Nothing Beats the Original

First things first, I loved the original Clash of the Titans. I mean LOVED it. I first saw it when a tito of mine sent a Betamax tape to us of the movie in the early 1980s. As a kid who was always interested in mythology, it was a veritable treasure trove of Greek myths, legends, and monsters. Every time that I watched it over the years, I began to appreciate things that I didn’t notice as a kid. There was the fact that the great stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen created all the creatures for the film like the Kraken, Medusa, Calibos, Pegasus, etc. There was also the fact that popular actors like Sir Laurence Olivier, Burgess Meredith and Maggie Smith were prominently featured. It also made Harry Hamlin a star before he appeared on L.A. Law. Suffice it to say that when I heard that Clash of the Titans was going to be remade, I was giddy with excitement. But did it measure up to the original?

 

Perseus (Sam Worthington) has been caught up in a war. It has cost him the only family he has ever known and he discovers that his real father is the god Zeus (Liam Neeson). The city of Argos has been targeted for destruction by the god of the underworld Hades (Ralph Fiennes) unless Perseus can find a way to defeat the monstrous Kraken. He embarks on a quest fraught with danger and monsters. Denying his demigod status, can Perseus save Argos while defying the gods?

Let’s get to the good stuff first. The effects for Clash of the Titans were topnotch. Visuals have indeed come a long way since 1981 and today’s effects have been able to do a lot more with powerful computers than anything Harryhausen could create with rubber and clay. The pace of the movie is quite fast which I believe is helped by Hades’ stating that the Kraken will be unleashed in ten days instead of the 30 days in the original. The 3D conversion was also horrible and completely unnecessary. It was so obvious that the producers just wanted to cash in on the 3D craze and rushed it for Clash.

Gemma Arterton as Io was also breathtakingly beautiful in this movie. It’s like in every scene she appeared, she had just taken a shower. She clearly had more chemistry with Perseus than Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) did so the twist in the ending wasn’t such a shocker.

The problems I had with this film are many, not the least of which is that it just didn’t capture the spirit of fun that the first Clash did. I guess director Louis Leterrier and Worthington wanted to inject some 2010 sensibilities into the story, particularly by having Perseus reject his godhood. Well excuse me, but doing that basically decapitates the Perseus story altogether. Perseus reveled in his demigod status and enjoyed the gifts that the gods gave him. To have him turn his back on those gifts and reject Zeus just made him seem like a petulant child.

I also couldn’t understand how Leterrier could cast great actors such as Polly Walker as Cassiopeia and Danny Huston as Poseidon yet underuse them for such a big movie. Even Alexander Siddig as Hermes and Izabella Miko as Athena were relegated to mere window dressing in the scenes on Olympus. It’s like Leterrier hired a casting director to get these names and faces then he decided to leave them on the cutting room floor.

Don’t get me wrong, 1981’s Clash already took a lot of liberties with the myths for the sake of making the story more interesting and heightening the adventure factor. Substituting Perseus for Bellerophon and integrating Medusa into the adventure all worked out in the end. Even the Kraken wasn’t a part of Greek mythology and was actually a Norse sea monster. It just seemed like 2010’s Clash lost some of the cheese and lighthearted fare that made the original such a classic in the first place.

I still had fun watching this new version, and it clearly helped that I was watching with other fans of the first. Let’s just say that I’d still take Laurence Olivier, Harry Hamlin, and Ray Harryhausen’s clumsy animation over the slick armor and self-doubting Perseus of the remake any day of the week. Still, it was fun hearing that line again. You know it, "Release the Kraken!"