RangerWickett
Legend
For sure.I think it's a lot more nuanced than that, to be honest.
My broad point, though, is that the writing in Ragnarok, and God of War before it, comes from a philosophical and moral perspective on the world that aligns with the sort of 'progressive ideology' that a few posters here have b*tched about.
I have for decades striven to make good faith attempts to understand the perspectives of people who align with the political right in the US, and thankfully many are still pretty reasonable and just caught up in tribal loyalties to a team that's lead by scoundrels. But I've come to the conclusion that a lot of right-wingers just genuinely don't agree with me on what it means to be a good person, on the value of humility, or on the importance of seeking to live in harmony with others rather than exerting force to get what you want.
No, Kratos isn't presiding over a lesbian marriage or anything else that's a current signifier of our ongoing culture war, but he's definitely an icon of 'how to go from being a giant piece of crap with deep grievances to being a decent person who tries to improve the world instead of lashing out.'
And that's kinda the crux of a lot of political disputes these days. Like, we're really far from the mid-century political ideal of "one party advocates that investing more in X will yield better results for the public, while the other party wants to remove regulation Y in hopes private innovation will produce good outcomes." Instead, we've got a LOT of people who are angry, and wholly unwilling to consider gradual compromise and peaceful coexistence, and instead think breaking things and letting people suffer is GOOD.
The new era of God of War is not a story that a right-winger would write.