million, the size of the audience makes the noise impossible to ignore, even when the noise is based on the wrong premise.
The practical read here is simple: Page is in Sinbad Odyssey as Sinon, the rumor about Achilles is over, and the film is entering the market with a controversy shaped more by leaked fragments and myth confusion than by the full performance. If the clips keep circulating, the only unresolved piece is how much of Page’s work those short shots actually reveal.
