Olympus

If you love watching TV Series, just forget about this one and move on to the next that you have in mind.

Some low budget TV shows deserve to be watched because of the quality of the stories, of the Actors , of the director's vision, of the visual effects,etc. None of the above is OLYMPUS case. There is nothing interesting about this Show. The storyline is (guess what) as far as possible from any decent Mythology plot that you could hope for. The Actors seem to be clueless about everything going on, in general: when you watch it, you have the constant impression to be watching a bunch of weird dressed mad people wondering around a TV Set with awful visual effects.

Do not be fooled by any misleading hope of finding any interesting character to rely to.

This is possibly one of the WORST TV Shows ever created. It wont survive to this 1st Season, so do yourself a big favor and move on to the next. We have plenty of good choices to enjoy.

Hero is an interesting character in the Olympus story because he is the one who is in charge of saving the world in a sense. What I really liked about Olympus is that each character had a different motive, and the quest for immortality was great. And the fight between two kingdoms for it seemed like a fascinating plot to me. I cannot wait to watch the whole series. The only thing that is wrong with Olympus is that it places too much emphasis on the fight scenes and not enough on developing some of the characters. The characters that could have been developed more were King Aegeus. Now what is most important is the Oracle character and she served her full purpose in the story as far as I'm concerned. What I also didn't like is that a few scenes were kind of boring. But Olympus made up for all that by creating a great plot and good ideas. Don't miss this brilliant episode.

There has been a good bit of criticism regarding the production budget of this series. I don't have the numbers right at hand, but clearly the great majority--if not all--of the shooting is done on a sound stage. This saves money, of course, but I think there is more to it. The world of Olympus is set in ancient Greece; but it is a world in which the gods are real, and supernatural powers are part of ordinary existence. I think that the oddly-crafted set pieces are deliberately intended to evoke a world that is similar to our own, but not quite ours. Perhaps this world is a psychological state of mind; the series synopsis tells us that the gods will eventually be consigned to the world of the unconscious, what they call the Underworld, or Hades. When this happens, the entire world will change...is this not perception? Watching this series brings to mind the German Expressionist movement in film. They both share the use of stylized set pieces, and the plots and stories of both often deal with madness, hallucination, and betrayal. And let's not forget that film noir arose out of expressionism; the eerie, atmospheric lighting, somewhat hapless protagonist, and the irrepressible femme fatale elements of noir can be readily by seen in Olympus. If you examine this series through that lens I think you will gain a better appreciation of it.

UPDATE: It is Aug 26 2015, and I wrote the above approximately a week before. I had not viewed the entire series by then, but I have now. If you have already made up your mind about this series, and decided that you hate it, nothing I say here will effect your opinion. But if you like the series, or are still undecided, I encourage you--nay, I entreat you--to watch it to the end. The final three episodes are spell-binding, and the season (perhaps series) conclusion is quite surprising and satisfying. This series has cemented its position on my short list of best series ever. It went by so fast I could hardly believe it was over. You owe it to yourself to give this show a chance.

The production value on this is low, not gonna lie. I wish the creators had had more money to work with, because there are some interesting ideas. They collapse time in order to deal with multiple issues - the ruins reflect us looking back from today, the Magi reflect a time when Christians would destroy the earlier polytheism - and the concept of how we experience time eventually comes into the plot. I'm a couple of episodes from the end and our Hero is in a downward spiral towards anti-Hero status which is painful and real feeling.

My one hugh issue is that once again Anglo writers felt the need to make the bad guys in a fantasy story vaguely Arabic. That really needs to stop.

I was SO looking forward to the premiere of OLYMPUS. I was disappointed at the weak initial character development and production value/cinematography and scene setting. It looked like I was watching a Lost in Space or I Dream of Jeannie (both good in their day) 40 years ago. You could clearly tell the actors were placed over footage from somewhere else. If it's CGI, it's bad CGI. Not even CLOSE to 300! I've seen cable channels like The 100 on CW do MUCH better with their backdrops and action sequences. The acting of the lead actor and the Oracle was OK but a lot of the other actors came off as hokey and artificial. A lot of that might have been due to the script and directing. I want to give this another chance but if this is the best you can do with the production of the show it's not going to make it.