Sometime earlier this month, I was trying to pick something to watch on Netflix. I didn’t have anything in mind but the captivating cover of “Kaos” drew me in. Then I watched a bit of the trailer, inquisitive me, I downloaded the whole season straight up. Since Netflix has decided to starve us with Sandman, I was eager to consume something mythological and mystical.
The movie was the right pick from the first scene listening to the narrator mentioning Greek gods. I thought I was in for entertainment but as the scenes developed, I discovered an element of melancholy.
Just like every historical story, there’s always a downfall attached to a person’s fate or prophecy. The fact that gods cannot escape their fate is something to ponder about.
In my knowledge about Greek gods, I saw Zeus as all powerful, not a god that needed people’s validation to get his day going. Charlie Covell’s representation of the Greek god, Zeus(Jeff Goldblum) broke a little bit of the god’s sacrament but at the same time made him relatable to humans. As humans, we are all scared of our fate such that in avoiding it, it comes to pass eventually.
It’s funny how fate works most especially if there has been a prophecy foretold. It may take centuries to come to pass but it eventually will.
The characterisation of roles in the movie is a 10/10. The best casting for me is the role of The Fates. One cannot tell who they are, they are indeed mysterious.
Adapting a mythological Greek story into fictionalized black comedy makes the storyline subtle and at the same time captivating for the audience. I wasn’t surprised when I found out that the movie rated 7.5/10 on IMDb.
Zeus’ lifestyle was admirable but one would not have thought that the King of gods still suffered an identity crisis. He literally needed his enemy turned confider, Prometheus( Stephen Dillane) to assure him out of his insecurities.
He was on the subtle side of sense such that Hera ( Janet McTeer) could talk him out of her cheating lifestyle which was hilarious by the way. Like Nigerians will say, she has got his mumu button. The fact he couldn’t decipher from where the prophecy will come to pass shows that he isn’t an all- knowing god. When at a point we thought gods could escape fate, Prometheus reminds us that Zeus was once a human. His former state of humanity still subjects him to the dictates of fate.
Zeus looks for all ways to avoid fate but he forgets to look within. The first thread of his prophecy to unfold was pulled by his son, Dionysus. The one whom he fails to pay attention to causes the chaos that ruins him.
I remember reading Oedipus Rex where Oedipus leaves home to escape his fate but later on, he still finds his life as a cycle which brings him back to his beginning. At all cost, a man’s fate or prophecy comes to pass.
What I fear most is a negative prophecy over one’s life. The more you try to escape it, the more you get closer to it. The good prophecies are always hard to get but the bad ones happen even when you try not to make it happen.
Let me not forget Orpheus (Killian Scott), the husbandman who literally goes to the afterlife to bring back his love, Eurydice (Aurora Perrineau). One couldn’t have imagined that but for a prophecy to be fulfilled, the unimaginable starts to happen. But I feel so sorry for Orpheus, he was just a variable in a bigger set of reality.
Zeus thought if he destroyed The Fates – Atropos (Sam Buttery), Lachesis (Suzy Eddie Izzard), and Clotho (Ché then he could escape his fate and prophecy. Peak foolery, a god should have known better.
Who are the Fates in Greek mythology?
In classic Greek mythology the Fates, known as the Moirai were three sisters and goddesses who determined the fates of humans.
Clotho spun the threads of human fate while a human was still in the womb, Lachesis dispensed it and decided how long a human would live, and Atropos cut the thread aka ended the human life.
So while humanity had free will, ultimately they could not escape their destinies as pre-determined by the Fates.
Their prophecies were instrumental in the stories of Achilles, Meleager, and of course Orpheus and Eurydice.
Source: Cosmopolitan
And at the end of the series, we discovered that the story had only begun. Caeneus (Misia Butler) becomes our MVP just at the end of the series. Let me not spoil the series any further! If you have not watched Kaos, you should check it out on Netflix today.
By Jemimah
