The Old Blood is as much a contrived circus performance as anything Vince could have cooked up, but like him it combines simple, relatable stories with supreme athleticism and sheer violence to create what, at its best, is pure entertainment. It’s simple, but it works, in both cases. He’s essentially John Cena: a hulking mass of Americana that’s going to save the world, a power fantasy at its basest and most obvious. The most obvious is the recasting of complex real-world conflicts as over-the-top superman allegories, right versus evil might, the baddies portrayed as literal freaks and monsters, an unwinnable battle won by sheer force.
On the surface, one has little to do with the other, inasmuch as Vince McMahon’s travelling circus of pre-ordained fighting and stunt-performing doesn’t share much in common with an alternate-history World War II, one where the Allies are fucked and Hitler, conspicuously if obviously absent, has gone full-anime with his Third Reich forces.īoth of them, however, share common storytelling techniques. I spent a lot of time thinking about wrestling while playing Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, a stand-alone prequel to last year’s critical darling The New Order.
