You know, the History Channel can really produce some great stuff when they have the right combination of appropriate resources and faith in their audience’s patience. Unfortunately, Clash of the Gods does not find that right mixture. What could have been a tremendously involving and revelatory series about the power and origins of myths ends up taking the low road, settling instead to become a loosely connected collection of vignettes of ancient myths, primarily from the Greek tradition (though Norse mythology is also represented here).
Clash of the Gods is made up of 10 different segments, with each telling the story of a different major character in Greek mythology. Zeus (and thus, the creation of the universe) is covered here, as is Medusa, Hercules, Hades, and all of the other ones that someone relatively unfamiliar with Greek mythology could be expected to know by name. The format is a strange one: heavy on staged re-enactments (if they could even be called that; essentially characters are shot in different poses and edited all to pieces to give the impression that more is happening than actually is) combined with the occasional commentary by noted (I’m presuming they’re noted) experts in the field, who essentially narrate the footage to let us know exactly what’s going on. Though they do not fall under the category of Greek mythology, the stories of Beowolf, the Oddysey, and the origins of Tolkien’s creatures are also given their own episodes.
The first thing that one might notice about this series is that at no point do the gods ‘clash’ in any way; instead, they tend to sit isolated in their own episodes, going through the motions of actions that they have been performing for millennia, rather than the epic ‘who would win’ that the title seems to be promising us (because that’d be a pretty cool show). But over the course of the series, Gods picks up on a number of interesting themes, most prominently how reality could be primitively interpreted such as to be explained by some of these myths (there’s a good bit on the skull of an elephant could easily be mistaken for that of a Cyclops), and how these myths only became ‘myths’ after the rise of Christianity. Either one of these (but particularly the latter) would have made a strong enough thesis to sustain a 10-part miniseries, but Gods never finds that focus, suggesting instead a project that was pieced together based on what characters they thought might be familiar to a large enough viewing audience. Considering how the title is merely a word off from a major film release coming out next month, that’s not all that hard to believe.
What’s ultimately most frustrating about Clash of the Gods is the massive amount of potential that was clearly available here to create a series if they had merely devoted the time and resources to doing so. Mythological Gods and creatures are hissy and tempestuous enough that the show probably could have been interesting even if the only footage that they had had was of scholars walking around ruins in the desert and explaining the images carved on the walls, as PBS has been doing for decades. The constant re-enactments (which could almost be better described as graphics, considering the heavy amount of rendering that clearly went into them) serve only to minimize the grandeur of Gods fighting over the fate of the entire world rather than personify or enhance it, and as a result narrow the import of the subject matter, which is ultimately the belief systems at the heart of some of the biggest civilizations that Earth has ever seen. A few years ago, I saw a documentary called Protagonist, in which the life stories of several people were re-enacted with wooden puppets. It had some of the same problems that this does, but one that it did not have was presentation. Silly as the concept may have been, those puppets certainly got the message across in a way that was consistent. Not to say that that was necessarily the answer in this case, but it would have been nice to see them try some some sort of representation that didn't involve computer graphics, or dispensed with them altogether.
DVD and Blu-ray Bonus Features
There are no special features. The DVD set is 3 discs, while the Blu-ray is 2 discs.
"Clash of the Gods" is on sale March 16, 2010 and is not rated. Television. Directed by Christopher Cassel, Jessica Conway. Written by Christopher Cassel, Stan Goldberg, Scott Miller, Kevin Fitzpatrick, Jessica lyne de Ver, Laura Verklan, Mashizan Masjum. Starring Blair Jones, Joseph Bedellem, Tate Steinsiek.
