Olympus: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Olympus: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

. . .doesn't a-mount to much.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 19, 2015

There are a lot of things that can be said about Olympus, a Canadian-British co-production which has been airing on Syfy, but probably the most salient single piece of information comes courtesy of a brief promotional blurb plastered across the back of this Blu-ray set’s insert, namely:

From the producers of Tin Man, Alice and Neverland!

That superfluous exclamation point notwithstanding, the fact that Olympus is another green screened reboot of some sort of hoary old tale might be enough to potentially entice some viewers, but when it becomes clear that Olympus is going to maraud through the iconic pantheon of Greek mythology, reinventing and reimagining things as it sees fit, some who feel mythologies that have stood the test of time might have enough to offer by themselves, without the need for any “gussying up”. Probably not so coincidentally, Olympus is brought to you under the auspices not just of the producers of that aforementioned trifecta, but by creator Nick Willing, the guy who wrote both Alice and Neverland, and who directed all three of the previous miniseries.

This green screen frenzy gets off to a pretty dark start (something that will be a recurring issue with this perhaps budget starved series), with the none too subtly named Hero (Tom York) trapped in a foot block in a scary cave, where he awakes to stare in abject horror at a huge beast who is surrounded by a “collection” of ankles and feet shorn from their previous bodies. It soon becomes apparent that this monster is the (a?) Cyclops, though the fact that its eye is also its mouth might make this creature’s name more appropriately monóklino stómio.

Needless to say, Hero escapes the clutches of the behemoth and it’s soon revealed he’s in the cave in search of the Oracle of Gaia. Unfortunately for Hero, he’s almost immediately greeted by not one but three potential candidates to be the oracle, and he has no choice but to get all three of the women out into the open and away from the Cyclops. And then just as soon as it’s introduced this plot line, Olympus just ups and drops it, having the real Oracle (Sonya Cassidy) reveal herself and sending Hero and his supposed captive prophetess out on an ostensibly Joseph Campbell sized quest.

Probably nowhere is Olympus’ ham handed revisionism more obvious than in its portrayal of the iconic character of Medea (Sonita Henry), who in this version is firmly ensconced with King Aegeus (Graham Shiels), but without any of that messy Jason baggage (though other elements of that storyline do enter the fray, including her infanticides). Medea is hot and heavy for some magical power (or portal to power) called the Lexicon, which she is attempting to fathom by bleeding her understandably pasty looking son Lykos (Wayne Burns), reading the rivulets for clues, but finding nothing, something that she finds enraging. Those with a passing interest in Greek mythology will probably already know what a multilayered, fascinating character the “real” Medea is/was, and why this version cobbles together a few passing plot points but then discards so much else is just kind of mind boggling.

The Hero/Oracle plotline ultimately intersects with Medea’s, and soon (a la Tin Man and Alice, again not so coincidentally) there’s a coterie of sorts assembled on a digitized “yellow brick rabbit hole” that supposedly will lead the trio, plus a late hanger on based on Daedalus (Matt Frewer—that’s right, Max Headroom, folks), all traipsing through a sometimes hilariously one dimensional looking series of green screened landscapes as they attempt to reach the portal to the Gods. There are varying motives in play, of course, with some shifting alliances leading to completely predictable "twists", as well as an equally predictable quasi-love story developing between Hero and the Oracle.

The story lurches forward in so many silly fits and starts that nothing ever resonates, and there’s next to no tension throughout this first season. There is a kind of interesting (if perhaps unintentional) Nietzschean element that enters the fray in the late going, where Hero seems to be more than happy to provoke a good old fashioned Götterdämmerung (to horribly mix metaphors, mythologies, and languages). Performances are middling at best, with York pretty much a cipher and Cassidy reduced to gasps of shock as she “witnesses” various prophetic visions. Frewer is Frewer, whether he’s playing Daedalus (with a faux British accent—why?) or, in a late episode vision, a modern “tour guide” who shows Daedalus—a plane (again, why?). Olympus just ends up being ridiculous most of the time, and that’s no myth.

Olympus: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Olympus: Season One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. It's a little difficult to divorce this series from its almost completely green screened environment, an aesthetic that looks undeniably soft throughout virtually every episode of this season. There's virtually no depth to many of the backgrounds, with spatial placement of the actual, honest to goodness live actors seeming totally random at times. When there's not an abundance of green screen technology overwhelming the image, detail can be quite commendable (see screenshot 2 for a good example). Perhaps due to the budget, a lot of scenes play out in near darkness, mitigating the need for dramatic backgrounds (digitized or otherwise), but also tending to deplete the image of detail. Contrast is a bit variable, and blacks are a bit milky at times, two more elements that can detract from detail.

Olympus: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Olympus: Season One features a decent sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which offers occasional bursts of LFE and adequate immersion, especially in scenes like the opening gambit in the cave, or a late episode where the four principal characters all encounter visions in various "worlds". There's a good accounting of various levels of ambient reverb when the pilgrims enter things like caves (which they do repeatedly). Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range reasonably wide across the episodes of this first season.

Olympus: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Series (1080p; 3:47) is a brief overview of the show with interviews.


• Creating the World of Olympus (1080p; 3:28) is a similarly short piece which focuses on elements like green screen and other VFX.


• The Characters of Olympus (1080p; 4:07) features interviews with cast members.


• The Mythology of Olympus (1080p; 9:41) isn't exactly Thomas Bulfinch, if you catch my drift, but delves into this show's conception of some of its iconic themes.


• The Epic of Olympus (1080p; 11:48) celebrates the series' supposedly grandiose ambitions.

Olympus: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The author A.J. Jacobs' website has one of the funniest lines I've read recently, where he states that he's Jewish in the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. With that indelible comparison in mind, Olympus is Greek mythology in the same way that a tv dinner is haute cuisine. The series is baseline interesting only insofar as it's so unrepentantly idiotic so much of the time. The green screen atmosphere gives everything a surreal ambience, which in this particular case may not actually be unwarranted. These redolent myths have ingrained themselves in human consciousness for a reason, and Willing's silly revisionism adds nothing, and in fact probably only calls attention to how ridiculous his efforts often are. Technical merits are very good (video) to excellent (audio) for those considering a purchase.