This past summer I watched both versions of the movie Clash of the Titans. The movies follow the adventures of Perseus, famous Greek hero. Unsurprisingly, the plot is the same with both movies, save the city, save the girl. A considerable difference in storytelling stands between the two efforts. One notes the dramatic technological change in movie making between the one made in 1981 and the one made in 2010. Movies don’t seem to age well. Not just technologically, either. One becomes aware of attitudes and mores of the older era. Still, a common thread runs thru the two movies, heroic quest.
As a title, “Clash of the Titans” sounds good. Really, tho, it should be Clash of the Gods. The Olympians were the generation following the Titans, tho sometimes gathered under the Titan name. The battles of Cronus, Saturn, and the rest, that was the real Clash of Titans. It would be a good movie if someone tried. Avengers End Game almost does that job, but the life of the franchises powered that too much. Even the Apocalypse needs a sequel. But anyway.
The older version of Clash should have been a doozy with hero and quest. The trials of Perseus offer cinema-ready action, and special effects were by Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen created the skeleton warriors, animate bronze statue, harpies, and the other monstrous threats that Jason battled in Jason and the Argonauts. That all mesmerized a certain adolescent, the perfect adventure movie. Clash 81 proved a tepid affair, however.
Harry Hamlin plays the lead role, Perseus, the hero. I know he starred in that popular lawyer show sometime after, but I have no more than that. I suspect that the director or producer chose him mostly for his yum factor. Unfortunately, dreamy eyes and hairless chest don’t provide enough zing for playing the Number Two Hero of Greek myths behind Hercules. Thru out the movie his quest seems merely like something to do till he can get to a club. I vaguely recall that he and the older but by no means creaky Ursula Andress became a Hollywood item. Forty years, I could be wrong about this exciting tidbit, but it does provide a meta look at Hollywood’s own Olympian playground.
The director had no interest in delivering what the Jason movie had in abundance: eye-popping action. Instead, it seems more like a drab philosophical inquiry about the world. I mean, he’s got Sir Laurence Effing Olivier as Zeus but the whole Olympus thing looks half-hearted and merely cheesy. The hero should be energized by his quest but instead strolls about his business. In the meantime, Olivier, Claire Bloom, and the aforementioned Ursula Andress all pick up checks for a few hours in a smoky studio. As gods, they just stand there. Now there is some strong commentary. No hint of the exaggerated egos of the immortals we know from the tales. They merely look uncomfortable waiting for the director to tell them what to do. The director, the real god here, doesn’t know. The pleading rashness of the gods has been set aside. They function as deus ex machina in drapes. Timeless mannikins.
Meanwhile Perseus listlessly wanders into a few temperate battles against monsters and whatnot. His legion of red shirts, unnoticed by the gods, pass forgetably into oblivion, just like the middle class. At least Perseus scores the big payday as hero. He’ll be good-looking forever.
In contrast to the low-intensity aerobics of Clash 81, Clash 2010 embraces a vigorous sense of pesty gods, loud as rock stars. First we get some back story. Baby Perseus has been set adrift on the sea with his mother because the king her husband did not father the child. The child survives but mom does not. A kindly fisherman finds and adopts the child. The child becomes the short-haired and rugged star of the show. This Perseus is oddly muted. He has spirit but internalizes it. When he is grown to manhood the gods war against a city of uppity people. As collateral damage, the fisherman and his family, except Perseus, get killed. The smell of vengeance rises.
Visually, this movie is already way ahead of Clash 81. A god, a freakin’ god, bursts directly out of the sky. If that don’t make you jump... Well that’s Hades, pissed. Ray Fiennes plays him as if he was never satisfied with any of Shakespeare’s villains. Angry and mighty, yet with a touch of snivvel, Hades got some character attributes, as he wars against Zeus.
Perseus commits to being his own man. He learns that Zeus is his father but Perseus turns away from the god side of his nature. It’s like Jesus saying he’ll just remain a carpenter. Perseus ends up getting cajoled into his hero quest. As played by Sam Worthington, Perseus is grim and humourless. He gathers a much more lively crew than Harry Hamlin did. The crew that joined Perseus in the earlier Clash seem like those who gathered around cocaine lines at Studio 54. I mean, whatever!
2010 bobs along as a quest. Perseus reconciles with dad, played with vocal reverberation by Liam Neeson. The Hero loses most of his mates along the way, but the two funny, blundering guys survive. This is religion, right there.
Weirdly, we just don’t think about the things we think about. In 81, Perseus receives the various aids in his quest as needed. It resembles a scavenger hunt for him. The helmet of invisibility, the flying horse, the shiny shield all come serendipitously to him expressly to be useful. In 2010, I do not think he gets a helmet, and the shiny shield is just laying around and he sees a use. Zeus does give him something or other, I forget what, which helps bring victory. This gift is more a token of their reconciliation than help of the gods.
In myths, the heroes seem less self-motivated than just following the only path before them. You’ll need a helmet of invisibility, Perseus, someone says, and so he has the useful tool for moving on. Presently, heroes everywhere challenge the world with their belief or denial of the pandemic. In each case, the hero becomes firm to the point of combative to follow their belief. Yesterday at the store a man agreed with someone that the pandemic is nothing to worry about. “It’s bullshit,” he said. His 97 year old mother will be fine when the family gathers for Thanksgiving. Yes, and Perseus knows Medusa can be defeated, the sea monster can be defeated, the gods can be defeated. Confidence wins the day. The proof is in the movie. Even listless Harry Hamlin can beat the gods just by doing what someone tells him.
One feels satisfaction when the hero wins. The path has been followed, the quest finished. What follows the adventure may be diminishment. Jason and the Argonauts ends with Jason and Medea smooching, but the gods know there’s some hot material for the Greek playwrights as the love match progresses.
Clash 81 proved hard to follow because nothing in the quest seemed to matter, and Harry Hamlin is too good looking to die. Clash 2010 provides the tension and the zesty visuals to soothe the need for hearty heroics but ends with something akin to Field of Dreams dad hugs. Hollywood the God of Gods exerts control.
When Donald Trump became an actual candidate, let alone President of the United States, I despaired. He rode into all this on a flying horse called Bullshit. The rumble of his self-aggrandizing swagger sounded heroic to way too many people. The fat gaudiness of his image resonated in a populous way. He became a monstrance of hope for certain disenchanted people. Their disenchantment is real but his mission was never. A hero is the deed itself, not the bragging puffery. Trump exploited the urge and need that kept the tales of such as Perseus alive even now. Both movies are cheesy because Hollywood cannot do otherwise, but they still bespeak a human need for heroic endeavor. Trump just twisted that, and the gods just laugh.
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