Clash of the freethinkers.

Rating: 7/10 (3 April 2017)

This movie is interesting. It diverges far from it's source materiel, and takes a radically different route. It ditches the whole believe and follow your parents faith, and instead toys around with some deeper concepts. Enter Perseus. Perseus has led a hard life, his adoptive family have struggled to catch enough fish to eat, and storms regularly claim people's lives. When Perseus loses his family to a storm, his disappointment for the gods becomes hatred. King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia's army finds him and brings him to their city. There, the populace has become heathens, resenting their gods and defacing the temples and statues that are devoted to them. The queen claims her daughter is prettier and more attractive than the goddess Aphrodite. Zeus's brother, the embodiment of evil and Greek equivalent to Satan, the misanthropic hades, is given permission to spread mayhem with his pet, the kracken,an immense beast with virtually no shortcomings, by Zeus, as punishment for humanity's defiance. However, if Andromeda is fed to the kracken, the monster will become pacified, and refrain from exterminating the human race. Perseus realizes that Zeus is his father, who impregnated a human. His biological mother was killed by her human husband, but not before giving birth to Perseus. Questing across the lands in a bid to find the means to defeat the kracken, Perseus frequently is offered help from his heavenly parent, yet refuses his pity. He much prefers justice and care for his fellow humans, and would rather die among them than live forever in heaven. Throughout his quest, battling many nightmarish creatures, he barely scrapes through, yet never asks for any help from the gods. His morality was above the gods who created him, and their threats and the massacres they carry out on humans never intimidate him into submitting to them. It is only later in the movie does Zeus soften up, and Perseus admit he loves him, but he never allows himself to mould his own morality around Zeus, or depend on him as a guide. Perseus doesn't even need the threat of hell and reward of mount Olympus, or heaven, to dictate who he his. He sticks to his own morality, and aspires to help his fellow humans, whether the gods approve or not. He is even offered advantages from Zeus, that would rise him above the mortal humans, yet he refuses them. This movie definitely paints freethinking in a positive light. Without needing faith, Perseus remained kind, caring, tough, brave, and well-rounded. He still learned to love the gods, and respect them, but never relied on or allowed them to dictate him. Interesting ideas stemmed from this movie. Gods being reliant on, and friendly with the very demon who punishes defiant humans, and the fact gods need prayers to survive, or they die, are not to be overlooked. Religious and atheistic people should definitely gives this one a watch.