the blog of nathan loding

Clash of the Titans (2010)
Star­ring: Sam Wor­thing­ton, Liam Nee­son, Ralph Fiennes
Directed by: Louis Let­terier
Writ­ten by: Travis Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Man­fredi
Rated: PG-13

Rat­ing:

I grew up on the orig­i­nal Clash of the Titans (1981).  It’s corny by some of today’s stan­dard, but the movie still holds up over­all.  The story sticks remark­ably close to it’s myth­i­cal roots, though it does take it’s own cre­ative embell­ish­ments along the way.  Ray Harryhausen’s effects work is still amaz­ing to me.

I can watch the orig­i­nal over and over.  I will never watch the remake again.

Perseus (Wor­thing­ton) is dis­cov­ered in a cof­fin at float in the sea by a mea­ger fish­er­man.  The fish­er­man raises the young boy as his own.  Many years later, Perseus and his adop­tive father are fish­ing when they wit­ness a giant statue of Zeus be top­pled into the sea by an army of men.  Hades (Fiennes) appears and destroys every­one around except for Perseus – after all, he is a demigod.

The few remain­ing sol­diers drag Perseus to Argos, where he meets King Cepheus and Queen Cas­siopeia.  It is here he learns that Cepheus and his Queen mean to end the time of the Gods and bring about a new Era of Man – his sub­jects have ceased pray­ing to the Gods, which is caus­ing them to weaken.  Cepheus is plan­ning an over­throw of Mount Olympus.

Zeus (Nee­son), angered by the loss of love from man, gives Hades approval to scare mankind back into a lov­ing sub­mis­sion.  Hades appears at Cepheus’ court, demand­ing that the princess Androm­eda be sac­ri­ficed a the eclipse to the Kraken, or Argos would be destroyed.

Hat­ing the Gods, specif­i­cally Hades, for killing his adop­tive fam­ily, Perseus sets out with some war­riors from Argos to find a way to destroy the Kraken, save Argos and Androm­eda, and beat the Gods.

I won’t touch on the utter destruc­tion of Greek myth (Acri­sius is Cal­i­bos?  The Kraken defeated Zeus?  Cepheus wants to destroy Zeus?) but it’s quite bad.  The 1981 film took some lib­er­ties, but over­all it’s sto­ry­line was com­mend­ably close to the orig­i­nal myths.  The 2010 ver­sion takes too many unnec­es­sary lib­er­ties that harm the story more than help.

The one dras­tic deviance I’ll note here is one I just don’t under­stand.  The film­mak­ers included the Djinn, an Ara­bic myth fea­tured promi­nently in Islam.  The djinn are, depend­ing your source mate­r­ial, one of the three cre­ations of God (along with angels and humans).  They were forged from smoke­less fire just as man was made from clay.  In Clash of the Titans, the djinn are war­riors in the desert who have replaced their limbs with charred wood to live for­ever.  What?

The other notable fail­ure of the film is, sur­pris­ingly, the spe­cial effects.  There are times that the ani­ma­tion sequences are no bet­ter than what Har­ry­hausen cre­ated by hand with clay.  I was sadly dis­ap­pointed in the giant scor­pion sequence.  Medusa her­self was a bit of a let down too.

I can’t really express how dis­ap­pointed in this movie I was.  I was so excited when the orig­i­nal trailer came out, with it’s awe­some look­ing action and heavy rock sound­track.  It’s too bad the actual film didn’t turn out like the trailer.  Why they are mak­ing a sequel is beyond me, and it’s a fright­en­ing prospect.

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Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6CJenNMsb4

For the record, I still think this trailer is bad-ass.