Golden Axe

Our Review

Paramount+ animates the Sega arcade classic — barbarians, evil giant Death Adder, the whole 1989 fantasy kitchen sink — with a comedic bent that treats the source material as a joke delivery system. Adaptations of games with no plot (the arcade original was: walk right, kill everything) have one honest path: make the world the joke, and Golden Axe commits to that with a voice cast of known comedy quantities. The result is hit-and-miss fantasy parody — sharper than most video-game adaptations dare to be, dumber than its best jokes deserve. Fans of the game will appreciate the deep-cut references (the fire-breathing dwarf, the chicken legs); everyone else gets a serviceable animated comedy in the Kung Fury-adjacent register. It won’t change anyone’s life, and as a first animated original for Paramount+ it’s a cautious swing. Watchable, forgettable, occasionally very funny. The bantam-weight of the September slate.