Clash of the Titans

[Murgos]

Medusa is a beautiful human that got raped

I thought she was cursed because she thought she was more beautiful than Aphrodite or something?

According to the Roman version of the story.  In the older Greek legends the Gorgons were children of god-like creatures from before the coming of the gods (but not Titans, more like the Great Old Ones).

[Comstar]

Needed better direction and script- it wasn't Transformers II bad, but it was clearly missing part of the script. I never did figure out the difference between the 2 old soilders and 2 young soilders, they were completely interchangeable.  Mass Effect II has changed me- if you're going to send the guys on a suicide mission at least give the audience a mission where they can do something first.

Or what the gods's plan was. Needed more God's too- Posidion needed some action, and Athena needed something to add to the movie.

The Kraken was good- I'd want to see it vs New York but then remembered we've seen that already in Cloverfield. Would be nice to see a monster the actual size of a city rampaging through the US (as opposed to the Cloverfield monster that was just the size of a building).

I also enjoyed the starring role of the Hubble Space Telescope at the start.

[Aez]

Anyone figured out WTF the mechanical owl scene was about? I'm talking about the scene where the hero find a small mechanical owl when the team is gearing up in the city.

[Quinton]

I gather the original film featured a mechanical owl, and depending on who you ask it was the best part or the worst part of that film. ^^

[Murgos]

The mechanical owl is a nod to the original movie.

I watched it last night.  I must be turning into a grumpy old man because I thought it was awful.  If my girlfriend hadn't been the one to suggest we go and also bought the tickets I would have walked out about halfway through.

At one point she said something like, "This movie is kind of scary." and I said, "Yeah, every time someone opens their mouth to talk I cringe in fear."

[Sir T]

In the original, Zeus told Athena to give Perseus her Owl of Wisdom. Athena got Hepheastus to build a mechanical Owl, filled it with Wisdom and sent that instead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoy8MEL9N3M&NR=1

[Ratman_tf]

The only good thing about a lot of these remakes is that they remind me to pick up a copy of the original on DVD.

[Ghambit]

The original was 10 times the movie this was.  And it was a horrible mistake moving so far away from the original script... all they had to do was modernize a classic and it would've been win.

[Sir T]

I agree. With modern cgi and effects the original would blow peoples socks off. Hell its still enjoyable

[Ghambit]

I dunno, it's like modern movies fail to capture the epic fantasy "quest-like" movies of old have.  Stuff like Krull, Dark Crystal, Goonies, and on and on.

[Cadaverine]

I loved Ray Harryhausen movies when I was a kid.  I'd still put his work above 95% of the CGI stuff being done today.  For me, it's simply that there's something more 'real' about a physical miniature, vs a CGI model.  The look of the ships in the Star Wars prequels compared to the original films would be a good example of this.

[Comstar]

This story explains what happened

What I don't understand is why they made the changes they did- all this editing just created huge holes in the story and the reshoots made no sense.

After reading this story, I like the movie a lot less now - it could have been much better.

    BY ZEUS! THE VERSION OF CLASH OF THE TITANS YOU DIDN'T SEE
    By Devin Faraci

    It's obvious that Clash of the Titans isn't the movie it's supposed to be. Watching the film - 2D or 3D - reveals a movie that's internally inconsistent and that bears all the hallmarks of something that's been tampered with and changed at the last minute. Trying to figure out what happened and to discover what the other Clash of the Titans could have been, I began doing some research and investigation.

    Probably the most interesting thing I learned is that there's a significantly different cut of the film in the vault. Louis Leterrier's original version of Clash of the Titans differs from what's playing in theaters in some fairly major ways, and while some of it could be restored for the DVD release, much of it would need extra FX work and would drastically change the plot of the film. Unlike last summer's Terminator Salvation, which got messed around with in the script stage and on set, Clash of the Titans was largely changed after principal photography through editing and some widely reported reshoots - all of which included Leterrier.

    It should go without saying that this article will contain spoilers for Clash of the Titans, so if you haven't seen the movie please stop reading now.

   
    What now? Some script changes were made on set, so some scenes never got shot, but there is a ton of footage of the gods that exists. Could there be a director's cut of the movie one day released? There are two major obstacles to that at the moment: first of all, all of the god scenes presumably need FX work (all of the Olympus scenes have a processed, fantastical look, and the floor of Olympus is a very cool birds-eye view of Greece, which I'm assuming is CGI). But more sticky is the fact that this cut would be a movie that has a completely different throughline and ending. With Clash performing as it is it's not unlikely that a sequel could be greenlit, so would Warner Bros want to put out a version of the movie that completely contradicts whatever will come next for the franchise?

    I wish they would. There's stuff in Clash of the Titans that works - lots of fun moments and action set pieces that thrill. But there are other things that simply don't. The shooting script presents an intriguing alternate version of the film, one with more humor and characterization and one with much more intriguing philosophical stakes. The ending of the original sets up fascinating avenues for a sequel, and feels like the beginning of the next step in Perseus' journey to free humanity from the yoke of godly oppression. Instead we ended up with a movie where our hero sells out to the man.

[Ghambit]

Something tells me there were some legal issues with the original script.  Perhaps they were asking too much coin for the IP, I dunno....  but they definitely turned one of the easiest movies to do a modern remake for, into garbage.

[WayAbvPar]

This story explains what happened

What I don't understand is why they made the changes they did- all this editing just created huge holes in the story and the reshoots made no sense.

After reading this story, I like the movie a lot less now - it could have been much better.

    BY ZEUS! THE VERSION OF CLASH OF THE TITANS YOU DIDN'T SEE
    By Devin Faraci

    It's obvious that Clash of the Titans isn't the movie it's supposed to be. Watching the film - 2D or 3D - reveals a movie that's internally inconsistent and that bears all the hallmarks of something that's been tampered with and changed at the last minute. Trying to figure out what happened and to discover what the other Clash of the Titans could have been, I began doing some research and investigation.

    Probably the most interesting thing I learned is that there's a significantly different cut of the film in the vault. Louis Leterrier's original version of Clash of the Titans differs from what's playing in theaters in some fairly major ways, and while some of it could be restored for the DVD release, much of it would need extra FX work and would drastically change the plot of the film. Unlike last summer's Terminator Salvation, which got messed around with in the script stage and on set, Clash of the Titans was largely changed after principal photography through editing and some widely reported reshoots - all of which included Leterrier.

    It should go without saying that this article will contain spoilers for Clash of the Titans, so if you haven't seen the movie please stop reading now.

   
    What now? Some script changes were made on set, so some scenes never got shot, but there is a ton of footage of the gods that exists. Could there be a director's cut of the movie one day released? There are two major obstacles to that at the moment: first of all, all of the god scenes presumably need FX work (all of the Olympus scenes have a processed, fantastical look, and the floor of Olympus is a very cool birds-eye view of Greece, which I'm assuming is CGI). But more sticky is the fact that this cut would be a movie that has a completely different throughline and ending. With Clash performing as it is it's not unlikely that a sequel could be greenlit, so would Warner Bros want to put out a version of the movie that completely contradicts whatever will come next for the franchise?

    I wish they would. There's stuff in Clash of the Titans that works - lots of fun moments and action set pieces that thrill. But there are other things that simply don't. The shooting script presents an intriguing alternate version of the film, one with more humor and characterization and one with much more intriguing philosophical stakes. The ending of the original sets up fascinating avenues for a sequel, and feels like the beginning of the next step in Perseus' journey to free humanity from the yoke of godly oppression. Instead we ended up with a movie where our hero sells out to the man.

Agreed. That sounds like a movie worth watching, and makes me want to kick the editor in the junk all the more.

[tazelbain]

So the compliment to turning Hades into Satan, I guess, is turning Zeus into Yahweh.  Of course, Yahweh can't be the bad guy.  Very silly, but I still liked the movie for the monster bashing.

[Sir T]

Kraken is Hades' child, the gods use it to kill the Titans

None of them are Titans.

Just watching the original. Zeus says in the first 10 minutes that the Kraken is the last of the Titans.

[Ironwood]

Oh, well, if the God of Gods says so, It Must Be True.

 

[Sir T]

If Zeus had been played by Charlton Heston his opinion would have carried more wieght 

[HaemishM]

Watched this over the weekend. How, with millions of dollars and a solid cast, do you fuck up something so goddamn simple as a remake of the classic cheesefest? Hollywood somehow figured out a way. It started poorly with the whole "Curse the gods!" and "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT! SOMEWHEN! SO SAYS THE FISHERMAN!" speeches. Once we got to Argos, it fell apart even more and the whole Perseus is the reluctant angsty douche demigod never rang true at all. He didn't want to be like a god because a God sort of kind of killed his adopted father and family? Is that it? Shouldn't he just he pissy at Hades, not the concepts of gods in general? And if Hades really wanted to steal all the worship from Zeus, couldn't he just release the Kraken on his own? Or I don't know, make it rain fucking fire on Argos? Seems he had pretty free reign in the world. Calibos was fucking awful - where are the goat legs? How did he get across the River Styx? Not even giant scorpions and a pretty cool looking Kraken could save this turd. You could even tell what parts they added merely to claim they were in 3D. It had about the impact of Jaws 3D only that shark looked more believable than most of the shit in this movie. The Medusa effects were pretty good, but the ripped off from LotRO scorpion riding Djinn's made no sense to the story whatsoever other than to have a cool looking character. I cared about every single character in Perseus' retinue except Perseus.

[WindupAtheist]

I would have liked to have seen a semi-authentic telling of the Perseus myth, with the sea monster being more of a sidequest than the main point of the movie and an existential threat to the world. (A sidequest taking place in Africa or maybe Israel depending on how you read it, but lol brown people I guess.) I knew that wasn't in the cards though, just based on this being a remake of the nearly-as-divergent original.