Clash of the Titans

Release Date: April 2nd, 2010

Click here for the Clash of the Titans Trailer.

Zeus(Liam Neeson) along with his brothers Poseidon(Danny Huston) and Hades(Ralph Fiennes) rose up one day to overthrow their own creators, the Titans, and assumed leadership over all with Zeus ruling over the gods, Poseidon ruling over the seas and Hades, tricked by Zeus and Poseidon, ruling over the underworld in chaos and torment. Zeus then creates mankind so that their prayers and worships may forever strengthen the gods.

Many years later, a fisherman named Spyros(Pete Postlethwaite) finds a coffin floating in the water with a baby inside. Spyros adopts the baby and names him Perseus. 12 years later, Perseus(Sam Worthington) is fishing with his family when the witness soldiers from Argos destroying a massive statue of Zeus, declaring war on the gods. Hades then appears above the soldiers and releases harpies to destroy them and in his rage, Hades destroys Perseus' fishing boat, killing his whole family.

Perseus is found by Draco(Mads Mikkelsen), the leader of Argos' Praetorian Guard, who takes him to the city to meet with King Cephus(Vincent Regan) and Queen Cassiopeia(Polly Walker) who are having a feast celebrating their soldiers and the war on the gods. The king and queen compare themselves to gods and even declare their daughter, Princess Andromeda(Alexa Davalos) to be more beautiful than the goddess Aphrodite(Agyness Deyn). This angers the gods and Hades appears at the banquet and kills the queen. Hades also creates a vortex, sucking in and killing almost all of the returning soldiers as Perseus remains unharmed. Hades then reveals that Perseus is a demigod, the offspring of a god and a human, and threatens to release the Kraken, an enormous beast that was created to destroy the Titans, on the city of Argos unless Andromeda is sacrificed within 10 days.

King Cephus begs for the aid of Perseus to find a way to defeat the gods and the Kraken in order to save Argos. Driven by his hatred of the gods for killing his family, Perseus embarks on a quest, along with Argos' Praetorian Guard and Io(Gemma Arterton), a woman cursed with agelessness, to find the answers he needs and the means to defeat the Kraken before all is lost.

Clash of the Titans is a remake of the classic 1981 film of the same name with hopes of revamping the story and bringing in a fresh new audience. That seems to be the theme for a lot of recent movies these days and the director can either succeed or fail. With Clash of the Titans, director Louis Leterrier does either depending on what exactly you expected from this film.

There are some very notable differences from the first Clash to this one. Probably the most noticeable is the presentation. The original 1981 film featured Perseus(Harry Hamlin) as a young, fair skinned man with flowing black wavy hair. He was very clean and looked, for lack of a better term, like a pretty boy. Sam Worthington's Perseus, however, is rugged, dirty, vengeful and bald adding, for me, a greater sense of realism to the character. Another huge difference is the story. In the original, Perseus is tasked with completing a riddle to win Andromeda's hand in marriage and then the goddess Thetis declares that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken or the city of Joppa will be destroyed by the creature. To put it side by side in the original, Perseus married Andromeda, this didn't happen in the remake. Thetis will send the Kraken to destroy Joppa if Andromeda isn't sacrificed within 30 days(1981). Hades will send the Kraken to destroy Argos if Andromeda isn't sacrificed within 10 days. So as you can see, the differences are not slight. However, the differences are good and they do give the film its own uniqueness.

So lets get into the components of the film. If you haven't guessed it by now, Clash of the Titans is an action film through and through. The film focuses on swordplay, big battles and dangerous creatures to satisfy the bloodlust most of us have brewing inside us. This is where the movie works its magic. We already know Sam Worthington can do action thanks to his performances in Terminator Salvation and Avatar and he definitely upped his game in this film. The action sequences were definitely intense. The sword choreography was awesome and reminisced films like 300 and Gladiator.

That being said, my one problem with the action/fighting scenes is that there wasn't enough and there certainly were not enough monsters. I expected Perseus to be fighting through hordes of enemies similar to 300 but on a lesser scale. But that wasn't the case. In the film, Perseus fought a total of 4 different monsters: giant scorpions, Medusa, a mutated and burnt king named Acrisius who was given superhuman powers by Hades and the Kraken. It was like playing a video game and skipping right to the boss battles. For me, it lessened the struggle Perseus had to face. I also was very disappointed with the Kraken sequences. The previews played the Kraken up big and his downfall was rather small.

The acting in the film was pretty good. I didn't think anybody was really terrible though Ralph Fiennes was really hard to hear and understand at some points. Other than that I though Worthington did a really good job and that all the supporting characters were very well done as well. Director Leterrier tried to incorporate humor into the film which is always good, but in an action flick you do not want to add to much and, at times, the humor tended to be a bit obnoxious and unnecessary.

The visual effects were all really good, obviously the creatures in the film do not exist but the team used to create them did a good job of making them look realistic and intimidating. The Kraken was by far the most visually stunning creature of the film, even though it deserved more screen time. Mount Olympus and the gods all had nice looks to them. They all had a tendency to glow, especially Zeus, which added to their mythology even more.

Overall, Clash of the Titans is a good flick to catch if you are in the mood for some good action, nice special effects, mythology, or just a good time. While there needed to be a bigger vairuety of monsters and some more action sequences, the ones that were in the film did a good job of holding your attention. Definitely one to see if this is your type of film but I would recommend seeing it in 2D. 3D is by far more expensive and the general consensus on the 3D in the film is that it isn't worth the extra cash. Overall I give Clash of the Titans 7.5 crazy Hades worshiping, Kraken loving zealots out of 10.