After decades of not touching this subject (except for the sneaky adaptation in the 2000 year anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, the 2009 movie "Avatar"), finally there is a great German series that serves this legendary story well.
Despite the statement of the producers not wanting to give Neo-Nazis anything to drool over, Barbarians is actually still quite a patriotic achievement: The Germans are the good guys, despite their ruggedness, and the Romans are clearly the imperialist bad guys.
The production value is great, and the historical accuracy when it comes to clothing, houses etc. Is sufficiently true, with some concessions.
Also, the story is only known through Roman sources, so the real truth may have been different, but we really don't know.
Some artistic licenses are taken, but again, the real story isn't clear anyway.
For the German viewers, the Germans may speak in an awkwardly modern way sometimes, which may be a point of criticism. I did not care personally, as the acting is fine throughout. The Romans speaking correctly pronounced Latin is pretty awesome.
Now some people have complained about wokeness in Season 2 - but here's the thing: Netflix requires some racial diversity and sexual diversity. Without it, your series won't be made. Under those circumstances, the producers did a marvellous and even subversive job to meet minimum requirements: The Black woman is from Africa, which is plausible in this scenario, and the backstory of the character is pretty awesome too. They do not claim there were Black German women back then.
Marbod is bisexual or gay in the series, but he's also mostly the bad guy... Since we don't know what he was like, it's not implausible, as he is also the guy who succumbs to the luxury of Roman imported goods, and corruption.
Cool and strong women are a staple of German culture, so it's not wrong to depict some of those, even if it's a bit of a stretch that Thusnelda is going into battle, and women were not part of the Thing as much as it is depicted in the series.
However, Roman historian Tacitus tells us about German women who stood beside the Battlefield as cheerleaders, exposing their breasts to motivate the warriors.
(not shown in the series though...)
Despite those things, wokeness is as minimal as it could be on Netflix, so don't complain, there are SO many more woke productions that really get on your nerves.
Germany is in a similar state right now, so... it may be good to be reminded by the series to be a little more patriotic.
This is a timeless story about Patriotism, and Barbarians delivers the message without watering it down.
Despite the statement of the producers not wanting to give Neo-Nazis anything to drool over, Barbarians is actually still quite a patriotic achievement: The Germans are the good guys, despite their ruggedness, and the Romans are clearly the imperialist bad guys.
The production value is great, and the historical accuracy when it comes to clothing, houses etc. Is sufficiently true, with some concessions.
Also, the story is only known through Roman sources, so the real truth may have been different, but we really don't know.
Some artistic licenses are taken, but again, the real story isn't clear anyway.
For the German viewers, the Germans may speak in an awkwardly modern way sometimes, which may be a point of criticism. I did not care personally, as the acting is fine throughout. The Romans speaking correctly pronounced Latin is pretty awesome.
Now some people have complained about wokeness in Season 2 - but here's the thing: Netflix requires some racial diversity and sexual diversity. Without it, your series won't be made. Under those circumstances, the producers did a marvellous and even subversive job to meet minimum requirements: The Black woman is from Africa, which is plausible in this scenario, and the backstory of the character is pretty awesome too. They do not claim there were Black German women back then.
Marbod is bisexual or gay in the series, but he's also mostly the bad guy... Since we don't know what he was like, it's not implausible, as he is also the guy who succumbs to the luxury of Roman imported goods, and corruption.
Cool and strong women are a staple of German culture, so it's not wrong to depict some of those, even if it's a bit of a stretch that Thusnelda is going into battle, and women were not part of the Thing as much as it is depicted in the series.
However, Roman historian Tacitus tells us about German women who stood beside the Battlefield as cheerleaders, exposing their breasts to motivate the warriors.
(not shown in the series though...)
Despite those things, wokeness is as minimal as it could be on Netflix, so don't complain, there are SO many more woke productions that really get on your nerves.
Germany is in a similar state right now, so... it may be good to be reminded by the series to be a little more patriotic.
This is a timeless story about Patriotism, and Barbarians delivers the message without watering it down.
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