Is There a Disney Reference Hiding in Golden Axe?
As improbable as it might seem, Golden Axe is getting a TV series adaptation later this year. This is a surprising turn of events mostly because the video game series has been more or less moribund since 2008’s Golden Axe: Beast Rider. The fact that this new animated show is a comedy is even more puzzling, but I suppose I’m happy to have Golden Axe back in any form.
I reserve judgment for when the show actually starts streaming this September on Paramount+, but at the very least I was impressed to see that the show seems to be an adaptation of Golden Axe lore in general and not just the story elements from the first game. Case in point: In addition to Gilius Thunderhead (Matthew Rhys), Ax Battler (Liam McIntyre), Tyris Flare (Lisa Gilroy), the cast also includes Carl Tart as Chronos “Evil” Lait, a pantherman who appears as a playable character in Golden Axe III, a console-only sequel that actually never even got a proper release on the Sega Genesis.
He’s basically “What if ThunderCats?” in a barbarian action motif.
Chronos’ inclusion means the creators did more than the base level of research to make this show. That might just mean that they scanned the wiki or watched a few playthroughs on YouTube, but it’s still something. Maybe we’ll end up seeing Dora, everybody’s favorite lady centaur, who doesn’t let the fact that she has horse legs prevent her from riding the series’ trademark animal mounts. (Women can have it all, it turns out!) But Chronos being in the news this week also means I get to write about his name. From the moment I read about him in some bygone game magazine — EGM? GameFan? I can’t remember which — I felt like his name was weird in a way that wasn’t even explained by coming from Japan. Have you ever encountered a name in some fictional work and had the reaction, “I am certain that is anagram for something” because it just didn’t seem like a thing a human would ever be named? This is the reaction I had to Chronos “Evil” Lait, but years after the fact, it was finally suggested to me that it might be a reference to the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, which opened in theaters about eighteen months before Golden Axe III was released.
Chronos, you see, was not born a pantherman. He was human until he was cursed into this form by Damned Hellstrike, the big bad of Golden Axe III and essentially this game’s stand-in for Death Adder. If you’re thinking this makes Chronos a little like the Beast character, you’re likely correct. This would seem to have been on the minds of the game’s creators too, because the only explanation for the name I have ever come across is that it’s a nod to that film’s big song. In Greek mythology, Chronos is the Greek god of time and also the personification of time; his name literally just means “time,” and it’s where we get words like chronicle. Lait is French for “milk,” sure, as in café au lait, but in this case it just happens to be an anagram for the word tail.
Tail? Time? Yes, it’s a reference to the Oscar winning love theme from the film. The song’s title is officially “Beauty and the Beast,” but I think basically everyone knows it as “Tale as Old as Time.”
Which I suppose is a better name for this character’s name to mean than “time milk.”
And yes, in the previous post, I did warn about believing surprising information you read on dedicated wikis, but in this case, it really would be a remarkable coincidence if this analysis of Chronos Lait’s name wasn’t correct. That said, I’m always down to be proven wrong, and if you think you have a better read on this one, I’m down to hear it.
Miscellaneous Notes
Having a pantherman as a playable character in a Golden Axe game puts the series closer to its spiritual predecessor, Altered Beast. Both games were spearheaded by Makoto Uchida, and they have a lot of thematic overlap despite Altered Beast taking place in ancient Greece and Golden Axe in vague, Conan-esque barbarian times. They both give off a whiff of homoeroticism, although Altered Beast much more so, and in fact Altered Beast is the game that originated the Chicken Leg, the cockatrice-like mounts that ended up becoming iconic in the Golden Axe games.
I’m struggling to think of another example of a video game character who technically debuted in one game but ended up becoming more famous for their role in a subsequent, unrelated one. I guess Birdo? Maybe Conker and Banjo in Diddy Kong Racing? Ralf and Clark debuting in Ikari Warriors?
Is Damned Hellstrike the most metal name in gaming?
Golden Axe, previously: