Buy american gods season 1 series#
Buy american gods season 1 tv#

DonвЂ™t take this too seriously, it seems to say, with a winking quality that highlights just how arbitrary the violence is.

Buy american gods season 1 series#

Slade and Willems go over the top to capture the frenzy and raw power of the battle the scene grabs the viewerвЂ™s attention, starting the series with a burst of energy. The explosive gore and waves of blood are so exaggerated, it becomes easy to detach from the brutality of it all. The sequence also introduces the showвЂ™s dark sense of humor, as seen when a detached Viking arm holding a sword travels through the air, eventually stopping when it impales a manвЂ™s throat. The prologue gets even more violent when the Viking captain realizes that Odin demands a blood sacrifice to summon the wind they need to escape. The cartoonish barrage of arrows that hit the first Viking who steps off the beach benefits from the element of surprise, revealing just how grisly American Gods is going to be. To shock the audience, scenes of intense violence bookend вЂњThe Bone Orchard,вЂќ although the opening is much more effective than what comes at the end. This flashback does appear in the book, but doesnвЂ™t arrive until later, and placing it at the start puts grisly sacrifice at the forefront of the story. Rather than beginning with Shadow in prison, вЂњThe Bone OrchardвЂќ takes a far more visceral, aggressive approach: The prologue flashes back to 813 CE and the landing of the first Viking party on the shores of North America. The opening scene is the first deviation, and it sets a very different tone.

This pilot sticks close to GaimanвЂ™s book, although thereвЂ™s some shuffling of material for dramatic effect. With nothing to lose, Shadow decides to embark on a completely new path for himself. (McShane quickly establishes himself as the episodeвЂ™s MVP with his sly, charismatic performance, while Whittle is much more withdrawn and sullen, reinforcing WednesdayвЂ™s authority over his new companion.) Though Shadow is skeptical about the job, his old life is essentially over: Not only is Laura dead, but heвЂ™ll soon learn that his best friend was also killed in the highway accident because she was giving him a blow job. Wednesday (Ian McShane), who offers him an impromptu job as his assistant. As Shadow makes his way across the country to LauraвЂ™s funeral, he meets a mysterious hustler named Mr. вЂњThe Bone OrchardвЂќ focuses on Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), a man whoвЂ™s released from prison after the death of his wife, Laura (Emily Browning). The care put into the design of American Gods is the main indicator that this is a Fuller production, while director David Slade and cinematographer Jo Willems create striking images that elevate the episodeвЂ™s script.

Buy american gods season 1 tv#

Fuller is coming off a celebrated run on NBCвЂ™s Hannibal, a very stylish, psychologically complex adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter novels, and American Gods is an opportunity for him to continue exploring darker storytelling while incorporating the whimsical elements of his earlier TV series, such as Pushing Daisies. ItвЂ™s too early to say if the show will pull that off, but its first episode is certainly a step in the right direction. To match the scope of the novel, American Gods will need an aesthetic that embraces both the grit and operatic spectacle of GaimanвЂ™s world. Who are the gods of the American melting pot? When people from different cultures unite to create a new nation, what happens to the gods of the past? What kinds of new gods will emerge? In his 2001 novel American Gods, Neil Gaiman asked massive questions about national identity, immigration, and faith, and after years of languishing in development limbo at HBO, an adaptation has finally arrived courtesy of Starz and showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green.