The reason why gods no longer feel as threatening or powerful, not only in greek myth retellings but in a lot of modern day media, is because people treat them as humans with superpowers rather than gods.
Yeah, they are big, and they can control the weather or whatever. But where's the influence they have on human society? Where's the respect? The reverence? The chapels? The hymns? The rituals?
Authors mostly depict people adoring a god when it's an evil cult and they are about to make a human sacrifice or something like that.
Ancient literature has gods that feel like gods because they were REAL gods to them. They wrote about them with actual fear and reverance to them. And the influence that their gods had on their people seeps in every aspect of their culture.
You don't even have to go that far. Think about catholicism and christianity. Maybe you yourself are not a religious person. Yet, you find yourself saying things like "Oh my god" or "for gods sake" . I would bet that you have heard a christian song at least once in your life. Or that you know a proverb, or at least know what is a proverb.
There's a lack of that in a lot of these new stories. There's no one that actually respects these gods. The gods themselves barely have an effect on the everyday life of people.
They lack that aura, etheral and misterious. They lack what makes a god a god. What good is that they command storms and bend nature to their will, if humans don't even respect them? Adore them? Revere them?
What's the point in always giving the atheist hero the reason?
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