Have you ever watched a movie just because you feel like you’re missing out on some aspect of pop culture? There’ve been references to things and you feel like you’re missing the full depth of them because you’ve not seen the movie they’re alluding to? Or maybe there’s a remake of an old cult film coming to theaters and you haven’t seen the original?
I found myself in that situation recently, so this evening, John and I sat down and watched 1981′s “Clash of the Titans” with Harry Hamlin, Laurence Olivier, and Maggie Smith. I’d list off the other people in the movie, but if you don’t follow classic films, you’re unlikely to recognise any of them. (Actually, you might be doing well to recognize Harry Hamlin from anything but television, but at least Maggie Smith has made a name for herself recently playing Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise). This film is a “cult classic”, known among fans of stop motion animation as the last film ever made by Ray Harryhausen, who was an enormously influential filmmaker for more than 30 years, in the era before CGI and digital effects, when all special effects had to be created by hand.
With that in mind, a certain amount of consideration must be given to the effects in the film. A certain amount. I’m not giving this movie a free pass on effects, not when “2001: A Space Odyssey” came out in 1968, when “Star Wars” came out in 1977, when “The Empire Strikes Back” came out in 1980, and “Star Trek” came out in 1979 (not to mention the television show that aired from 1966-1969!). OK, sure, stop motion and the sorts of effects in other movies listed aren’t the same sort of effects. Except, see, “Coraline”, which was released last year, used stop motion animation and was really very well done. Seriously, if we compare the quality of effects for the time period, then there’s clearly a disparity there. If we compare the quality of effects across the same sort of effects (stop motion against stop motion), there’s still a telling disparity. So sure, be fans of the guy and love him, but at some point, crappy effects are crappy effects, no matter how awesome the filmmaker may be or what sort of influence he had on the industry.
But even if we set the effects aside, this movie is so flawed that I really don’t know where to start. I suppose we could argue that it doesn’t even want to be remotely accurate to history or mythology, and poof all the problems go away. Except, see, when you take characters from mythology and then just play with them this way, it kind of feels… dirty. Wrong. Like putting Abraham Lincoln at the Boston Tea Party with an Uzi and blowing up the British with the first atomic bomb. Yeah, that’s the level of messed up this movie is, and if you think that a) Abraham Lincoln was alive in 1773, b) in Boston, c)that Uzis existed in 1773, d) were used at the Boston Tea Party, e) that bombs were used against the British at the Boston Tea Party, f) that atomic bombs existed in 1773, and that g) any of this is remotely likely… well, maybe you should go brush up on your history instead of reading this review or watching this movie (or, um, any movie, or television, or ANYTHING else).
Warning: If you have yet to see this movie, or you want to go into the 2010 version (which I’ve only seen trailers for, but I assume must follow the plot of the original even remotely) without knowing anything, spoilers follow. Also, if you have like, ANY respect for classics, the following might drive you insane. You have been warned. (This is the Wiki article with added comments from me).
“King Acrisius of Argos (Donald Houston) locks his daughter Danaë (Vida Taylor) away from mortal men to avoid a prophecy that he would die if his daughter had a son. While she is imprisoned, the god Zeus (Laurence Olivier) visits her and she becomes pregnant. After discovering the pregnancy, Acrisius casts his daughter and her newborn son Perseus out to sea in a wooden coffin, hoping to kill both and avoid his fate. In retribution, Zeus orders the god of the sea Poseidon (Jack Gwillim) to release an ancient monster known as the Kraken to destroy Argos, fulfilling the prophecy. Meanwhile, Danaë and Perseus safely float to the island of Seriphos.”
Wow. We go off track in the first scene. That’s got to be some kind of record or something. OK. According to myth, there was an Acrisius of Argos. He was the king, his daughter was Danaë, and he did imprison her to keep her from bearing the son who would be his prophesied death. Zeus comes in a shower of gold (or maybe it was her uncle) and she turns up pregnant with Perseus. Enraged, Acrisius locks the daughter and infant son in a chest and has her tossed in the sea. Zeus DOES get Poseidon involved… to guide the two to safety on Seriphos where the child grows up. But where does the Kraken come from? And what happens to King Acrisius? History says that Perseus eventually accidentally kills him years later, fulfilling the prophesy. We’ll discuss the mysterious Kraken later, but it certainly didn’t destroy Argos! (Besides, if it destroyed Argos, then what is Perseus supposed to rule?)
Calibos (Neil McCarthy), son of the sea goddess Thetis (Maggie Smith), is a handsome young man destined to marry Princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker), the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia (Sian Phillips) and heir to the rich city of Joppa. But cruel and destructive Calibos has hunted and destroyed every living thing surrounding the Wells of The Moon, including Zeus’ entire sacred herd of flying horses (except for Pegasus). As punishment for this and his many other transgressions, Zeus transforms Calibos into a goat-like monster who is subsequently shunned and forced to live as an outcast in the swamps and marshes. Thetis, furious at her son’s fate, vows that if Calibos cannot marry Andromeda, no other man will either. Equally infuriated by Zeus’s total devotion for his own son, Thetis transports Perseus (Harry Hamlin) from Seriphos to Joppa.
Um, where to begin. Who is Calibos? Thetis is a sea nymph. Her son is ACHILLES, the one she dipped in the River Styx while she held him by the heel, thus resulting in that being his only vulnerable spot and the origin of the term “Achille’s Heel”. Andromeda and Casseiopeia live in Ethopia, and their coastal port city is Jaffa. Wells of the Moon? What wells of the moon (and why, in every scene shot here, does it look like DAYLIGHT)? Pegasus exists already? No, no he doesn’t. Pegasus is born when Perseus cuts off Medusa’s head.
So we have a non-existent son in a non-existent city pledged to marry a princess who’s on another CONTINENT and has killed everything around an non-existent sacred site, except for a sacred stallion that SHOULDN’T EXIST YET. And we magically transport Perseus to the non-existent city to get him in on the action.
Perseus, befriended by the scholar and playwright Ammon (Burgess Meredith), learns of Andromeda and her plight: she cannot marry unless her suitor successfully answers a riddle, and any suitor who fails to answer the riddle correctly is burned at the stake.
In a scene that is clearly “THIS IS EXPOSITION”, a guard explains poor prisoner Andromeda’s plight. He also clearly tells us that the riddle is known ONLY to the poor sap who fails to correctly answer it. This is an important point. Remember it.
Armed with gifts from the gods (a sword, shield, and a helmet that renders its wearer invisible), Perseus captures Pegasus and follows Andromeda’s shade on her nightly journey to learn a new riddle from Calibos. Armed with the answer, Perseus is nearly killed by Calibos, but escapes, losing the magical helmet in the swamps in the process.
Perseus appears at the next ceremony for a new suitor and answers the riddle correctly, presenting Calibos’s severed hand (with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which is the answer to the riddle) and winning Andromeda’s hand in marriage.
Remember where I pointed out that the friendly expository guard said the only one who knows what the riddle was is the poor sap who answered it wrong and is thus today’s torch? Yeah, in this scene, Andromeda just blurts it out to everyone in the temple. And the clue Calibos gave her in the swamp? How the crap did THAT become the riddle? And if THAT’s the sort of riddles she’s been giving, really, why did it take Perseus to figure it out, because that was pretty dumb. Yikes. Of course, this is all objections to THIS crappy plot line. In mythology, NONE OF THIS TAKES PLACE, because WHO IS CALIBOS AGAIN? Perseus and Andromeda haven’t even met yet!
At the temple to Thetis, Calibos prays to his mother Thetis to take vengeance on Perseus. Thetis tells Calibos that she cannot do so because Perseus is protected by Zeus, but she can take vengeance on Joppa. At the wedding, Queen Cassiopeia compares Andromeda’s beauty to that of Thetis herself, which angers the goddess. The statue of Thetis collapses and its head comes to life, demanding Andromeda as a virgin sacrifice to the Kraken in thirty days, or else Joppa will be destroyed.
Do I really have to address the whole “Calibos doesn’t exist plot line” again? I’ll deal with it later. Perseus STILL has not met Andromeda, so there’s no wedding. Cassiopeia just boasts, unprovoked, that her daughter is the most beautiful, even more than the nymph daughters of the sea. Thetis isn’t even invoked. It’s Poseidon, King of the sea, who sends the Cetus, on his own, to punish the vain queen and her country. Andromeda’s father, the KING, begs for help for his people at the Oracle of Zeus, and is told that his virgin daughter must be sacrificed to the Cetus on the coast of Jaffa. NO THETIS, NO KRAKEN, NO JOPPA, and NO CALIBOS.
Perseus seeks a way to defeat the Kraken. Zeus commands Athena (Susan Fleetwood) to give Perseus her owl Bubo as a replacement for his lost helmet of invisibility. Instead she orders Hephaestus (Pat Roach) to build a mechanical replica of Bubo as an aid for Perseus.
Let’s ignore the fact that Perseus isn’t in this story yet, there is no Kraken (it’s a Cetus) and that he can’t be looking for a way to kill it because he’s not aware of the problem. Let’s just look at the Bubo issue. Her owl’s name is Bubo? How is that name remotely Greek? It’s right up there with Kraken! Oh, wait, I’m dealing with the Kraken later. Ignore that. Worse than the name, though, is the fact that Athena goes to Hephaestus and orders a mechanical replica of the bird to replace it. It’s not like Zeus won’t notice she’s still got her owl on her shoulder or anything… so now, in prehistoric Greece, in a mythical story, we have a ROBOTIC BIRD flying around. It chirps, whistles, flaps its wings, blinks its eyes, and only Perseus can understand it. Harryhausen claimed it predates R2D2. Sure, Harryhausen. And my mother was a hamster, and my father smelled of elderberries.
Bubo leads Perseus to the Stygian Witches, three blind women (Flora Robson, Anna Manahan and Freda Jackson) who disclose that the only hope of survival in combat against the Kraken is by using the head of another monster, Medusa the Gorgon. Once a beautiful woman, Medusa had been punished by the gods by being transformed by the goddess Aphrodite (Ursula Andress) into a horrible monster.
They climb up to get to the STYGIAN Witches. Stygian mean “of the River Styx”, which flows through the UNDERWORLD. So why are they climbing UP to get to witches who are part of the Underworld? Maybe the witches decided to take a page out of George Jefferson’s book and move on up to the Eastside. Actually, they’re described in mythology as graeae, primordial deities of the sea or earth. They share one eye and one tooth, and while the movie gets right that Perseus steals the eye and holds it ransom for information on the gorgons, there’s no indication that this is an “all powerful eye” as it is described in the movie, or that a mechanical owl helped him, or that they have jack diddly to do with the river styx. Nor does he go to them to get help fighting the Kraken or the Cetus: he goes to get help fighting the GORGON, Medusa, whom the Stygian witches in the film introduce as an aside, a means to kill the Kraken, not the end that Perseus was actually there for in mythology.
Also, if this is an all powerful eye, why return it? Why not use the eye to kill the monster, or the Gorgon? Why give it back to witches that are eating people? Why risk them using it against you? Even if you accept that there is an all powerful eye, WHY GIVE IT BACK?
Worse, we’re told that Medusa is a Titan. No. She might be a monster that dates from the age of the Titans, having been created to aid them against the Olympians, but she’s not a Titan herself. We’re also told that Aphrodite turned her into a monster. No again. ATHENA caught Medusa, who was a beautiful woman, with Poseidon, in her temple. In revenge, ATHENA transformed Medusa in the horrible ugly creature. ATHENA. Not Aphrodite.
Meeting Medusa’s gaze will turn any living creature to stone, including the Kraken. She makes her home on the Isle of the Dead, which lies across the River Styx, at the very edge of the Underworld. Perseus travels there and manages to decapitate her with help of his shield and collects her head, but loses the shield in the process. As he and his party set to return, Calibos raids the camp, drives off the group’s horses and punctures the cloak carrying Medusa’s head, causing her blood to spill and spawn giant scorpions. The scorpions and Calibos attack the party. Left alone, Perseus is able to kill the scorpions and manages to best Calibos, whom he finally kills with Aphrodite’s sword.
I’m not given a location for the home of Medusa, but when Perseus crosses the Styx, he’s given a coin to give to the ferryman, Charon, to pay his passage. Of course, how he’s supposed to get back isn’t made clear. In myth, this isn’t a problem; THIS is where Pegasus comes from; Medusa is pregnant with the winged horse, and when Perseus cuts off her head, the winged horse comes forth. No more worries about how to travel. There’s also some legend about her having poisonous blood, or her blood turning into snakes, but nothing about scorpions. Also, if her blood turns into scorpions, why does it wait until Calibos pierces the head later, and not when it globs out gracelessly at her death? At least Calibos is finally out of the picture.
Perseus, weakened by his struggle and running out of time, asks Bubo to find Pegasus. The owl locates Pegasus in the swamp, guarded by Calibos’ men and the vulture. Perseus manages to scare them off, destroy the camp, and free the winged stallion.
Maybe I wasn’t paying attention at this point, having concluded that this movies was laughably awful by now, but I saw the robot bird that had, to this point, been nothing more than comic relief (and not good comic relief even), suddenly becomes an awesome hero and swoops in to save the day. I didn’t see Perseus once. The horse has to be rescued though, so that the story can get some sort of back on track.
Just as Andromeda is about to be sacrificed to the Kraken, Bubo appears, trying to stall the Kraken while Perseus is seen flying to her on Pegasus. Perseus approaches the Kraken but is knocked off, falling into the ocean. Bubo retrieves the head and delivers it to Perseus, who frees the head, turning the Kraken into stone which collapses into the bay. Perseus throws the head into the ocean and frees Andromeda. Pegasus emerges from the sea to the crowd’s delight.
Perseus flies in, kills CETUS, and is given permission to marry the rescued Andromeda. He uses the head of Medusa to turn her uncle, to whom she’s been promised, Phineus, into stone. When Perseus eventually does get rid of Medusa’s head, he gives it to Athena, who puts it on her shield. Had he thrown her head into the sea, the head would have turned everything into stone. This would have been a huge disaster.
The gods discuss the outcome of the adventure: Perseus and Andromeda will live happily, rule wisely and produce good children. The other gods are forbidden to pursue any vengeance against them. In addition, the likenesses of Perseus, Andromeda, Pegasus and Cassiopeia are set among the stars as constellations to forever remind mankind of the values of heroism and bravery.
The figures were placed in the stars. Athena places Andromeda near Perseus, but it is Poseidon who places Cassiopeia in the heavens, and it is a punishment that places her there… not a reward or a reminder for mankind of the values of heroism and bravery.
Now… the Kraken. There is a sea monster that threatens the city of Jaffa and the lovely princess Andromeda. Perseus, on Pegasus, slays the sea monster, thus winning the lovely princess Andromeda, marrying her and living happily ever after. The monster is called Cetus, though, not Kraken, and this really is a big difference. It’s thousands of miles and an entire PHYLUM of difference. Cetus is a fish like creature that lives in the Mediterranean Sea or possibly the Indian Ocean. Fish like means it’s a vertebrate, has a spine. And note that like Calibos (the man who doesn’t exist), Perseus, or any of the other myriad of names here, Cetus is actually vaguely greco-roman sounding. It actually sounds like it might fit the story.
Kraken, on the other hand, is a Norwegian or Icelandic monster that most closely resembles the giant squid or octopi that live in the Atlantic. In fact, the word “kraken” is the German plural for octopus. It doesn’t sound like it fits because it doesn’t. It comes from the wrong mythic structure, it’s an invertebrate, and it’s not found around Greece or Ethiopia.
So, let’s sum up: We have a hero who gets a horse from a sacred site that doesn’t exist before it’s born, is sent on an epic journey to save a princess after her fiancé, who doesn’t exist, is punished for killing everything at the sacred site except the horse that is pre-existent, from a Norwegian monster, described as the last Titan, by first killing the gorgon who is supposed to give birth to the pre-existent horse he rode to get the information on how to kill the monster…
This plot is so twisted and broken that I can’t even figure out how to fix it! From the standpoint of the mythic structure, it’s hopeless broken and abused. From the standpoint of its own continuity and plot line, it’s broken, weak, and inconsistent. And the effects in this movie are so awful as to be laughable! It’s SO bad that “Clash of the Titans” actually contains no actual Titans, not even one! The closest we get to one is Medusa, and she’s not a Titan; she’s a Gorgon, who might have been created to assist the Titans against the Olympians. So no Titans which means no clash of non-existent Titans!
Still, I was raised with the motto “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” For all the numerous flaws in this film, there are things worth noting. For instance, Vida Taylor, who turns in a tiny role (mostly nude) as Perseus’ mother, Danae, is lovely and believable as first terrified and then devoted to her son. Maggie Smith, playing Thetis, who is given a weak script, manages to still redeem her performance, begging for her son, and managing to bring life to a cold marble head. Even Sian Phillips’ Cassiopeia is believable in her portrayal. It’s a shame these actors didn’t have actual meat to work with; the story of Perseus might have been worth watching if it had actually been crafted with some skill.
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