Clash of the Titans (2010)

[A Black Falcon]

SJ: It's only a bit over an hour and a half, actually. Fairly short film. That perhaps helps it, it doesn't overstay its welcome.

I agree that it doesn't do a very good job of making you care about the characters, though. I didn't care that much about them either, really. I just didn't mind that as much as you obviously did, I think.


Darunia: 300 I tried to watch a few weeks ago actually... I disliked it so much that I quit maybe two third of the way through and didn't even finish it. Ugh... so stupid, so inaccurate, so propagandistic... that was a bad movie. High production values, but a bad film.

Honestly, while Clash of the Titans is also pretty poor, at least I was entertained and felt like it was worth the time, if barely. The spectacular visuals are the main draw, certainly, but they're done well and did help keep me interested in watching.

Anyway. Inaccurate, yes. The new Clash of the Titans is, incredibly, probably even less accurate than the first one, which had almost no connection to the myths it was supposedly based on. Almost nothing about the movie was really accurate. Did I mind? Somewhat, yes. Some of the inaccuracies bothered me a lot, most notably the "the gods are awful and should die" element that the main character and his stepfather both said a lot. That's just not very accurate historically!

I mean, yes, some Greeks were of course athiests, etc, but honestly, his stepfather decides he hates the gods because he wasn't catching enough fish? Oh come on... and if Perseus oh so hates the gods, then why near the end did he pick up that sword... Even so though, it's perhaps not as bad here as it was in 300, where somehow they twist Sparta from the most religous, devout state in Classical Greece (which it actually was) to some place whose religious leaders were awful creepy old men... and Leonidas from a believer in prophecy and the gods to one who essentially spites them... etc, etc. The twisting is as bad in Clash of the Titans, but at least they sort of take it back at the ending. Of course, that dissonance between most of the film and the ending is very strong, so I don't know if that's a lot better, but it's slightly better, I think, at least.

Oh yeah, I do have to mention one inaccuracy. I forget what the original one did, but this Clash of the Titans has the now-standard Evil Hades. Hades is the villain, as usual in modern ancient Greek stuff. Actually in Greek myths Hades wasn't evil. People feared him and often avoided using his name, because he was the god of the dead, and he was strict and harsh, but he was not evil or a villain, aside from the "kidnapping Persephone" thing. But because in the Christian world the Greek world of the dead has been equated with Hell, Hades is the devil in this movie and many others (Disney's Hercules is another of many examples). It's just not at all accurate to the actual myths... not that the people making these movies care at all.

But anyway, yeah, Darunia, I agree that they were trying to get in that dark theme that is so common today, and I definitely agree that it's unfortunate, but the entertainment factor of the rest of the movie was enough that I didn't regret watching it, even if it was often pretty stupid. Also, while it has a lot of htat modern darkness in it, some of the spirit of fun of the older films does come across. While they sort of tried, this isn't God of War or 300, it is a bit different. Not as much different as it should be, but different.


Anyway, on a related note, my favorite ancient Greek themed movie is Oliver Stone's Alexander. I really, really liked that movie. I know most people in America hated it, but I thought it was very good...