Blood, butts, boats, and sweetness: There are worse foundations upon which to construct your historic epic. Judging by the sheer amount of every within the sequence premiere of Chief of Struggle, Apple TV+’s brutal and exquisite new saga of war-torn late 18th century Hawaii, this present’s on strong floor. Filmed completely in Hawaiian and fueled by the simmering star energy of Jason Momoa, who co-created the present and co-wrote the episode with Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett, it’s proof that the “Recreation of Thrones however in the actual world” success of Shōgun was no fluke. Executed with care and charisma, it’s a method that works.
A gap montage units the scene. The Hawaiian islands stand divided into 4 perpetually warring kingdoms: O‘ahu, Maui, Kaua‘i, and Hawai‘i. Whereas a prophecy foretold {that a} king would come up to unify the islands and their individuals following the arrival of a star with a feathered cape, simply such a comet got here and went many years earlier, and no such messianic monarch has appeared.
That’s the place Maui’s king, Kahekili (Temuera “Boba Fett” Morrison), enters the image. A warmonger of lengthy standing, he’s acquired intel that the excessive priest of close by O‘ahu is utilizing his inexperienced younger king as a catspaw to organize an unprovoked invasion of Maui. If Kahekili strikes first, he can thwart the invasion — and, maybe, take his first steps towards fulfilling the traditional prophecy.
His success, nonetheless, hinges on successful again a deserter from his trigger. Once we meet our hero, Ka‘iana (Momoa, finally within the star automobile he deserves), he’s busy killing a shark together with his naked arms by lassoing it, getting dragged behind it, grabbing it by the dorsal fin, and stuffing poison into its gills by hand. I do know, I do know, it sounds simple, however let’s see you strive!
However regardless of his prowess, we quickly uncover that Ka‘iana is a person with no nation. Although he lives within the kingdom of Kaua‘i — alongside his spouse, Kupuohi (Te Ao o Hinpepehinga); her sister, Heke (Mainei Kinimaka); and his brothers, big-haired Nāhi (Siua Ikale‘o) and mulleted Nāmake (Te Kohe Tuhaka) — he’s truly in self-imposed exile from Maui. Although he as soon as served as Kahekili’s battle chief, therefore the present’s title, he stop his majesty’s service slightly than proceed to wage his bloodthirsty wars of greed and conquest. A type of wars obtained Ka‘iana and his brothers’ father needlessly killed, and that’s exhausting to forgive.
Ultimately, it’s to protect his late father’s honor slightly than Maui’s security that Ka‘iana decides to battle O‘ahu. The king reveals that the rival nation’s excessive priest desecrated his father’s bones in an try and make a propitious sacrifice for the approaching battle. Devastated and enraged, the brothers reconsecrate the bones and head off to battle — however Ka‘iana, nonetheless cautious of pointless bloodshed, plans a diversion that ought to enable them to take the dominion almost with no battle, taking down its scheming excessive priest however sparing its boy king.
Kahekili has a special plan in thoughts. Whereas Ka‘iana is busy holding up his finish of the discount, the king leads his fleet ashore prematurely, sacking the enemy’s sacred temple and slaughtering everybody inside it atop a holy web site.
Arriving too late to cease the bloodbath, Ka‘iana is outraged at having been hoodwinked into collaborating within the bloody conquest. So is Prince Kūpule (Brandon Finn), Kahekili’s principally respectable son — however that doesn’t cease him from ordering spies to observe Ka‘iana and his household in case the restive battle chief tries something humorous. After watching Kahekili mercilessly execute the younger king for no cause, he wears a glance on his face that claims he is aware of he’s been tricked by a psychopath. How lengthy earlier than he strikes again?
Nicely, you don’t forged Jason Momoa on this position if some hanging again isn’t in its future — he’s the kind of actor whose piercing stare and superhuman physique make him appear much less like a human being and extra like a gun with the protection off or a sword midway drawn from its scabbard. Momoa has performed loads of robust clients since his breakout position as Khal Drogo, the horse-riding warlord within the first season of Recreation of Thrones, however this position understands there’s one thing each robust and tender to the man in a manner nothing else has. I wouldn’t need to be King Kahekili with this man obvious at me, however I would need to be Kupuohi when he comes house from an extended day on the battlefield and desires a cuddle, you realize?
I promise you, nonetheless, that I’m going to notice one final time that Momoa nearly nude all through the episode — he’s nearly nude all through the episode, I’m speaking a loincloth and that’s it, and it hides nothing within the rear view division thoughts you — and depart it at that. I don’t need to be seen as making mild of Hawaiian civilization’s gown code, I need to be seen as making mild of the truth that a famously good-looking actor is cheeks to the wind for the majority of the episode, and I feel that time has been made.
The central rigidity of Momoa as an actor is identical rigidity of Ka‘iana as a personality: He’s constructed for violence, however he merely isn’t a violent man by nature. He can be, however he doesn’t need to be; circumstances, and skullduggery, power his hand. This rigidity is mirrored within the magnificent island setting, a stunning backdrop of blue water, inexperienced foliage, and luxurious red-and-yellow helms and capes. Director Justin Chon proves equally adept on the fairly and the gritty, with lengthy photographs of landscapes and tableaux of individuals consuming or speaking that hit almost as exhausting as shark tooth–studded golf equipment splitting skulls in half and sawing individuals’s mouths open chunk by gnarly chunk.
Which is a roundabout manner of claiming this episode will cease you brief with each its loveliness and its repulsiveness. How, you surprise, may individuals in paradise, sporting the plumage of the birds of the heavens themselves, probably convey themselves to soak the bottom in one another’s blood with apparently alarming frequency?
However that is an everlasting query, and never one restricted to the shorelines of the Hawaiian islands. All all through human historical past, individuals identical to you and me have satisfied themselves they don’t have it ok, and the one method to have it higher is to kill different individuals from different nations, at house or overseas, in hopes this creates some sort of trickle-down impact of happiness. In actuality, all that trickles down is blood, both staining our arms or, finally and inevitably, spilled from our personal veins.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Occasions, and anyplace that may have him, actually. He and his household dwell on Lengthy Island.
