I am so happy because I just watched the first two episodes of American Gods series last night, which is adapted from the same titled novel by Neil Gaiman. The story evolves around Shadow Moon's life after prison, which became stranger and stranger each day, starting from his wife Laura's death--to weird yet powerful people he's meeting along his employment to Mr. Wednesday.
Tho it's dark and so much grotesque, I find the story interesting because it's talking about the old gods VS the new gods we are adoring. Thousands of years ago we may worshiping a line of gods and goddess, no matter where we are, because they ruled and had the power. But tho the world is changing and we're so much 'developed', we still adoring and worshiping things--only in different form than the old gods/goddesses. The new gods now are technology, television program, video game, and so on.
I'm taking this idea in my own perspective: that we are forgetting those who helped our ancestors in their time, forgetting those who helped us built our nation, and replacing them with new-found culture of futurism, technology and westernization. Apart from the filthy works the gods are depicted in this movie, I still believe that they did what they had to do in that time.
Although most of Greek/Nordic gods-goddesses are depicted as narcissistic and selfish beings, I believe many of them aren't behaving that way. It's just that we human don't know so much about them that we often view them from one side and judge them from where we see it--but how do we know more about them?
Well this is just a thought about how I see our relationship with the old gods: we know nothing about them, only heard of them from some tales, some myths or sayings. But one thing that we can prove from these legends: that once upon a time our world believed in gods and goddess, that they were being forgotten by younger generations, and that this world is still need worshiping something in exchange that we mostly don't realize.
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| via deviantart |
Back to the film, I feel happy with this series. Especially because I like the guy playing Shadow Moon, Ricky Whittle--he's much better than how I'd picture him in my imagination. I like most of the casting, except for Bilquis, whom I expected would be more pretty and seducing as the Goddess of Love would be--but maybe in this time of crisis for the old goddess, it's okay that Yetide Badaki plays her. It's not that she's not beautiful--it's just that her natural expression is mostly too dark and sad for a Bilquis in my mind.
Well I don't really recommend this film for everyone. Not many can take so much blood and darkness on scene, but lovers of Hannibal would love this flick--especially because it is created by Bryan Fuller and this is his first series after Hannibal. And Neil Gaiman has a reputation of never disappointing his readers, making his films always as good as the books (remember when he created different plot for Stardust? I think it's good to avoid having bad film adaptation from a book!)
So yeah, I'm rating this film 10 out of 10, for all the details and the whole imagination-coming-to-life, although the film is admittedly much darker than how I thought it'd be. I just really can't wait to see Easter and the epic war in the end. So excited!
