Atlantis: "The Earth Bull"
So, I watched the first episode of Atlantis. Let’s get a couple of things clear before I start picking it apart:
1. I’m not going to watch or comment on any more episodes. That’s a decision I made long before this aired and is not indicative of the quality of this particular episode. My reasons are simply that a) I don’t trust the creators of this show and b) I’m generally sick to death of white dude bromances anyway (and the assorted and unavoidable fandom baggage that goes with them). I’m watching The Earth Bull out of morbid curiosity, and then I’m stopping.
2. This review isn’t going to be full of personal attacks on Johnny Capps, Julian Murphy, et al. I’m not going to spare the snark on the content of the episode, but at the end of the day, Merlin and Atlantis was/is their show, full of their characters, and they had/have the right to whatever they wish with it. I certainly didn’t have to like it, but ultimately my only choice in the matter is to either watch their stuff, or not watch their stuff. I chose the latter option.
3. Hating on things is stupid. Snarking on things is great fun. There’s a fine line between the two, but ultimately I don’t want to waste time writing on something that will almost certainly prove a disappointment.
So, here we go.
Atlantis doesn’t follow the exact blueprint of Merlin in terms of setup, but certainly does in regard to plot and character. No doubt you’ll see some people insisting that the two shows are completely different whilst others will accuse Atlantis of being Merlin 2.0, and I’d argue that the differing opinions will be based on what angle people are watching from. Because sure, Atlantis is different in that Jason is from the contemporary world (in an exact inversion from Merlin, which was set entirely in the medieval age but ended with a single scene in the modern times, Atlantis begins with a couple of scenes in the present day before heading back in time to Ancient Greece) and has a specific goal to track down his father.
But in specifics, it all seems depressingly familiar. To be fair, perhaps I would have gone into this show with a very different attitude had I not know who was behind it. Perhaps it would have felt very different were it not coming on the heels of Merlin. But I did know who was behind it, and the parallels are there, and you just can’t stop making comparisons.
There’s a wide-eyed newcomer in a large city who gets into an altercation with palace guards. There’s a chase/fight scene in a marketplace, complete with fruit and other wares flying everywhere. There’s a mysterious being in an underground room lit by torches that utters strange warnings and cryptic prophesies. A meaningful conversation takes place sitting on the palace steps. The royals sit at a dinner table glowering at each other while the headstrong princess cries foul over their laws and traditions. The hero prepares for battle and the would-be love interest enters in order to help him with his armour. The characters wander through rocky underground tunnels in the exact same set they used in The Poisoned Chalice. Monsters are defeated not through cunning or skill or strategy, but with violence and sheer dumb luck. The protagonist eventually learns he must keep his true identity a secret from the king (and everyone else) in order to keep himself safe. Jovial banter to take us out to the credits.
And of course, destiny. Lots and lots of destiny. I’m really beginning to hate this concept, as it’s just a lazy shorthand way to make plots happen. You know what would be cool? If characters actually took the initiative and decided for themselves to do things instead of obediently following the orders of whatever ominous shadowy figure delivers an ego-stroking spiel about how special they are.
The characters on each show line up pretty perfectly with the cast of Merlin: Jason as the heroic Arthur who gets at least one inexplicable naked-torso shot (seriously, don’t you hate it when you’re on a submarine and then you lose all your clothes?), Pythagoras as the tall and slightly geeky Merlin, Ariadne as the headstrong and spirited Morgana, Pasiphae as the bad-tempered, gender-flipped Uther, the Oracle as the manipulative, soothsaying Dragon, and (calling it now) Medusa as the good-hearted servant girl Gwen who will go the way of Morgana in regards to her turn to evil and inevitable snake hair.
Only Mark Addy as Hercules strikes a more original note, though at a stretch, you could say he’s a mix of Gwaine and Gaius, with the former’s love of the tavern and general bawdiness, and the latter’s nay-saying attitude and reluctance to act. Perhaps there’s a little of Arthur in him too, as everything out of his mouth is a series of put-downs directed at other people.
And ultimately the “next time” preview suggests that once the cast is gathered, it will follow a usual Monster of the Week formula with Pasiphae cooking up trouble, lots of dudebro bonding, and Jason inching ever-so-closer to finding his mysterious father’s whereabouts. Plus there have already been four familiar faces from Merlin: Sarah Parish (Lady Catrina), Alexander Siddig (Kanen), Mark Lewis Jones (King Olaf) and - next week - Karl Johnson (Taliesin).
In short, the backbone is different, but all the ligaments are the same.
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I’m certainly not adverse to the mythology-mix-up; as far as I’m concerned, old stories are there to be played with. But I’m not really certain how this particular world works or how aware Jason is meant to be. For instance, he knows what a Minotaur is, but doesn’t seem to recognise the likes of Pasiphae or Ariadne, and he certainly doesn’t bring up Theseus. He is also aware that Atlantis will one day sink to the bottom of the ocean, but it’s only mentioned in passing and he doesn’t seem particularly concerned by it. Neither do I understand how the likes of Pythagoras (a real person) is meant to co-exist alongside all the mythological gods and monsters. And is Jason the Jason of Argonauts fame?
Merlin had real problems with continuity, but the way in which it played with the source material could sometimes be clever and/or innovative (Mordred as a child, Guinevere as a servant girl, the genesis of Excalibur) and had a sense of internal consistency. This all felt very random.
The writers sneak in little nods to the myths now and then, but not in ways that make any kind of sense - for example, Ariadne gives Jason a never-ending thread to help him get out of the labyrinth, which he duly uses. Nice touch. But once he’s in there, he starts telling the rest of the sacrifices that they’ll “find another way out.” So why is he bothering with the thread? And then afterwards he return it to her and says: “it was of greater use that you could have ever imagined” even though it played no part in defeating the Minotaur and there are no scenes of him using it to get out of the caves.
And it would have been cute to have Jason enter the city with only one sandal, but I don’t think Howard Overman did that much reading. But needless to say, they completely cut out the part when Pasiphae is the mother of the Minotaur after a bout of bestiality with a sacrificial bull.
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The acting is okay, particularly from the old pros Mark Addy and Sarah Parish (though she doesn’t get much to do here), but Jack Donnelly is incredibly wooden. He goes through the motions, but his eyes are utterly blank throughout and Jason's utter nonchalance at ending up in a mythological city in a completely different time-period would be hilarious if it wasn’t so weird.
I have no idea what they’ve got on Juliet Stevenson to have roped her into this, but at the very least, I liked the character design of black tattoos on her hands.
There is one funny gag, I’ll give them that. When Jason goes up against a palace guard, he grabs a sword and the two circle each other. I rolled my eyes, foreseeing that he would inexplicably be an accomplished swordsman thanks to some “innate gift”. And then the guard whacks Jason’s sword and it goes flying. Heh.
There’s pointless casual sexism, as when Hercules says: “I’ve seen four year old girls with a stronger grip.” Don’t roll your eyes at me. He could have said: “I’ve seen four year olds with a stronger grip,” and the line would have served the same purpose, but no - these guys just HAD to make it gendered.
The defeat of the Minotaur is painfully anti-climactic. After what felt like ten minutes of running around in a tunnel network, Jason is thrown across a cave (in slow-motion of course), grabs a sword from a nearby skeleton, and holds it out as the Minotaur runs into it. And then it turns into a man because... you know what, I don’t even care.
Oh, and this happened:
If you don’t think that this scene was blatantly designed SPECIFICALLY AND SOLELY to pander to the slash contingency... well I can’t help you. Because it was.
And the worse thing is? People have already fallen hook, line and sinker for it. Even though the likes of Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy will never in a million years make it canon they’re already cooing over how totally gay it is.
I have a million GIFs of disgusted faces that would do quite well here, but I think this one sums up my visceral reaction:
Go kid! Destroy that awful cardigan!
Seriously though, I find it astounding that people are rushing so quickly to eat up such obnoxious queer-baiting, and - as I predicted - there are already tons of passive-aggressive comments directed at Ariadne: “oh, I bet she’ll turn out evil” and “I’m concerned she’s going to be just a love interest” and “at least she has chemistry with Jason” (the implication being that a. chemistry is the responsibility of the actress, and b. she can hardly aspire to anything more worthwhile). It’s only a matter of time before someone takes a pot-shot at her eyebrows, but personally all I want for this show is for it to get cancelled quickly so that I can fill my dash with pictures of the beautiful Aiysha Hart without fear that I’m inadvertently promoting Atlantis.
Urgh. Fandom alone is reason to avoid this like the plague. I’m going back to Orphan Black, where the protagonist is a complex and wonderfully nuanced woman and there is an openly gay character who doesn’t just exist for titillation or tokenistic purposes.
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So just for fun, here’s what we can expect from Atlantis and its subsequent fandom...
The girl who witnessed the exchange between Jason and the transformed Minotaur will no doubt rush to tell Pasiphae that Jason has a special destiny. What a bitch! But then, what else could you possibly expect from a woman?
Jason will kill a badly rendered CGI monster every week, but because he’s the hero, they’ll all thank him for it.
Jason/Pythagoras end up in various compromising positions involving the loss of clothing, falling off over each other, mud wrestling, hands-on sword-fighting and accidental innuendoes. Hercules might join in, but who are we kidding, no one’s going to write slash fiction about Mark Addy.
Pasiphae plots and schemes because that’s what evil matriarchs do. She’ll probably end up poisoning King Minos in order to seize power because Alexander Siddig is a POC and therefore can’t hang around for too much longer.
Ariadne does something. God, what a whore/bitch/Mary Sue!
Medusa has a legitimate grievance against the tyrannical and unjust regime she lives under, and must therefore be repeatedly terrified, isolated, abused, exiled, imprisoned, tortured and threatened. She’ll disappear for a year and come back as pure evil as a result of all the trauma heaped upon her and so be punished with a head of snake hair. But she’s evil now, so she totally deserves it.
The Oracle will make more prophesies. Some will arbitrarily come true, and some arbitrarily won’t. Oh, and she’ll end up as Jason’s mum. That’s a decent twist right? I mean, it worked well enough with Uther and Morgana.
Jason finds his father who tells him that his super-special destiny is to save Atlantis from destruction but can’t ever tell anyone because of reasons. He then dies before the credits roll.
For the next five years Jason struggles with the burden of his destiny, for he alone can save Atlantis from itself, and he must tell no one of his pain and suffering because how else can a man cope with such terrible man-pain?
Atlantis is thus doomed thanks to Jason’s bad decision-making and endless procrastination. Oh, irony! It works so well in lieu of decent writing!
Jason finally tells Pythagoras his secret, who then says: “fucking hell, why didn’t you tell me this five years ago when it was actually relevant and could have prevented all this shit from going down?” dies.
Atlantis sinks and everyone drowns.
Julian Murphy realizes that fandom is pissed and so throws them a bone in the DVD commentaries by a stream of gay jokes. Fandom declares him a gay ally for being brave enough to depict a loving male/male relationship on television celebrates that their ship was validated in the most puerile and condescending way possible.
Ariadne will herald in the Golden Age: uniting the kingdom, righting the injustices, punishing the collaborators, introducing personal hygiene, and ruling with common sense and tolerance. All off-screen.
There, I just saved you five years of emotional investment. You’re welcome!
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And that’s the first and last you’ll hear from me on this subject.