Clash of the Titans Review

I saw this movie a few weeks ago with a friend, it had looked promosing in the trailers and the summary of it had sounded nice.

When I went out from the cinema I was really dissapointed, it had been nothing what I thought it would be.

To start of, the adaption to the original story. It mostly only got the characters names right and that Perseus was Zeus' son. But that was kind of it. I hadn't read the whole story about Perseus but after the movie I did a quick research about it, where I found out that they had more or less butchered the story of Perseus.

Let us begin with the movie then.
Movie:
The first that happens is that we get a backstory of the story, yes, that logical! That a king had stoped carring about the gods, which made Zeus seek revenge upon him by comming in the form of a bird, transformed to the king himself and impregnated the queen.
When he found out, he killed the queen and places her in a wooden chest along with the kid. He then proceeded to throw them into the ocean.
A fisherman and his wife find the wooden chest and then fishes it out only to find Perseus and his dead mother. They adopt him and take him in as their own, raised him into manhood where he will start his adventure to fight the gods.

Original:
In the original the King never got a son so he consulted the oracles which told him he would be killed by his daughters son. To prevent that he locked her into a bronze chamber open to the sky. Then Zeus appeared as a golden shower and impregnated the daughter and she would later give birth to Perseus.
The king didn't want to kill Perseus and the daughter in case it would anger the gods, so he threw them into the ocean in a wooden chest.
Perseus mother prayed in the darkness of the chest as it floated in the sea, thanks to it they got washed up on a shore of Seriphos. It was here they met a fisherman who took them in and raised the boy to manhood. The fisherman also had a brother who later fell in love with Perseus mother.


Comment:
Oh boy, only such a short thing and so many wrongs. How could they change it so much that went wrong. How could they just change it to that it was the queen that gave birth to Perseus instead of the kings daughter? It wouldn't be THAT hard to make it happen, even if the golden shower would be a little wierd, atleast for me. But non the less, a really stupid and uncessecary change.
Then that he killed the queen and not the child (atleast the kid was alive when the movie started, so yeah), it was really wierd. And if they killed the kid, how the heck was he alive when they found the chest? Makes not sense what so ever!
The change with the fisherman and lack of wife in the movie was most likely only due to the change that the queen died before, so it was a natural change even if it was also a really stupid change. Because of that change, they took out a part of the movie and changed the story.

Not to keep you waiting, I will write the original so you can see what we missed.

Original:
The fishermans brother eventually fell in love with Perseus mother, but wanted Perseus gone from the island so he could have her for himself.
To do so, he held a large banquet where every guest had to bring a horse because he was pretending to make a contribution to the Hippodamia, the tamers of horses.
The fishermen's protegé didn't have any horse to give the brother, so they asked him to name a gift which they wouldn't turn down to get him. It was here the brother made Perseus start a journey to leave the island, he demanded the head of the only mortal Gorgon, Medusa. So he set out for the journey to get the head of the Medusa for him.


Comment:
We stop here for now, since this didn't take place in the movie at ALL! There were no brother, no banquet, no nothing. The Medusa didn't appear until much, much, MUCH later in the movie, almost in the end of the whole movie. Such a fuck idiocy to remove that, it would be better and would have made a longer movie.

The movie hold similar thing to the original, but they've switched places, so I will bring them up as they appear in the movie. Let us go on with the movie then!


Movie:
Perseus and his familiy is out fishing, it has not gone well at all with the catch for a long while and they suffer from it. They come close to the Island where King Cepheus rule, and they're trying to provoke the gods and start a full scale ware against them.
To get their attention, they've started to destroy the statues of the gods, also by burning the tempels. This of course angers the gods and they strike back, atleast Hades does. During the assault of the troops Hades sees Perseus and his family and attack the boat. It starts to sink and the family (except Perseus) is traped in a small area with air. So Perseus tries to save them, but they're beyond saving and he saves himself instead and then get washed up on the island.
There he get captures by the troops after the assault of Hades has seized and brought to the room where the king and queen is.
There they start talking about why they're provoking and anger the Gods, because the Gods doesn't show them love anymore and therefore the humans want revenge. They also proclame that the daughter of the king and queen is more beautiful than Aphrodite herself.
Then Hades appears agian and starts to kill all the troops in the room, but he also notices Perseus and proclame him son of Zeus, a demi-god. He also says that they would have to sacrifice the princess to his monster Kraken, or it would destroy the whole island and everyone on it. He also kill the king and queen if I'm not wrong. After Hades is gone, Perseus get in trouble and everyone more or less hate him, and Perseus just want to take revenge on Hades for what he did to his mom and dad.


Comment:
Let us stop here, because well, in the original, this doesn't really happen, not at all. The only thing that is correct is that they claim that the princess is more beautful than any human, but not the gods but the sea nymphs. Which causes the anger of Poseidon, not Hades. He also just sends a big sea serpent that destroys land and man alike. Oh man, they just LOVE to fuck it big time. But wait, I'm not done with this yet.
Compared to the original, this was after the whole thing with the Medusa, and it is much later they get to know about the Medusa in the movie. Because in the original Perseus arrives in the kingdom Ethiopia(don't remember if it was called the same in the movie, but it is supposed to reprisent the same place) on his way back after have slain Medusa.
.... What? They've just switched place of everything... Just awful...

Back to the movie and let us see where it takes us.

Movie:
The city want the princess to be sacrificed for the saftey of the city, but Perseus and the troops of the dead king and queen doesn't want that to happen so they set out to find a way to kill the unkillable Kraken.
On their way Perseus get trained by one of the seniors of the troops and find out he's a natural with the sword. They also find a sword that has been forged on Olympus, but Perseus doesn't want it because he want to do this mission as a man, not a god.
They also come across Pegasi and later Perseus late mothers husband, the king. They fight him and lose about two of the troopers, the king run away and they chase after him into a desert.
In the desert they get attacked by giant scorpions and even more troopers die due to Perseus lust for vengence. As they're almost killed the scorpions are stoped by a mysterious people who live in the desert and tame the scorpions.

They tell Perseus and the group about the Norns who can give them the answer they seek, so they set out to find them which proves not to be a hard time at all.
The norns tell them they would need Medusa's head that can turn everything of flesh and blood to stone.
Now they have to get to the underworld where Medusa is held prisioner and kill her.
They're also now accompanied by the half-god Io whom decided to join them.

Comment:
Just wow so much that's wrong here, just wow. The only thing that's right is that they want to sacrifice the princess to the moster. But that's about it!
The biggerst what the heck for me is that they called the three old hags norns... NORNS? That's F-ING NORSE MYTHOLOGY, COMPLETELY WRONG MYTHOLOGY HOLLYWOOD!
Those old women were called Graeae and otherwise they were correctly potrayed, but that they were called norns where so wrong.
Also this thing about Perseus wanting to be man and not god is so wierd, because in the original he get a lot of gifts from the Gods and he uses them all. Like the helm of invisibility, his flying shoes and such.

Also that Medusa is along in a prision is wrong. She is the only mortal of three sisters living together in a cave. Also, the Kraken never appeares in the original, it is only the sea serpent by Poseidon, not any moster by Hades. Oh man, this is just getting out of hand. Also, they never crossed any desert like that. And the sword forged on Olympus didn't exist either. Just so you know.

But on with the movie then, we're almost done, wierd, eh?

Movie:
Perseus and the remaining troopers plus one of the wierd sand people(why do I think of Star Wars when I say that?) head towards the only place where they can get to Medusa, through hell. But they don't know how to get across Styx unless dying, luckily Perseus had gottena coing from Zeus before and could bribe their way across.

When they arrived to the prision of Medusa only Io stayed behind and everyone else went in with Perseus to kill her. The fight ended with everyone but Perseus dying and he managed to cut of her head and then put it in a bag as he returned to the mortal world.

As he got back he met up with Io, but she got killed from behind by the king he had been chasing,. They fought for a long while, then Perseus decided he would use the Gods gift and power so he managed to kill the king. Then out to his aid came the black pegasus he had encountered earlier in the movie.

Comment:
I was to say there is no word for this, but no, there's a lof of words for this.
Medusa didn't live in the underworld, she lived in a cave hidden away and she was living with her two sisters who where immortals. There weren't even any fight in the original story, Perseus suck in alone with his adamantine sword and a polished shield Athena had given him. He also used the helm of invisibility to sneak in, but of Medusas head by looking in the reflection of the shield and then sneak out when the sister awoke.
Aslo this is where the the pegasus appears, because as Perseus kills Medusa a pegasus leaps out from her neck along with Chrysaor, pegasus brother.

Just so many things that are wrong. One thing that just made me wonder, is that Perseus doesn't have any bag for the head when he goes to Medusa, but when you see him go out from Medusa's lair he is carrying the head in a bag.

One of the things that annoyed me a lot was that in that scen when he fought the king, that he embraced his godhood and decided to be half-god and half-human. So the arrogance and selfish desires got all of the troopers killed only to be thrown away after Io died. Then Io had the nerve to call him he best of a god and best of men. He's neither, almost the worst of both! SRSLY! NO, DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT, TAKE RESPONSABILITY!

They just can't keep it consistant and keep skipping things. What the heck was it with getting everyone killed in the fight against Medusa? Just so Perseus could fly back on the pegasus alone? Did Io die because of that too? I don't know, I'm not sure the writer knew themselves. Oh well, onwards we go to the last part of the story.


Movie:
Perseus travels back to the princess and to stop the Kraken from killing her and the rest of the city. As he arrives the Kraken has already started to attack the city along with harpies who were sent by Hades.
The head get stolen by a harpie that Perseus chases to get it back since it is the only chance to kill the Kraken.
After a long and persistant chase Perseus finally get the head back and just in time manages to turn the Kraken into stone before he devoured the princess. Perseus then ask Zeus to help him to defeat Hades, he does so by striking Perseus sword with lightning and then he throws it at Hades so he get sealed up in the underworld.
Unfortunately the princess falls into the water below the city and the Kraken collapses and falls over where she landed. Perseus jumps in after her and saves her from drowning.
When he get her up from the water, he let her walk away to her kingdom to rule it. Zeus appears and offers Perseus a place on Olympus but he refuses the offer and want to live with the mortals, being kind as Zeus are he revives Io so they can live together and wouldn't be alone ever again. Here the movie ends.

Comment:
I mean... Kraken wasn't even a part of the original, he wasn't even there! Why did they persist to change it like this? I mean, protecting that city and princess was only a part of Perseus story, not the only story. They probobly didn't know what they were doing.

Also, Io wasn't even really there in the original, he was just with a small band and got the help from gods, no Io or anything. Also, how the FUCK do you survive after falling like 20 meter into the water, getting big chunks of a moster on you? Apparently if Perseus touches you, you'll revive instantly and everything will be okay, except if your name is Io that is.


Apart from just butching the story, it wasn't even good as just a movie. It was extremelly rushed all the time, they just jumped from one fight to another, Perseus learned how to fight with a sword in about two minutes and he had never in his life held a sword. Even if he's a god, I doubt it's all "Wow, sword! I'm a master swordsman now! Let us banish Hades! :D". The characters wasn't even that interesting all together, the most interesting character was the sand person, and he said about two words in the movie and blew himself up(awesome, right?). That says A LOT about the movie, don't you think? Plus I saw it in 3D and it had minimal 3D effects, I took off the glasses many times and it was no difference at all.

And yeah, the "fight" with hades was ridicilus. Perseus held up his sword, Zeus struck if with lightning and he threw the sword at Hades and he got sealed away in the underworld. Just WOW, that's a way to make a climatic fight short, same with the Kraken. It was such an immense build up how awesome and evil it was and then it just dies without doing much. Crush a building, hittan a human then dying. Slowes fucking most dangerous monster in the world ever.

Plus, when Perseus saved the princess he clamed marrige to her, but that was not even any hint of in the movie, they just wrote it out from the movie.

Also, why do they keep potraying Hades as the evil guy? They even say it in the beginning of the movie, he got tricked by the "good" gods to rule in the worst place ever. So yes, he is the evil guy that is ruling the underworld. NO WONDER HE IS PISSED AT ZEUS! I don't blame him for being mean to Zeus and being all dark, I would be that too.

There are more to the original, but it doesn't have any more connection to the movie, so I'm not going to mention it.


So to conclude this all, Clash of the Titans isn't something you should see, not even when it comes out on DVD/Bluray or anything. Not even worth downloading. Just warning you guys, and sorry about my long rant about the movie, but I payed 150kr(about 18$ or something like that.) and I felt it was my right to tell you all how bad it was.

So, until next time!
"I fart in your general direction!"