Gal Gadot was born to play Cleopatra
In a world that is a little saner than ours, the news that Israeli actress Gal Gadot, most famous for her role as the comic book superheroine Wonder Woman, has been slated to play Cleopatra would be met with universal rejoicing. However, while some rejoicing took place, it was not universal.
USA Today has a good rundown of the Twitter firestorm that took place in the wake of the announcement. Sameera Khan, referred to as a journalist, wondered who “thought it would be a good idea to cast an Israeli actress as Cleopatra (a very bland looking one) instead of a stunning Arab actress like Nadine Njeim? And shame on you, Gal Gadot. Your country steals Arab land & you’re stealing their movie roles… smh.”
First of all, “very bland looking?” Really? REALLY? Second of all, anti-Semitism is an ugly thing.
To be sure, the days during which Alec Guinness could play an Arab emir or Sean Connery could play a Berber chieftain (and a Lithuanian submarine captain), not to mention Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, appear to be over. The eternally woke leap the lengths of their chains when a Caucasian is cast to play an ethnic role. However, as many on Twitter pointed out, Cleopatra was not, strictly speaking, Egyptian. She was the scion of a Graeco-Macedonian dynasty that began with a fellow named Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s generals, who had the foresight to grab Egypt as his own when Alexander died and his empire broke apart.
Besides, the Mossad parody Twitter account had the best response to this kerfuffle.
“In our opinion, @GalGadot is the most historically accurate choice for the role of Cleopatra. We know this because back when Gal was with the Mossad, she travelled back to the 1st century BC and ruled Ptolemaic Egypt for 21 years.”
Also, good lord, she’s Wonder Woman! Any film starring Gal Gadot, especially one directed by her cinematic partner Patti Jenkins, has a built-in box office. Historical epics, which tend to be expensive, are hard to get green lit, not to mention get filmed. And for every “Gladiator” (which starred Russell Crowe, who was not a Roman), a dozen or so films get made that turn out to be flops or so ahistorical that they are annoying to watch.
Cleopatra has shown up on the big and small screens for decades. The 1963 film “Cleopatra” is the most familiar for audiences. Who can forget Liz Taylor chewing the scenery, daring both Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar and Richard Burton as Marc Antony to keep up? The most irritating part of the 1963 film is that Antony is depicted as a whiney little — er — rhymes with witch who Cleopatra has wrapped around her little finger. And it ends in tragedy, as Octavian, unimpressed by the Queen’s charms, conquers Egypt and obliges Cleopatra, in order to avoid being a trophy during the Roman Emperor’s triumph, to embrace the asp.
Gadot and Jenkins have quite a task ahead of them to top the Elizabeth Taylor depiction. Their “Cleopatra” will likely have a lot of girl power and female empowerment layered in. But “Wonder Woman” carried the feminist themes off without being misandrist. No doubt the new “Cleopatra” will depict the Queen as a person who could win the respect of Julius Caesar, the greatest soldier and statesman of his age, just as Wonder Woman could shame her male companions into following her across No Man’s Land in the teeth of German machine guns and on to victory. That will make it a movie worth risking even the coronavirus to see on a big screen.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond and Children of Apollo. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.
