An Epic Poem That Doesn’t Feel Very Epic

Jeff Goldblum performs Zeus, king of the gods, in Kaos. Within the advertising and marketing for the Netflix sequence, he’s been positioned as extra of an Atlas-like determine, with the complete present carried on his again—and his twitchy, stuttering shtick. Really, Kaos is distributed fairly evenly amongst its massive forged of characters, lots of whom don’t actually appear to be they belong to the identical world, and none of whom show sturdy sufficient to maintain the sequence from crumbling.

Kaos takes place in a world not not like our current one, besides right here the Greek gods are actual and rule over humanity from atop Mount Olympus. We’re launched to the main members of this pantheon of gods in a gap sequence set to Dire Straits’s “Cash for Nothing,” with every character title typically adopted by a smaller one providing some glib addendum. This introductory sequence—and the remainder of the eight-episode sequence—is narrated irreverently by Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), who sometimes addresses the digicam immediately.

From that apparent dad-rock musical alternative—together with the likes of Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Worry) the Reaper” and the Zombies’s “Time of the Season”—to the present’s winking, Deadpool-ish model of humor, nothing about the way in which Kaos begins feels notably impressed, or notably inspiring. Had been Cassandra right here, she’d seemingly have some ominous issues to say.

The sequence follows Zeus as he turns into more and more nervous about dropping energy, simply as a bunch of people on Earth are drawn right into a plan to be sure that he does. Caught in between these two realms is Zeus’s son, Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan), who will get concerned in mortal affairs in a bid to win the respect of his father. Dionysus is arguably Kaos’s true fundamental character, and Rizwan provides an endearing efficiency, however his Dionysus is outlined by a skittish, fast-talking demeanor, which you will not affiliate with the hedonistic god of wine and revelry.

Probably the most notable among the many Earth-bound characters are Orpheus (Killian Scott), imagined right here as a Chris Martin-esque stadium pop-rocker, and his associate Eurydice, who prefers to go by “Riddy” (Aurora Perrineau). Followers of Greek mythology will know roughly what to anticipate from this plotline, which Kaos reduces to an exceptionally drab love triangle wherein Riddy falls for a sad-eyed white boy after which will get forged all the way down to the underworld the place she falls for one more one.

The Greek gods have been re-imagined on display screen in numerous methods, displaying up in every little thing from Ray Harryhausen epics to Disney cartoons and ultraviolent video video games, however Kaos does little to earn a spot in that canon. There’s nothing in the way in which that Zeus and his kin are depicted to separate them from any of the opposite poisonous households on TV, and even their godly powers are rendered in essentially the most uninventive phrases: a little bit of telekinesis right here, a little bit of teleporting there.

Zeus does throw certainly one of his patented thunderbolts in a later episode of the sequence, although even this primarily occurs off display screen. Between that and the truth that Dionysus is the one little one of Zeus who seems within the sequence, the entire thing recollects that Deadpool 2 joke about twentieth Century Fox solely with the ability to afford the looks of a few X-Males within the movie.

Even supposing no effort is made to type the Olympians in an particularly distinctive method, Kaos nonetheless suffers from a difficulty that plagues a whole lot of streaming-era exhibits, the place each merchandise of clothes seems like a fancy dress. No matter realm we’re in, everybody’s outfits have that fresh-off-the-rack crispness about them. That is particularly obvious in relation to the Furies, who stands out as the least gnarled biker gang to ever grace the display screen.

Extra essentially, there’s an actual uncertainty concerning the form of sequence Kaos needs to be. Solid members like Rizwan and Suzy Eddie Izzard (taking part in one of many Fates) relish the possibility to chew some surroundings, whereas others play their roles with the seriousness of a Greek tragedy. The sequence doesn’t have a constant sufficient inside logic to succeed as a grown-up fantasy sequence—at the least one plot beat hinges on the truth that these nigh-omnipotent deities talk by landline phone—but it surely’s additionally not humorous or outsized sufficient to operate as a comic book farce.