Clash of the Titans

Rating: 4/10 (15 January 2011)

I watched the original 1980's version of the Greek based story starring Lord Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress many times when I was a kid, I wasn't surprised I saw there was a remake coming out, from director Louis Letterier (The Transporter, The Incredible Hulk). Basically Hades (Ralph Fiennes) was tricked into running the Underworld by King of the Gods and his brother Zeus (Liam Neeson), but he is still powerful enough to make demands and get some revenge. On Mount Olympus, he argues that there is some kind of uprising happening, and he needs permission to destroy the Earth city of Argos (not to be confused with British retail stores), and he plans to do this by having the Kraken released. Meanwhile on Earth, fisherman Spyros (Pete Postlethwaite, in one of his final film roles before his tragic death) adopts little Perseus, but he dies from drowning and leaves grown up Perseus (Avatar's Sam Worthington) to fend for himself. Perseus finds out that he is actually the son of Zeus, who made love to his birth mother on Earth, and he is destined to stop Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) from being sacrificed to the Kraken. The three blind witches, with one crystal eye ball to see, tell him that the only way to kill the giant monster is to use the head of the Gorgon Medusa (Natalia Vodianova). Before Perseus, with fellow warriors Draco (Mads Mikkelsen) and Eusebios (Nicholas Hoult), get to the cave of the evil serpent haired creature, they go against a bunch of giant scorpions sent by one of the servants to Hades, obviously they survive. Of course everyone knows that Medusa can kill anyone that gazes into her eyes by turning them into stone, so no-one has come out of her cave alive, most of the men die, but Perseus manages to take her head off. In the end, the people of Argos look like they are giving in and sacrificing Princess Andromeda to the Kraken, but Perseus uses the Gorgon's head to turn it to stone, and manages to get rid of Hades as well. Also starring Quantum of Solace's Gemma Arterton as Io, Danny Huston as Poseidon and Jason Flemyng as Acrisius. The original used mostly stop-motion animation to create the Greek monsters that have become legendary, this remake is more advanced with CGI special effects, the story is pretty much the same, with only one or two small differences and maybe a reference to the original (the mechanical owl), it is not a bad fantasy action adventure. Okay!