If Amazon were to make a Mass Effect show, it would be the first time that they have done so. The company has shown interest in the series before, but this might be the push that they need to move forward with it.
A new show from Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series could be on its way after reports that it has signed a deal to create an unknown number. How this will affect other franchises and how we remember what happened in Mass Effect 4 is yet to be seen.,
According to Deadline, Amazon Studios is close to finalizing a contract to make a Mass Effect series.
Neither Electronic Arts nor BioWare have made a series announcement. In addition, the story made no indication of who might star in the show or what the narrative may be. Recently, though, there have been a few bread crumbs strewn around.
Earlier in 2021, the project director for Mass Effect Legendary Edition said that a movie or TV program is “not a question of if, but when.” In February, actor Henry Cavill revealed a secret project on his Instagram account. The hazy picture was later identified as a print-out of the Wikipedia page for Mass Effect 3.
Even farther back, in 2010, Legendary Pictures bought the rights to a Mass Effect film. The arrangement, however, did not come to fruition.
The Mass Effect series, according to the article, is the consequence of Amazon doubling down on adaptations.
That’s because to The Wheel of Time’s apparent success. According to Deadline, the series had the best completion rate of any Amazon series when it first premiered. In addition, the program was the most popular on social media.
Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, did not provide any further information about viewership. She did say, though, that The Wheel of Time is “certainly trending to meet our high expectations.”
Then there’s the Emmy-nominated success of The Boys, a comic book adaptation. When you consider the pre-release buzz around the next The Lord of the Rings film, Amazon seems to be a big fan of adaptations right now.
Williams enjoys walking around the neighborhood with his wife and dog when he is not writing up news. It’s either that or a cup of hot chocolate. Or you could do both.
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To some, the Spartans are the epitome of warriors: ferocious, courageous, liberty-loving, physically ripped superheroes. The very definition of raw and ready virility.
Others find the Spartans repulsive, seeing them as boorish, brutal, and one-dimensional proto-totalitarians. Owners of slaves, perpetrators of infanticide, and pederasts.
Neither perspective represents the intricacies — much alone the contradictory stories — of the ancient city-state of Lacedaemon.
Warriors of valor? The Spartan reputation for martial skill was undoubtedly well-deserved. However, the Spartan warrior did not battle in the manner we usually imagine — in single combat, for individual glory — but rather as part of a greater phalanx.
The Spartan man was also not a one-trick pony, relying entirely on his martial prowess and intellect. He was an aristocratic gentleman who had been educated not just in battle but also in music, singing, dancing, eloquence, logic, philosophy, and disciplined behavior. He was a literary fan of sports and poetry, as well as physical sparring and verbal sparring. Sphaerus, in contrast to the notion of a barren, aesthetically and intellectually austere civilization, said that “no one was more dedicated to music and singing.” Spartan dance and choral festivals drew guests from far and wide, and Socrates said that “Crete and Sparta are the most old and rich nurseries of philosophy among the Greeks.”
When it comes to slavery, infanticide, and pederasty, the evidence is mixed as to the precise nature and scope of these practices. The Messenians were conquered by the Spartans, but they were treated more like medieval serfs than slaves, with much more rights than those held in other regions of ancient Greece; as a result, thousands of slaves from Athens migrated to Sparta in search of better treatment. The Spartans are claimed to have slaughtered newborns judged unworthy to survive by exposing or tossing them down Mt. Taygetus, although no remains of children have been discovered there, and infanticide was not exclusive to Sparta; it was also done in Athens and other city-states. There are sources that attest to pederasty’s practice, but there are also sources that deny it, such as the account of Athenian historian Xenophon, who is the only source from that period with firsthand experience of the agoge (the Spartan system for training the young) and enrolled his own sons in this school. Whatever the extent of the ancient culture’s practices that we today find abhorrent, they can only be fully understood, if not justified, by the Spartans’ singular focus on creating an indestructible society of warriors, and the fact that much of the polis’ culture was structured around, and subordinated to, this goal.
Even ancient observers couldn’t tell if Sparta’s governance was more akin to a monarchy, democracy, or oligarchy. “Lacedaemon was, in truth, everything and none of the above,” writes Spartan expert Paul Rahe. To call the Spartan polis (and its neighbors) a state is to misunderstand it, since “there was no Greek state in antiquity.” As James Madison would later comment, the ancient Hellenic republic was “a true democracy… a society consisting of a limited number of individuals who meet and run the government in person.” The polis was, as the Greeks put it, “all about the men.”
We shouldn’t be shocked that there are different and often contradictory accounts of Sparta since the actual records of this people are far thinner and patchier than is commonly assumed. Much of what is known comes from sources that are biased in one direction or the other — from either champions or enemies of the city-state — and is limited in scope; the Spartans were a very secretive people who restricted citizen travel abroad and foreigner visitation at home (indeed, this secrecy is part of what made Sparta compelling in its own time, and continues to draw our interest today). “It would not be exaggeration to apply for Sparta Winston Churchill’s famous description of Russia: Lacedaemon was in antiquity and is today a conundrum wrapped in a mystery within an enigma,” Rahe remarks.
What we do know is that the Spartans had a genuinely distinctive way of life. “Classical Lacedaemon was no ordinary polis,” Rahe says. No one believed this in antiquity, and no one should believe it now.”
We also know that many of the city-contemporaries, state’s as well as many renowned observers throughout the years, were fervent fans of this unique way of life.
“To see at the temperance and orderliness, the facility and placidity, the magnanimity and discipline, the bravery and perseverance, and the toil-loving, success-loving, honor-loving attitude of the Spartans, you would deem yourself merely a kid,” Plato remarked of Lacedaemon’s culture.
Sparta was not the only ancient city that Plato admired from afar. Foreign visitors, including professors like Libanius and politicians like Cicero, came from all corners of civilization to see the famous agoge for themselves, and some, like Xenophon, even enrolled their own kids in the program and made large financial contributions.
Sparta was revered as a polis free of luxury and trade for centuries after its fall, as an example of the qualities of simplicity, accuracy, self-sacrifice, martial energy, mental fortitude, and physical endurance, and as an inspiration for a balanced, mixed government. The Founding Fathers were inspired by “the rule of military monks” while drafting the American constitution, while Samuel Adams wished for the new republic to become a “Christian Sparta.”
Even if these “Laconophiles” exaggerated the Spartan city-virtues, state’s it’s still worth studying what attracted their admiration. Even though the specifics of the Spartan way of life are often disputed or inflated, they nonetheless point to fundamental principles — ideals and lessons that we can’t and wouldn’t want to recreate precisely today, but that still provide insights into how to live our lives better. As Rahe points out:
“We may like the Athenians because they are more similar to ourselves, and we may be correct not only in that assessment but also in our moral and political inclinations.” Regardless of our preferences, we name sports teams after the Spartans, and we write novels and films about them (rather than the Athenians), which says a lot about the ancient Lacedaemonians and perhaps also something about the unsatisfied longings that lurk just beneath the surface in modern bourgeois societies.”
A city described by the Roman historian Livy as “memorable not for the magnificence of its buildings, but for its discipline”; defended by a “wall of men, instead of bricks” by the mythical founder of its military; and populated by those who claimed to be descendants of “Heracles the Unconquered” — a small warrior community that managed to command the respect of its neighbors and leave a legend for all time — undoubtedly has much to teach about the nature of
We’ll look at what lessons the ancient Spartans can teach contemporary males in the next three episodes.
Make sure to listen to our Sparta-themed episode with Paul Rahe:
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