Clash of the titans [spoilers]

[Ford Prefect]

Decades of childhood nostalgia is better protection than bathing in the Styx.

[Sinewmire]

I particularly enjoyed the way the actors couldn't keep a straight face during "serious" dialogue. I thought it was hilarious that the director presumably thought that was the best take.

It was good dumb fun, with a sly dig at the original movie. One of those bad movies you can't help but love for it's badness and feel satisfied when your predictions are fulfilled.

"Oh what a lovely supportive but poorly fleshed out family. I bet nothing tragically character-building will happen to them."

[Vympel]

That movie was freaking awesome. Just got back from it. A campy, fun but awesome action piece, far superior to the original. The bit where they dismissed that stupid mechanical owl was especially good.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, the people on the Internet who say the original film was better are just wanking over their youth. This is the danger of any kind of remake. No matter how cheesy the original is (and in this case, there's a lot of cheese), there will always be people who pretend it was a "classic" and that the new one fails to live up to it.

Honestly, who the fuck are these people who walked into a remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS and expected it to be like Gladiator?

[Vympel]

Yeah, the people on the Internet who say the original film was better are just wanking over their youth. This is the danger of any kind of remake. No matter how cheesy the original is (and in this case, there's a lot of cheese), there will always be people who pretend it was a "classic" and that the new one fails to live up to it.

Honestly, who the fuck are these people who walked into a remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS and expected it to be like Gladiator?

I have no damn idea. I didn't much like the original even when I was a kid - it had this "made for TV" vibe about it that I was never able to shake- people go on about the stop-motion animation - Jason and the Argonauts was a far superior example of that, and it was what, 20 years older, if not more?

Me and my friend burst out laughing when we looked it up again and say that Perseus was played by Harry LA Law Hamlin. This is the classic that's being defiled?

[Molyneux]

1) How the hell did they know that Perseus was a demigod? He didn't know himself, Hades just muttered "interesting...", and unlike in the original, he didn't get his daddy specifically sending him a video-phone message.

2) They stole Arthur's origin story. Interesting, but it made me go WTF a little bit.

3) If Zeus could create humanity, and they powered him up for a few thousand years, why not just create MORE humans elsewhere and let the whiny ones rise or fail on their own? That would work pretty well with the whole twisted "Zeus is DADDY" thing they had going.

4) Is Argos the only city in the world? When the Kraken starts smashing it, suddenly Zeus is horribly weak. What, no Athens? No Sparta or Crete? Nothing at all but this one freaking harbor town?

5) Suleiman was neat, but I still don't freaking understand why he killed himself. He's still my favorite character, and I admit that I liked the revelation that "no flesh left" was equivalent to "immune to Medusa's stare".

6) Medusa, as always, was a sexy snake chick. They really don't like making her ugly, it's always just some weird superpower she has. Uma Thurman played her better, though.

7) Again with Medusa - she's the freaking victim! Innocent woman screwed over by the gods, and they don't even seem to care that they have to kill her to stop the Kraken.

Why were there all the statues of the other warriors in her lair, anyway? She's trapped there, so she can't be pillaging or anything monster-y like that. The Kraken has never been used before, as far as I know; why the hell were they coming there?

9) This bugged the hell out of me - scorpions do not hold their tails over them EXCEPT when they are about to sting something. Tame giant scorpions are a neat idea, but that just hurt to watch.

Still, the scorpion fight itself was good. And the Medusa scene was very well handled, though not as well as the original.

[Darth Wong]

1) How the hell did they know that Perseus was a demigod? He didn't know himself, Hades just muttered "interesting...", and unlike in the original, he didn't get his daddy specifically sending him a video-phone message.

I assumed Io told them, and that she was already known to be a demigoddess herself. After all, she's been creeping around for centuries. Someone's bound to notice that sooner or later.

2) They stole Arthur's origin story. Interesting, but it made me go WTF a little bit.

Clash of the Titans was always a collage of jumbled mythologies. There's no Kraken in Greek mythology.

3) If Zeus could create humanity, and they powered him up for a few thousand years, why not just create MORE humans elsewhere and let the whiny ones rise or fail on their own? That would work pretty well with the whole twisted "Zeus is DADDY" thing they had going.

Maybe it was really difficult to create humanity? Motives for creating and giving a damn about humanity are a sore spot with all of those old mythologies in real-life, not just this movie.

4) Is Argos the only city in the world? When the Kraken starts smashing it, suddenly Zeus is horribly weak. What, no Athens? No Sparta or Crete? Nothing at all but this one freaking harbor town?

That's one of the few areas where the film actually does accurately mirror the way ancient mythology was made.

5) Suleiman was neat, but I still don't freaking understand why he killed himself. He's still my favorite character, and I admit that I liked the revelation that "no flesh left" was equivalent to "immune to Medusa's stare".

Yeah, say what you will about his lack of character depth, but that scene when he laughed at Medusa was great.

6) Medusa, as always, was a sexy snake chick. They really don't like making her ugly, it's always just some weird superpower she has. Uma Thurman played her better, though.

7) Again with Medusa - she's the freaking victim! Innocent woman screwed over by the gods, and they don't even seem to care that they have to kill her to stop the Kraken.

Uh yeah, that's the myth. Medusa is unfairly treated by the gods, although they might have taken some liberties with the details. That happens all the time in ancient mythology.

Why were there all the statues of the other warriors in her lair, anyway? She's trapped there, so she can't be pillaging or anything monster-y like that. The Kraken has never been used before, as far as I know; why the hell were they coming there?

For glory and riches, one would assume.

9) This bugged the hell out of me - scorpions do not hold their tails over them EXCEPT when they are about to sting something. Tame giant scorpions are a neat idea, but that just hurt to watch.

Still, the scorpion fight itself was good. And the Medusa scene was very well handled, though not as well as the original.

My boys absolutely loved the scorpion cavalry. I want that as a recruitable unit in Medieval 2 Total War.

[Bedlam]

1) How the hell did they know that Perseus was a demigod? He didn't know himself, Hades just muttered "interesting...", and unlike in the original, he didn't get his daddy specifically sending him a video-phone message.

Doesn't Hadies say something about Zeus being his father when hes looking at Perseus? The line sounded like it could have been to all the Humans reminding them that Zeus created them but it looked like the rest of the Court took it to mean Perseus was Zeus's son.

[neoolong]

The story's a mess, but worse than that, the action scenes are unimpressive. It would have been better if less quick cuts had been used, but honestly, most of the action feels like they're just there with no thought but to them at all. The Calibos vs. Perseus fight was just lame.

And would it have killed them to have Perseus on Kraken action be more akin to God of War 3 than a quidditch match?

[Ford Prefect]

7) Again with Medusa - she's the freaking victim! Innocent woman screwed over by the gods, and they don't even seem to care that they have to kill her to stop the Kraken.

Yeah, she was the victim. While happened to Medusa sucked no matter what version of her myth you take, it's hard to miss how there are dozens of dead littering her house, and she probably killed a lot more. She was a victim, and now she's a mass murderer. It evens out.

And would it have killed them to have Perseus on Kraken action be more akin to God of War 3 than a quidditch match?

To be honest, when I saw Calibos tear a guy in half I was thinking 'haha, if Perseus stabs a scorpion with its own stinger or jumps all over the Kraken's face, I won't be surprised'. Admittedly none of that happened, but to be honest I'm not sure I could really buy Jakesooly doing that. I had trouble buying him doing backflips over Calibos, so ...

I want that as a recruitable unit in Medieval 2 Total War.

Do the Timurids get to mount cannons on them?

[Gil Hamilton]

1) How the hell did they know that Perseus was a demigod? He didn't know himself, Hades just muttered "interesting...", and unlike in the original, he didn't get his daddy specifically sending him a video-phone message.

Gods can always recognize their own. Remember, in the original myth, Perseus is practically followed around by the Gods.

2) They stole Arthur's origin story. Interesting, but it made me go WTF a little bit.

For Perseus? Actually the myth was half way through. The big difference was that is wasn't that Acrisius was laying seige to Olympus, but he got the standard "You will be killed by your own descendant" prophecies that Delphi is found of spitting up. Like alot of myths, his attempts to circumvent the prophecy result in him fulfilling it, cause he sticks his daughter in a tower to prevent her from mating, except that bars are no match for Zeus when he's trying to get a piece, who enacted mythologies first golden shower. When she turned up preggers, Acrisius did cast both of them into the sea in a box, which failed to kill them and Perseus was raised by fishermen. That's the origin myth.

There wasn't a Kraken though, but a really big whale.

3) If Zeus could create humanity, and they powered him up for a few thousand years, why not just create MORE humans elsewhere and let the whiny ones rise or fail on their own? That would work pretty well with the whole twisted "Zeus is DADDY" thing they had going.

Like in Greek mythology, the Gods loved them even though they were arbitrary and cruel.

4) Is Argos the only city in the world? When the Kraken starts smashing it, suddenly Zeus is horribly weak. What, no Athens? No Sparta or Crete? Nothing at all but this one freaking harbor town?

The point was that suddenly there was a huge surge in the FEAR of the Gods, which powers Hades, rather than adoration, which powers Zeus.

5) Suleiman was neat, but I still don't freaking understand why he killed himself. He's still my favorite character, and I admit that I liked the revelation that "no flesh left" was equivalent to "immune to Medusa's stare".

I liked him because he was basically Chewbacca made out of wood.

6) Medusa, as always, was a sexy snake chick. They really don't like making her ugly, it's always just some weird superpower she has. Uma Thurman played her better, though.

7) Again with Medusa - she's the freaking victim! Innocent woman screwed over by the gods, and they don't even seem to care that they have to kill her to stop the Kraken.

Both true to myth, according to Ovid. However, in the actual myth, she was a victim of Athena only rather than of Posideon and Athena. Of course, had Medusa resisted Posideon's advances, he'd have made her anyway. However, my reading of classic greek mythology would be that Athena would be more severely ticked at Posideon than Medusa, even though she might have done something cruel to Medusa to get back at Posideon.

Why were there all the statues of the other warriors in her lair, anyway? She's trapped there, so she can't be pillaging or anything monster-y like that. The Kraken has never been used before, as far as I know; why the hell were they coming there?

That's the Age of Heroes in Greek Mythology, back when every man was a foe and every meeting a fight. Heroes would go after Medusa because she was a monster of reknown.

9) This bugged the hell out of me - scorpions do not hold their tails over them EXCEPT when they are about to sting something. Tame giant scorpions are a neat idea, but that just hurt to watch.

To be fair, they were giant Hades powered super scorpions spawned from the fallen ichor of a monster from hell. I think that they can take liberties with their behavior for the sake of making them look cool.

[Gil Hamilton]

The story's a mess, but worse than that, the action scenes are unimpressive. It would have been better if less quick cuts had been used, but honestly, most of the action feels like they're just there with no thought but to them at all. The Calibos vs. Perseus fight was just lame.

And would it have killed them to have Perseus on Kraken action be more akin to God of War 3 than a quidditch match?

Kratos would have chopped the Kraken to shit, chopped Hades to shit, and then kick Zeus' ass for trying to help him do the first two.

[Vympel]

I had the exact opposite reaction to the action scenes - there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. Where were the quick cuts? I knew exactly what was going on at all times. It wasn't like watching a Bourne movie - in the second movie the fights were downright incomprehensible. Or was it the third? Probably both.

[neoolong]

The Calibos/Perseus fight. I'm not saying it was incomprehensible, but it was annoying. Especially for fights that weren't all that impressive to begin with.

[Rye]

I thought it was thoroughly entertaining. Perhaps LotR has skewed my tolerance for longer films, but I felt it could've slowed down the pace a bit and grown the characters a bit more with the stuff of the setting. It really made me want to watch the God of War movie. I really liked the anti-theism of the humans in the setting, it made for a more dynamic world with lots of interesting character politics and analogies.

5) Suleiman was neat, but I still don't freaking understand why he killed himself. He's still my favorite character, and I admit that I liked the revelation that "no flesh left" was equivalent to "immune to Medusa's stare".

I got the impression he was probably fucked. Sure he's made out of charred wood and magic, but he was being constricted and was in it till the end, so he suicide-bombed her. A bit racist. I liked the mixture of myths though.

6) Medusa, as always, was a sexy snake chick. They really don't like making her ugly, it's always just some weird superpower she has. Uma Thurman played her better, though.

That's something of the problem with something being so ugly it turns people to stone; you can't render it, or if it were possible, your audience would turn to stone. Additionally, her being beautiful has been an artistic interpretation since the 5th century BC.

7) Again with Medusa - she's the freaking victim! Innocent woman screwed over by the gods, and they don't even seem to care that they have to kill her to stop the Kraken.

Her origin story according to Ovid is actually pretty close to the film's description. I think I would've shown and not told that bit.

Why were there all the statues of the other warriors in her lair, anyway? She's trapped there, so she can't be pillaging or anything monster-y like that. The Kraken has never been used before, as far as I know; why the hell were they coming there?

The underworld in greek mythology was laden with treasures, hence why Cerberus had to guard the entrance.

[Ford Prefect]

The underworld in greek mythology was laden with treasures, hence why Cerberus had to guard the entrance.

This doesn't get brought up much, but Hades is actually god of being a rich ass motherfucker. One of the perks of being king of the underworld is that you technically own all the mineral wealth beneath the surface of the earth. Which is probably why he's generally such a mellow guy.

[Vympel]

I liked Medusa's design because she had a gorgeous face and the facial expressions were just priceless - the one of sheer puzzlement as to why the Suicide Bomber wasn't turning to stone was great. So cute.

[Gil Hamilton]

This doesn't get brought up much, but Hades is actually god of being a rich ass motherfucker. One of the perks of being king of the underworld is that you technically own all the mineral wealth beneath the surface of the earth. Which is probably why he's generally such a mellow guy.

I also think he was the God of Lawyers, or at least had the God of Lawyers on retainer. After all, who but a really slick contract lawyer could manage to turn six pomagranate seeds into a binding marriage agreement with the woman he kidnapped and get away with it?

[Ford Prefect]

I also think he was the God of Lawyers, or at least had the God of Lawyers on retainer. After all, who but a really slick contract lawyer could manage to turn six pomagranate seeds into a binding marriage agreement with the woman he kidnapped and get away with it?

Could you imagine the look on Demeter's face when Zeus upheld it? That said, I have heard that it being entirely involuntary on Persephone's part is not necessarily true. Certainly she seems pretty cool with being Queen of the Underworld afterwards, though if we remove the kidnap of Persephone, that leaves with Hades with ... not many profoundly dickish acts to his name.

So cute.

Haha, thank God someone else thinks so.

[Shroom Man 777]

7) Again with Medusa - she's the freaking victim! Innocent woman screwed over by the gods, and they don't even seem to care that they have to kill her to stop the Kraken.

Yeah, she was the victim. While happened to Medusa sucked no matter what version of her myth you take, it's hard to miss how there are dozens of dead littering her house, and she probably killed a lot more. She was a victim, and now she's a mass murderer. It evens out.

Um, yeah. A whole bunch of dead people, who happened to be dead warrior people? Why would a bunch of dead warrior people be coming over to her place? Maybe it's to bleed her breasts cut off her head and use it as a trophy weapon thinggy, like Perseus.

Poor girl. First she gets raped by Poseidon, then get turned into a snake monster, and now EVERYONE wants to cut off her head.

[Molyneux]

This doesn't get brought up much, but Hades is actually god of being a rich ass motherfucker. One of the perks of being king of the underworld is that you technically own all the mineral wealth beneath the surface of the earth. Which is probably why he's generally such a mellow guy.

I also think he was the God of Lawyers, or at least had the God of Lawyers on retainer. After all, who but a really slick contract lawyer could manage to turn six pomagranate seeds into a binding marriage agreement with the woman he kidnapped and get away with it?

I would think that the god of lawyers would have to be Hermes.

[Darth Yoshi]

Both true to myth, according to Ovid. However, in the actual myth, she was a victim of Athena only rather than of Posideon and Athena. Of course, had Medusa resisted Posideon's advances, he'd have made her anyway. However, my reading of classic greek mythology would be that Athena would be more severely ticked at Posideon than Medusa, even though she might have done something cruel to Medusa to get back at Posideon.

Medusa was unfortunate enough to be the only viable target for Athena's wrath. Even though she likely was more pissed off at Poseidon, Poseidon is a son of Kronos and too powerful to directly oppose; in the Odyssey she doesn't make her move to get Odysseus home until Poseidon goes off to visit Ethiopia.

[The Romulan Republic]

The plot read like a bad RPG. First we need a reason for the hero to EMOHATE the gods (Hades playing Voldemort). Then we have him see a way to get to Hades via LOVE INTEREST. So he goes on the start with a bunch of fodder, and we get to SPECIAL WEAPON AND HORSE dropped into his lap, but his EMOHATE tells him to fuck this...because he must do this as a MAN!!! Yeah, a man who apparently has the sword skills of a trained soldier having never picked up a sword before. So after a CGI battle with Calibos and some scorpions presenting itself as a bad miniboss fight we get new fodd...ally. They meet up with 300's reject hags, and they give an deadly prophecy. And then Zeus comes down, and gives him a coin to pay the ferry man to get to Boss Lair #1. While on the way to Boss Lair #1 we have Perseus and love interest foreplay. Then...we have Medusa battle. Not too bad, but went by the book in how people got whacked. Perseus still won't used the damn EMOHATE GOD WEAPONS until love interest gets hurt. Then he whacks Kalibos who has some silly final words.

Oh...back to a side plot. You see...nevermind. Let's not and go to the CGI spectacle that is the Kracken. Who roars, dies, and Perseus does a 200 hit combo on Hades to win the day. Only he doesn't want the princess but wishes to be on a lonely island with his manly horse. Zeus goes "No son of mine is going to be fucking only a horse" and cast Life on said love interest to end the tale.

And yes, do not see this in 3-D. I protested to the fucking thing and lo...I was right. Avatar was enjoyable for 3-D, this was $5 assrape without a reacharound.

While I think your points about the plot have some merit (and this was clearly in no way faithful to Greek mythology), I kind of enjoyed this movie. It had some good fight scenes, the special effects were (for the most part) decent, and it kind of reminded me of Pirates of the Carribean for some reason. As I liked that series, this was a plus.

Regarding the sudden sword fighting skill, I would point out that the older warrior (what was his name?) basically says after Perseus beats him "that's the God in you" or something to that effect. I found that an acceptable handwaving. The plot basically required Perseus to pick up those skills fast, and I didn't have much trouble swallowing it.

1) How the hell did they know that Perseus was a demigod? He didn't know himself, Hades just muttered "interesting...", and unlike in the original, he didn't get his daddy specifically sending him a video-phone message.

I thought that Hades specifically referred to him as being Zeus's son in front of a crowd of people (in the throne room), but maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

Also, I liked that Hermes was played by Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashere from DS9).

[The Romulan Republic]

Also, I find the complaining in the OP about the brevity and easy victory of the Zeus/Hades fight a bit needless. It fit with the theme of Hades drawing on people's fear for strength- in confronting Zeus he easily wins because, like a smart villain, he's spent the entire film building his power to that point. Thematically it makes sense.

[Shroom Man 777]

I love the fact that those two comic relief hunter characters imply that all sorts of freaky-deaky monsters are, like, a common occurence in their world and that they regularly slay freaky-deaky things like those like all the time.

You know, we need a good bullshit Greco-Roman mythology series. Like Xena! But with more CGI monsters!

PERSEUS! THE MYTHICAL ADVENTURES

starring kevin shroombo