Clash of the Titans (2010)

The first time I tried to watch Clash of the Titans (2010), I stopped when the ridiculous Djinn showed up. This time, I managed to finish it, though I wish I hadn’t bothered. It was obvious this was going to suck the moment Hades was presented as the villain because some people just can’t help equating the Greek Underworld with the Christian Hell and seeing Hades as the Devil. Disney’s mangling of the Heracles myth did the same thing, and it was just as stupid. Anyway, I decided not to waste such snarkable material and wrote a review. Warning: SPOILERS.

Perseus is the demigod son of Zeus who was raised by mortals. After Hades kills his mortal family, he ends up in Argos, whose rulers have been defying the gods. When the gods ask for Princess Andromeda to be sacrificed to the Kraken as punishment for her parents’ arrogance, Perseus agrees to help them. Together with some of the King’s soldiers and the assistance of cursed Io, he embarks on a dangerous journey to find a way to stop the Kraken and get his revenge on Hades.

If you’re wondering what a Kraken is doing in ancient Greece, the movie’s intro helpfully explains that Hades made it from his own flesh after Zeus convinced him and the other gods to rebel against the Titans. Afterwards, Zeus tricked his brother and sent him to the Underworld. He then created humans so that their prayers and worship would maintain the gods’ immortality. Hades has been looking to take revenge on his brother ever since. Yes, really. Look, I know Greek myths can be a mess and there are even several versions of the same one, but this is just ridiculous. As is the idea that humans could collectively rebel against the gods. Yes, there’s the occasional idiot who thinks it’s a good idea to anger beings who can turn people into vermin on a whim, but a whole bunch of people? And all the gods? Pentheus couldn’t even ban the cult of Dionysus in Thebes and Dionysus isn’t even one of the main deities. In the original myth all Cassiopeia had to do was say that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids to draw Poseidon’s wrath against Argos. Here, the King and Queen are having Zeus’s statue destroyed and openly dismissing the gods’ authority and yet Zeus doesn’t immediately smite them with one of his lightning bolts. The statue’s destruction does cause a reaction – some humanoid pterodactyls show up and kill the haters. They then come together to form a smoky Hades (WTF!?) (and were they supposed to be harpies?), who turns into a fire bomb and drops into the ocean (why?). This destroys the boat carrying Perseus and his family. He’s the sole survivor and is taken to the palace by soldiers. On the way, they see lots of poor people and a preacher telling everyone they must love the gods. Oblivious to all of that, King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia are having a party. Princess Andromeda isn’t happy about her parents’ heathen ways, but her mother keeps saying stuff like they’re the new gods while miraculously avoiding a painful death. This is because Zeus is too busy having a meeting with the other gods so they can decide what to do together. It appears this Olympus is a democracy peopled with pacifists. Clearly, whoever wrote this crap knows nothing about Greek mythology. Hades freaks everyone out by showing up and asks Zeus when was the last time they saw each other. At his wedding to his niece, Persephone? Anyway, Hades finally gets Zeus, who apparently loves (killing, tormenting, raping) the humans too much, to utter the immortal words “Unleash the Kraken”, and it is ON!

Smoky Hades crashes the party and kills Cassiopeia before warning that Argos will be destroyed in ten days unless Andromeda is sacrificed to the Kraken. He also calls Perseus son of Zeus, which makes everyone suspicious and lands him in the dungeon. Draco, the main guard, tortures him a little, but King Cepheus stops him. He believes Perseus is their only hope and begs him to help them. At first, he refuses but changes his mind when Io shows up and tells him Hades will be weakened and therefore killable if the Kraken is harmed. Io, who has been cursed with eternal youth for… reasons, has been looking over Perseus his whole life (why?) and tells him about his parents. His mother was the wife of King Acrisius, who also rebelled against the gods. To humiliate him, Zeus took his appearance and impregnated his wife. When he found out, Acrisius locked her and the child in a casket and threw it into the sea. He was struck by a non-fatal lightning bolt in the process and Perseus was later found by his human parents. In case you’re wondering, no, this bears no resemblance to the original myths.

- Io was one of Zeus’s lovers, whom he turned into a heifer to protect her from Hera’s wrath.

- Perseus’s mother was Danae, the daughter of King Acrisius of Argos, who hid her in a cell after an oracle said his grandchild would kill him. Zeus knocked her up in the form of a rain of gold. When he found out, her father did the whole casket thing, but both she and Perseus were saved by a fisherman.

- Cepheus and Cassiopeia were the king and queen of Ethiopia. They didn’t know Perseus, who saved Andromeda after randomly coming across her being sacrificed.

There’s more, of course, but I’ll mention it when it becomes important for what’s happening. Oh, and yes, the movie did casually present Zeus as a rapist, which will never be said out loud by anyone. Still, it should come as no surprise when he refuses to give Perseus sanctuary because he’s never heard his prayers. This doesn’t make much sense because his human parents didn’t seem like atheists, so he must’ve prayed at some point. Io tells Perseus he was born to kill the Kraken and that the witches of Stygia know how to do it. He will be accompanied in this journey by Draco and some other soldiers from Argos, plus a couple of brothers who claim to be able to kill mythical beasts and are probably supposed to be the comic relief but end up not doing anything. By the way, most of these people barely have any personality and I didn’t even catch most of their names. There’s Draco, a mean older guy, the young and pious Eusebios, Ixas, who has an endless supply of flutes, a kinder older guy, and some other guys. Of course, they’re basically all cannon fodder, so it doesn't matter. Perseus turns out to be a natural at sword fighting, but refuses the special sword left for him by the gods. Fortunately, Draco keeps it. He will also tell Perseus more than once that he’s an idiot for not taking advantage of his non-human gifts. But Perseus wants to do this as a mortal. Because he’s an idiot. While wandering the woods, he comes across winged horses, one of which is of course, Pegasus, who, for some reason, is black. Io explains he was never ridden by anyone. Fun fact: Pegasus is supposed to be born from Medusa’s blood and therefore shouldn’t exist yet. Oho, turns out Acrisius is still alive and he’s now a deformed creature going by the name of Calibos because there was a Calibos in the original movie and for some reason the remake decided to keep that. Hades asks him to join him and then spits fire into his mouth (eww!), which gives him some of his power. Calibos attacks Perseus and the soldiers, kills some, and loses a hand before running into the desert. Perseus insists on following him and ends up getting everyone attacked by giant scorpions. Some die and in the end, they’re all saved by Djinns because the people who made this decided that fudging Greek mythology wasn’t enough. These Djinns are magical warriors who replace their limbs with charcoal and black magic when they’re injured. Yes, really. Meanwhile, in Argos, Andromeda is giving bread to poor children, and that preacher we saw earlier talking about love now worships Hades and is now going around telling everyone the princess must DIE.

One of the Djinn heals Perseus, which leads to a misunderstanding and a quickly resolved fight with the Greeks. Perseus is important to them, too, because they believe he is the one who will release them from the gods. Hmm, what? How are the Greek gods oppressing them? They’re from an entirely different pantheon. Whatever. Everyone rides the giant scorpions to go see the witches. They’re a trio of terrible looking (and I don’t mean that as a compliment) CGI creations, who share one eye and one tooth. After some attempted cannibalism, they tell Perseus about Medusa. Well, finally! The original myth had him go after her head because he foolishly told the king of Seriphos he’d get him the Gorgon’s head and that’s it. The witches also helpfully explain the movie’s title – both the Kraken and Medusa are considered Titans – and tell Perseus he’s going to die, which makes all the Djinn save one leave. I guess they decided he wasn’t their liberator after all. The brothers also leave. Zeus shows up and offers Perseus sanctuary because he changed his mind about his ungrateful bastard off screen. When Zeus asks him to fight for him, Perseus says men die for each other and not gods, proving once again that none of the people involved in this know anything whatsoever about Greek mythology. Zeus gives him a gold coin that will be useful later. How thoughtful.

Since Medusa lives in an abandoned temple beyond the Styx, they must travel in Charon’s boat. Naturally, they use Zeus’s coin. For some reason, Charon is part of the boat and the whole thing just looks bad. Draco bonds with Perseus by talking about his dead daughter as a way to humanize him before his inevitable death. The boat trip is pretty uneventful. After arriving at their destination and before they go into the temple to kill Medusa, Io tells Perseus her story. Like with most Greek myths, there’s more than one version of it. In all of them, Medusa is a monster with snakes in her hair whose stare can turn anyone who looks into her eyes to stone. The only thing that changes is the reason she’s like that:

Version One - Medusa is one of the three Gorgons, scary monsters with snakes for hair. Unlike her sisters, she’s mortal, which is why she was chosen by Perseus. Poseidon was the only one brave enough to hook up with her.

Version Two - Medusa is a mortal woman who was cursed by Athena because she dared to compare herself to the goddess and kept bragging about her hair.

Version Three - Medusa is a mortal woman, who was raped by Poseidon in a temple dedicated to Athena. Furious at the desecration, the goddess cursed her.

Given that the hero of the movie is going to brutally behead her, which version do you think would be the smarter choice? The one that makes her a rape victim, obviously. Why the hell did the people behind this go with that? Why not use the one in which she’s a monster from the start (and which so happens to be the earlier one)? Her being the victim of a curse doesn’t even match with the whole Titan vs. Titan thing. Oh, and then they add some bullshit about how Athena allowed Medusa to not hurt women, presumably as a kindness to her. Except, these are Greek gods, they DGAF about mortals. The same wise Athena turned another woman into a spider because she said she was a better weaver than her, FFS! After the infodump, Io decides to teach Perseus how to best fight the unfortunate rape victim he decided to kill just because of her deadly stare even though she’s done nothing to him or his loved ones and just spends her days hanging out at a temple in ruins. This is clearly the perfect time for him and the woman who watched him grow up to make googly eyes at each other. Because that’s not icky or anything. Really, why would Io have the hots for someone she’s been watching since he was a baby? Also, may I remind you that the Io from the original myths was Zeus’s lover? You know, Perseus’s father? Seriously, who thought this was a good basis for a romantic relationship?

In the temple the remaining soldiers and Djinn finally fulfill their purpose and dramatically die fighting a slithering Medusa. Perseus manages to behead her and returns to Io, who’s waiting outside. And then Calibos randomly shows up and kills her. Well, she did complain that her eternal youth curse meant she had to see her loved ones die around her, so thank you, Calibos? Apparently not. Perseus kills him with the special sword and with his dying breath, the man who killed his bio mum and tried to kill him more than once, asks him to not become like the gods. So, I guess I should mention that Acrisius never turned into some deformed weirdo and just carried on with his life after throwing his daughter and grandson into the sea. Perseus accidentally kills him during some funeral games and only finds out who he was after his death. And this was when he was already married to Andromeda. This Perseus stays with Io until she dies even though the Kraken is about to attack Argos.

Everyone is ready to go get Andromeda, but she volunteers to save her people. She’s tied to a wooden contraption which dangles her above the water. Oho, turns out Hades tricked his brother! Zeus and the other gods survive on the mortals’ love (as demonstrated by all the Greek myths in which they’re horrible assholes who torture people for stuff they didn’t even do), but Hades learned to survive on their fear, so the Kraken will only feed him, making him more powerful than Zeus and enabling him to take over. This would be bad for mortals because… I don’t know, Hades is less prone to go on raping sprees and curse people?

The Kraken attack is one big mess: instead of just grabbing Andromeda, it starts destroying everything; Perseus shows up on Pegasus with Medusa’s head; the crazed preacher kills King Cepheus and gets promptly crushed by one of the Kraken’s petrified tentacles; the two brothers from earlier show up riding a scorpion; and the harpies attack. Hades shows up as a big smoky butterfly and Perseus stabs him with his magical sword, though the God of the Dead doesn’t die. He then dives into the sea to save Andromeda, who had fallen during the Kraken fight. She wants him to stay in Argos, which, according to myth, was Perseus’s homeland, not Andromeda’s, and help rule it, but he refuses and leaves the woman, who, according to myth, he should be marrying and having kids with. Zeus shows up one last time to thank Perseus for defeating Hades and warns that Humanity’s weakness makes him stronger and a threat to Olympus because the people who made this know nothing about the source material. They also have Zeus tell his son to be better to mortals than they have because if there’s one thing the Greek gods are known for is their ability to own up to their shitty behaviour. As he leaves, he gives Perseus a gift – Io. What exactly was the point of breaking up the Perseus/Andromeda pairing from the myths? The original movie didn’t do that so it’s not as if the filmmakers can claim they were just being faithful to it. Also, if they were really set on making Perseus/Io happen, why come up with that whole watching over him story? And why the hell did they choose someone who, in the myths, was one of Zeus’s lovers? God, this movie was dumb till the end.

I know changes are necessary and that Greek myths are messy. For instance, the rescue of Andromeda being random is bad storytelling and wouldn’t work well in a movie. The solution – having Perseus at the palace when the threat is made and having that be the precursor to the quest for Medusa’s head – made sense, but side-lining Andromeda, who’s an integral part of the myth, in favour of Io, who has no part in it, did not. There were way too many unnecessary and outright bad changes that went against the core essence of these characters, especially the gods. Pagan gods in general can be jerks and the Greek gods are major assholes. The interjection of a Christian view that equates the sky god Zeus with (tainted) goodness and the underworld god Hades with evil adds nothing to the story. Ironically, apart from the kidnapping of Persephone and Orpheus’s journey to reclaim Eurydice, Hades is mostly absent from Greek myths. The other gods, including Athena, who’s usually portrayed in a positive way, are the biggest generators of misery for mortals. There was no need to make this spat between god and mortals into some world threat. Like I wrote earlier, Perseus was sent to get Medusa’s head after he jokingly told the King – who also had the hots for his mother, Danae, and saw this as an opportunity to take her – he would get it for him, while the sacrifice of Andromeda was due to her mother offending the Nereids who then asked Poseidon to avenge them. That’s it. There was no attack on the Olympus and the fate of Humanity didn’t hang in the balance. But of course, the movie decided to overcomplicate things. And the inclusion of the Djinn, who also bear no resemblance to their original myths, and the attempt to link them to Greek mythology was just weird. What’s the point of adapting Greek myths if you’re going to ignore key aspects of them? Surely, making up an original story about a quest to defeat a sea monster would’ve been easier.

Verdict: the characters are bland, the CGI unimpressive (really, the witches were just bad and Charon looked ridiculous), and some of the action scenes confusing rather than exciting – Clash of the Titans (2010) ends up turning the colourful Greek myths into a generic Hollywood action movie.

(If you’re into Greek mythology, check The Fantasy of Helen of Troy, which compares different versions of Helen, and PG Olympus, which talks about popular webtoon Lore Olympus and other adaptations of Greek myths)

By Danforth