The Clash of the Titans and the Clash of the Versions

The clash of the titans is a epic tale of adventure set in ancient Greece concerning the fates and gods aligned against the young Perseus and his quest for love and glory. This brief description of the basic plot is for all intents and purposes the only similarity to be found between the two incarnations of the story of gods and hero’s, that and they both have a disturbing lack of Titans and the clashing’s there of. Both films strangely have become known less for their actual cinematic contents and rather the effects and or gimmickry that they employed.

The first film (released in 1981) is often remembered today as the final work of the great Ray Harryhausen, a man for those unfamiliar who can be easiest explained as the Stan Winston of his day (that day being the 70′s). His mastery of stop motion monsters and their movements set him apart as one of the true founders of the art and a massive influence to film makers to this day. The films story and actors both portrayed the ancient Greece feel that was sought after by many similar films and achieved a sense of the epic by its use of set, scenery and (for the time) truly amazing creature effects. Laurence Olivier as Zeus masters his surroundings and Harry Hamlin provides a likable and interesting leading man as Perseus. Despite this however this film is remembered mostly for the world it constructed and the fantastical creatures who inhabited it and it is this effects wizardry which sets the film apart from its many historically epic cousins. This is mostly due to its safe and at times bland approach as well as a slight yet constant lack of coherency as it seems to take for granted a familiarity with both basic Greek mythology and Greek story structure leaving many of the characters motivations and abilities as half formed suggestions to be understood by those perhaps more learned.

The new version (from 2010) is for renowned for being converted to 3D in post production thereby increasing the cost of the tickets and pain of the migraine that followed. This film became a central point in the argument against 3D, especially in its post-production applied form. It however did not need any gimmick to make it the subject if ridicule and scorn. The film as a whole fails on several critical levels due mostly to the choice of director Louis Leterrier. Leterrier though a skilled action director and the man behind a personal favorite Danny the Dog lacks the budget and skill set required to achieve the sense of epic scale that such films require, relying heavily on CGI and prolonged fight scenes to provide large if shallow pieces of spectacle. The new screen play though certainly based on the same story concept deviates from the original in so much as to be a new story altogether and in so doing loses the rather familiar Mythological story and character arcs such films are expected to provide. In losing this all important sense of the familiar and expected the film fails to compensate rather allowing for a much more Hollywoodesc interpretation constructed from cheap thrills and cliche. Taking the hard to penetrate plot of the original and in an attempt to make it approachable drop it into the IQ equivalent of the Mariana Trench. This makes for visual pomposity married to a range of talent which makes for a cinematic baby of odd and often conflicting proportions. This clash in abilities on the actors parts is most apparent when seeing the impressive combination of Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes who provide truly theatrical and potent performances as Zeus and Hades giving a true sense of godliness and drama only to be immediately offset by the action hero stereotype of Sam Worthington whose accented and macho character seems wholly out of place and his often aggravating entourage of muscle men, comic relief and by-the-book love interest.

Though both flawed it is the elder we remember more fondly due perhaps for its nostalgia or its nature as a legacy to a great artist. It is however always for these films the matter of capturing a sense of the grand and fantastical and for whatever reason this is the greatest strength of the first and greatest weakness of the second and for this we can proclaim truly which is to be ,if not superior then, the more beloved of the two.