Film Review: "Clash of the Titans" (directed by Louis Leterrier, 2010)

It begins in space. A voiceover describes the backstory of pretty much everything that has happened in the universe up to the current plot. The audience finds later that this is narrated by Io, played by Gemma Arterton, who seems to be the "goddess of exposition." She lets the audience know that Perseus, played by Sam Worthington, is also a demigod who ends up being raised by a poor fisherman, played by Pete Postlethwaite. These are the only characters really worth caring about, and the latter one dies about 5 minutes in when Hades, god of the underworld, hits his boat with a fireball.

Perseus survives the fireball, and is picked up by some soldiers from Argos, the city that likes to piss off the gods. Hades shows up in Argos, kills some people, and tells them that if they don't sacrifice the princess then he will destroy the whole city. And they've got like a week to think about it.

The powers that be in Argos change their mind a few times about Perseus, shifting between seeing him as some guy and seeing him as a spy from the gods who caused all their troubles. Io shows up and does her thing, telling Perseus that he is a son of Zeus and pretty much the details of his life between conception and being picked up by the fisherman (at least they made sure the goddess of exposition was nice to look at and listen to).

So everyone decides that Perseus isn't so bad and they agree that the best plan of action is to figure out a way to kill the Kraken (the enormous hellbeast that will destroy the town) rather than give up the princess, since she is pretty and nice and apparently worth more than, at best, a few guys from the questing party, and, at worst, the entire town.

Now this is based on Greek epics, and the values of the characters won't always match up with modern ways of thinking, but wouldn't giving up the princess be by far the best option? Sure, she's a nice gal, but the loss of human life one way or another will be much greater if they don't give her up. I suppose it's the principle of the thing, "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," but that kind of thinking got Argos into this mess in the first place. Maybe this is not a direct fault of the filmmakers, but trying to adapt ancient myths can make the protagonists seem a bit foolish and hard-headed compared to modern stories.

Anyway, Perseus and some guys head out and walk through a bunch of rock quarries. None of the guys on the team are very interesting or memorable. There are a couple guys who are supposed to pass for comic relief, but either forget to have screen presence or have the sense of humor of someone's dad. Io tags along too, so there is something interesting to look at, since the sets are pretty generic and unremarkable. Perseus and his pals experience some decent action scenes, with special effects ranging from awesome (Pegasus) to video game (Medusa). Everyone in his crew dies, but Perseus gets what he needs and eventually saves the day to a really good soundtrack. The city gets half-destroyed by the Kraken (who is rendered at a giant scale that is actually very well-done and believable) but it's cool because they stood up to the gods and the princess is ok. Oh, and Io gets better.

The ending kind of plays weird tricks with the themes. The motivation for the proposed destruction of Argos was Hades' attempt to prove to Zeus that men are ruled better by fear than love. This can be said to be one of the major themes discussed in the film. Hades is proven wrong, at least for the moment, as humanity rises up to defeat him instead of cowering in fear. Obviously, ruling by love is better, as Zeus comes to realize (and always suspected). However, a few facts get in the way:

1. People were rebelling when Zeus was ruling by love
2. Hades really just wasn't powerful enough to rule by fear
3. Argos was saved by a demigod, with help from the gods

To be fair, point 3 is mentioned, which suggests a partnership between humanity and Olympus is in everyone's best interest, although it implies that the gods should fear man just as much as man fears the gods. So the gods are really too weak to rule and fail to inspire love. Essentially, Hades was right. It is best to rule by fear, you just need to be powerful enough to actually do it.

This theme isn't bad, it's just different from the conclusion everyone in the story has come to. Which, again, makes the characters seem thick-headed and foolish. I have not seen the original "Clash of the Titans" nor I am familiar enough with the source material to comment on the writing, but the audience is more likely to sympathize with the characters if they make choices and conclusions that hold to some kind of consistent value system, preferably close to the audience's own.

Of course, deciding to give up the princess and submit to Hades wouldn't make a good action movie, and we'd miss out on some neat action (in the always-interesting classical mythology setting), and a great soundtrack.