God of War creator David Jaffe did not have many nice things to say about the newly released “first look” photo Amazon shared of their live-action adaptation.
He shared a 6+ minute long video to his YouTube channel taking apart every aspect of the image that falls short, calling the photo—a first look at Ryan Hurst as Kratos and Callum Vinson as his son Atreus—”so bad in so many ways.”
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“Kratos in this pose with this expression, not the guy’s face, but this expression, he just looks stupid,” David said. “If you’re going to reveal, to most people, a brand new character that you hope is going to carry your series, for the first time, and they’ve never really seen this before, and this is the way you introduce them?”
“Maybe that’s conscious. Maybe they’re like, ‘Well, what we really want to focus on is the father-son story. And if we focus on him being like, Spartan rage, and all that, maybe people are like, “I don’t want to watch that show.”’ Ok maybe. But then, at that point, could you find a picture that doesn’t look like he’s shitting in the woods? Cause that’s what the picture looks like,” he continued.
The game designer continued, noting that Callum looks like a “very confused little boy with too much product in his hair.”
He said neither character looks great in the photo and, if anything, it looks like God of War “Dumb and Dumber edition.”
However, out of everything in the photo, he calls “the most offensive thing” the “Styrofoam rock” in the background, adding that it might not be the prop team’s fault, but the lighting makes it look bad.
But David did share some praise, saying that he doesn’t necessarily think the show itself will be bad thanks to the talent of showrunner Ronald D. Moore.
“Let’s be incredibly clear, okay? Two things can be true. This can be a terrible image, and it is. It’s so bad in so many ways, which we’ll talk about in a moment. And Ron Moore is awesome, who is the showrunner. This guy is a juggernaut of a talented fellow. I have absolutely no doubt it is going to be a good show,” he added.
