Clash of the Titans arrived in April 2010 as a remake of the 1981 film of the same name, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with the underlying rights picked up by Warner Bros. in 1996 through its purchase of Turner. Louis Leterrier directed from a screenplay by Travis Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. The story is loosely drawn from the Greek myth of Perseus, and the film runs 106 minutes.
It was a hit. It was not a good movie. Those two facts sit together without much argument, and the record backs both.
Trailer, via Warner Bros. UK & Ireland.
Perseus, Hades, and a Ten-Day Deadline
The setup comes fast. Perseus is born of Zeus and the mortal Danae, then raised as a man by the fisherman Spyros and his wife Marmara after Acrisius locks mother and child in a chest and throws them into the sea. Zeus answers by striking Acrisius with a lightning bolt that deforms him into the creature Calibos.
Eighteen years later, soldiers from Argos tear down a statue of Zeus and declare war on the gods. The Furies kill them. Hades destroys the family’s fishing boat, drowning Spyros and everyone aboard except Perseus.
Hades then crashes a celebration in Argos, ages Queen Cassiopeia to death, and threatens to unleash the Kraken in ten days unless Princess Andromeda is handed over as a sacrifice. Perseus joins the mission to stop him.
That is a workable spine.
What the Cast Is Given
Sam Worthington plays Perseus. Gemma Arterton plays Io, cursed with agelessness and acting as his guide. Mads Mikkelsen is Draco, captain of the royal guard. Alexa Davalos is Andromeda. Ralph Fiennes plays Hades, and Liam Neeson plays Zeus.
The supporting names are deeper than the material deserves:
- Jason Flemyng as Acrisius and Calibos
- Pete Postlethwaite as Spyros
- Polly Walker as Cassiopeia
- Nicholas Hoult as Eusebios
- Natalia Vodianova as Medusa
Neeson and Fiennes are the two performances that hold. Arterton gives Io a stillness the script does not earn. Worthington, asked to carry the center, plays a man with nothing to lose as a man with nothing to do. The source records praise for Neeson, Fiennes and Arterton and criticism for Worthington’s performance. That split is the fair one.
The 3D Conversion Was the Wound
Clash of the Titans was set for a standard release on March 26, 2010. It was then converted to 3D and pushed to April 2, 2010. That decision is the one that dates the film worst. The conversion was done after the fact, and it shows in flat, murky depth that adds nothing to the scale the film is selling.
The scale itself is the real asset. The Kraken, the Furies, the deformed Calibos — these are built as spectacle, and the source credits the film’s epic scale and visual style. Leterrier can stage a monster. The problem is everything between the monsters.
Perseus must accept his power as a god, defy fate, and create his own destiny. That is the arc, stated plainly.
What the $493.2 Million Actually Means
The film grossed $493.2 million worldwide, one of the highest-grossing releases of 2010. That success led to Wrath of the Titans in March 2012. None of that is a defense of the film. It is a fact about the market.
Audiences wanted a monster movie with a famous name, and they got one. The cast helped. The title helped.
The 1981 original had stop-motion creatures. This remake has better tools. It is bigger in every measurable way. The Metacritic score of 39 out of 100 (3.9/10) is not a pile-on. It is roughly what the film is.
What is worth watching here is the cast the film wasted — Neeson, Fiennes, Mikkelsen, Postlethwaite. What is not worth watching is the conversion, the direction, or a lead performance that never finds the character.
3.9 of 10.
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