Crime
Line of Fire
The Hollingsworths don’t care much for each other, and they certainly have their share of secret affairs. But will they keep one another out of the line of fire?
Imagine this: The peaceful land of Yuria is under attack. The attacker? The nefarious Death Adder, wielding the legendary Golden Axe.
The only hope for Yuria lies in three equally legendary fighters: Ax Battler, the barbarian warrior; Tyris Flare, master of magic; and Gilius Thunderhead, the malodorous battle dwarf.
Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to use their unique fighting skills to battle increasingly deadly foes until they finally face off against Death Adder himself. Then, they’ll need to kill him.
If that sounds like the plot of a 1980s video game (or if the characters themselves sound familiar), well, that’s because it is.
Paramount+ brings SEGA’s 1989 arcade-style beat-‘em-up game franchise to its streaming platform in a new series called Golden Axe. But to call this series “new” in any other sense would be misleading. Other than some tongue-in-cheek humor about how these types of games usually go down, there’s not much going on here that feels fresh.
The plot, as stated above, is exactly what it was in the 1989 game—although the heroes do admit they should check to make sure Death Adder actually dies this time around. The heroes are also the same. Even Chronos Lait, a panther-man who teams up with Ax and Tyris after they have a disagreement with Gilius, was part of the original Golden Axe franchise. The title? No difference. The villain? No change.
In fact, the only part of the show that does feel new is the introduction of Hampton Squib, an ordinary adventurer who joins the heroes on their quest simply because he’s a fan of their work—oh, and because he inexplicably has the ability to wield the one weapon that can kill Death Adder. But even that “Chosen One” dynamic is overplayed in video games.
Tyris’ barely-there battle bikini has always been pretty skimpy. Indeed, promotional art for the original games made her and her cohorts look more like swimsuit-clad bodybuilders than serious warriors. And while Paramount gives her a sort of skirt to wear over her bikini, those improved graphics still show quite a bit of skin—which apparently Tyris still doesn’t think is enough.
But perhaps I’m not giving Golden Axe (the show) enough credit as far as new content goes: Due to the improvement in computer graphics over the years, the blood shed by our heroes here feels much gorier than the original games. Scary skeleton-like villains get even scarier with easier-to-see details, such as missing eyeballs. Language is coarser, too. And when Ax, Tyris and Gilius want to blow off some steam, they usually down a few pints at the local tavern.
If you played the original Golden Axe video games in the ‘80s and ‘90s, then be forewarned: This series, while very, very similar, makes changes in all the wrong places—and that’ll probably prevent you from introducing it to your own family of heroes.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
When heroes Ax, Tyris and Gilius learn that their previously defeated foe Death Adder isn’t as defeated as they thought, they set out to destroy him once and for all. However, they split up after a disagreement regarding how they should conquer Death Adder.
The trio learns that Death Adder is alive during a battle against his minions. Most of those minions are reanimated skeletons, some human, some bipedal pigs. A dark priest in service to Death Adder (who is described as a demon) tries to sacrifice a young woman. However, it’s unclear if this is some sort of dark ritual or simply the priest’s bloodlust: He keeps going on about how much he loves blood.
The young woman is tied up, and her garment is torn in several places. Someone says she must be a virgin, but she insists she isn’t. After rescuing her, Gilius tries to flirt with her, but she turns him down. Tyris then offers to take her home, and the woman happily hops on the back of Tyris’ steed. She then tells Tyris that she thinks Tyris is pretty, though it’s unclear if this is meant to be suggestive, and Tyris almost seems bored by the compliment.
Reanimated skeletons are smashed to bits. Fleshier foes go down much bloodier. A troll’s entrails are laid bare. The heroes admit they love shedding blood as much as their enemies. (I guess they justify it since they’re killing bad guys, not innocents.) A man carries around a dead rat in his beard, which he pulls out a few times—and his cohorts note how much it reeks. A flashback shows Death Adder cleaving two “gods” in half.
Characters fight with a variety of weapons, including axes, swords and daggers. Skeletons litter the landscape everywhere you look. Someone nearly drowns in quicksand. A man is tricked into setting off a booby trap: He falls into a pit of snakes but manages to escape.
Gilius is impervious to fire, and he complains that his colleagues often ask him to use this ability to cause distractions. In one scene, he falls asleep in the flames, burning off his tunic and revealing his bare rear. Tyris wears a bikini with a sort of skirt over the bottom half, and she complains it covers too much. There is a carving of two naked women on a wall.
Tyris can wield magic, and we see her throw some fireballs. The heroes all ride strange mutant beasts. Gilius battles a 1,000-year-old troll. Whenever someone mentions a certain legendary weapon, a mysterious green glow appears accompanied by a choir singing the weapon’s name.
An elderly woman smacks a talkative man with her walking staff, threatening to cut out his tongue. We hear that Death Adder killed the families of each of our heroes.
People drink ale at a tavern. Someone notes that Gilius is “very drunk” during a fight, though you can’t tell from how he defeats his enemies.
Someone says that the best part of being an adventurer is the friendships you make along the way—but Gilius says the money is better.
We hear uses of the s-word, “a–,” “a–hole,” “d–n,” “d–k,” “h—” and “p-ss.” Someone exclaims, “Oh my gods!”
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
The Hollingsworths don’t care much for each other, and they certainly have their share of secret affairs. But will they keep one another out of the line of fire?
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