Ancient Greece. Fantastical tales of gods, mythical monsters and magic. It’s a mythical pool that directors return to again and again as the premise for popcorn entertainment. From the stop-motion genius of Ray Harryhausen, whose early special effects techniques were used in the original 1981 Clash of the Titans, to the computer-generated creatures of today, the appeal of these films have grown along with the budgets.
‘I want this film to be epic, with big wide shots, real locations, sunsets, clouds, mountains, fire – that’s what I’m looking for,’ Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Transporter 2), says. He is the French director responsible for re-imagining Desmond Davis’s original film, a cinematic classic that dipped into Greek mythology and melded together disparate stories and adventures to create a single heroic narrative, brimming with strange and fearsome creatures.
Like the original, the new model is more about adrenaline-fuelled adventure than meticulous scholarship. At the film’s heart is the intimate struggle of Perseus – the demigod played by Sam Worthington (fresh from his work on Avatar) – who seeks revenge after Zeus (Liam Neeson) destroys the human family that raised him. The plot is as familiar as the Parthenon itself, but with a cast that also includes Ralph Fiennes as Hades, Danish star Mads Mikkelsen as Draco and acclaimed actor Danny Huston as Poseidon, and a narrative that attempts to focus as much on character development as it does on flashy CGI, it certainly ticks all the right boxes for getting bums onto cinema seats.
‘This guy doesn’t accept his destiny and who he really is. He fights it. The gods are selfish and egotistical, using human beings as their playthings. It’s no wonder that mankind wants to revolt. It becomes a truly epic struggle, with iconic creatures, heroes and amazing action sequences,’ tells Leterrier.
The film follows a surge in more traditional sword-and-sandal movies in recent years. The decade began with Best Picture Oscar winner Gladiator, shortly followed in 2004 by Alexander and the less-than-impressive Troy. It was the 2007 hit film 300, though, that truly captured the attention of Hollywood exec’s with US$456million made at the worldwide box office from a US$67million budget. Despite this, Zack Snyder’s hyper-stylised adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas led 300 Spartans against the entire Persian army in 480BCE, received mixed reviews. While critics commented on the poor interpretation of Miller’s novel, audiences were lapping up the endless battle-porn; gold-tinted scenes of buffed men lopping off limbs in slow motion.
While certain aesthetic aspects of the Clash of the Titans remake mirror those of 300, the overall look of the film is more ‘real’, as Leterrier explains. ‘My style is never a steady shot – the camera is always moving, telling the story. Normally, I want to bring something a little bit more actual, to indulge modern movie-making with hand-held cameras and Steadicam.’
Like the Middle East’s main power-players in property development, Hollywood is constantly striving for ‘bigger and better’; it’s the force driving advancements in special effects and CGI and, at the same time, the cause behind many of modern cinema’s most spectacular flops. It’s a double-edged sword, and like the shiny CGI version wielded by the classic anti-hero, success or failure depends on its ability to slice through audience perceptions of reality.
Hoping to do just that is Dawn of War starring Henry Cavill, Frieda Pinto and Mickey Rourke – another Ancient Greece-based gods-against-humans-against-monsters marathon battle. Due for release in 2011, the Tarsem Singh-directed film is already being pitted against Clash of the Titans, despite the lengthy wait between release dates. Only time will tell who will emerge victorious. In the meantime, let battle commence.
Clash of the Titans in 3D is released on April 8 at cinemas nationwide. See timeoutabudhabi.com for showtimes.
Monsters and myths
As Greek mythology begins to dominate the big screen, Claire Carruthers takes a look at the celluloid power struggle between gods, men and beasts
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
A jolly juvenile adventure in which Jason (the rather stolid Todd Armstrong) is aided or hindered by assorted whimsical gods on Mount Olympus as he quests for the Golden Fleece. The film itself is given an enormous boost by Ray Harryhausen’s special effects. The bronze Titan is an arthritic disappointment, but most of the other inventions are pleasingly imaginative, not least the army of waspishly pugnacious, sword-wielding skeletons which pop out of the ground when the Hydra’s teeth are sown. Great fun, as these things go, with a surging Bernard Herrmann score to boot.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1973)
Python’s delightful and, on the whole, consistent reductio ad absurdum of the Grail legend, in which the Knights forsake their chorus line can-can dancing at Camelot for a higher aim. The Pythons set up a ‘historical’ tale as the sum total of modern anachronisms and misconceptions about it, a format repeated in The Life of Brian.
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Old style monster-and-mythology movie, made with the entrancing splendour of Ray Harryhausen’s visual effects (the Pegasus flights) and the occasional cynicism that results from under-using and abusing a star cast. Perseus (Harry Hamlin) and Andromeda (Judi Bowker) are as boringly lovely as classical hero/ines should be, and even the scaly Kraken looks too dazed to bite Bowker in half. The eschewing of modern optical effect techniques in favour of the classic stop-motion animation work of special effects legend Harryhausen is a delightful highlight.
Troy (2004)
As preposterous excuses for calamitous military assaults go, the tangled pretext for the Trojan War might rival those fictitious WMDs. To the consternation of his upstanding brother Hector (Eric Bana), timid trousersnake Paris (Orlando Bloom – an androgynous pin-up), smuggles away his sweetheart Helen (Diane Kruger) from her gilded cage in the palace of her much older husband, the Spartan king Menelaos (Brendan Gleeson). When the spluttering cuckold swears revenge, his brother, ruthless land-grabber King Agamemnon (Brian Cox, taking fork and well-sharpened knife to a prime-beef role), seizes the opportunity to lay siege to Troy, the last barrier to complete control of the Aegean. To vanquish his enemy, however, Agamemnon requires the fighting prowess of the unreliable and apparently unkillable Achilles (Brad Pitt), a surly type who, in his apolitical stance and stoical longing for death, somewhat recalls Maximus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. However, Petersen’s own sword-and-sandals bonanza proceeds by a numbingly reliable tick-tock of expository set pieces alternating with vast CGI-aided battle scenes. In grandiosely illustrating the power-drunk derangement of empire building, and in rendering war as pointless, brutish and dishonourable (not to mention a big sandy bore), Troy is certainly of its horrified moment.
The Book of Eli (2010)
The stylish opening of The Book of Eli – a lateral camera track through an ashen forest – attests to the spellbinding talent of ace cinematographer Don Burgess. His moody and immersive visuals (most notably a shoot-out filmed, Children of Men-style, in an illusory single take) lend weight to this otherwise rote postapocalyptic tale from Allen and Albert Hughes (From Hell). For a few brief moments, the film becomes something close to Greek mythology, as opposed to graphic-novel imitator.
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
Following a disastrous incursion into bubblegum high-school romance territory (I Love You, Beth Cooper), Chris Columbus returns to his comfort zone for this mirthless, episodic fantasy saga based on the young-reader book series by Rick Riordan. The film focuses on the underachieving Percy (Zac Efron look-alike Logan Lerman), who discovers he’s really a sword-swinging demigod. When Hades (Steve Coogan) kidnaps Mum as a bargaining chip for Zeus’s lost lightning bolt, Percy is charged with finding trinkets scattered across the country in order to avert a crisis on Mount Olympus and save his human kin from eternal damnation.
That Percy risks life and limb to preserve the family unit is typical of Columbus, and the film works best when playing on the idea that no amount of bravado is enough to mask our desire for parental love. Yet it’s not enough to compensate for the computer-game-style plotting, which relies on us to pick up on the narrative nuggets that mechanically slot in like puzzle pieces later on. And then there’s the outrageously rampant product placement: Apparently, if you’re locked in a life-or-death struggle with Medusa (Uma Thurman), you can avoid her deathly gaze by using an iPod’s shiny backside as a mirror. What did we do before Apple saved our lives?
Master magician
Ray Harryhausen carved out a unique niche for himself in movies, from the ’50s through to the ’80s. In an era in which actors commanded the lion’s share of public attention, with directors (and sometimes the increasingly rare producer) taking most of what was left, Harryhausen – who was neither an actor, director, or producer – acquired a worldwide fandom as the creator and designer of some of the most beloved fantasy films of all time.
