I forgot-
We had a lot of fun saying “Release the Kraken!” as a euphemism for various things. I’ve decided that from now on, at the moment of highest pleasure I will shout that phrase.
At the moment of highest pleasure?
I predict that will end in laughter or in tears.
Try it and report back to us.
The biggest sin for me was that at times I was just plain bored in this movie.
I just wanted to add, I see Cal mentioned it and a couple of others I think, the Hades chose not to kill Persues in the throneroom of Argos.
I actually took that as Hades had intended to suck up everyone standing in that area and that Perseus was able to resist, presumable thanks to his Demigodness. I’m sure Hades than looked over and said ‘Interesting’ or something similar as he was somewhat surprised that there was someone still standing there. And from there then recognises him as a DemiGod.
Saw it this weekend. Good effects, terrible movie. I really want to like Sam Worthington, but he keeps disappointing me - even in Avatar, which I quite enjoyed, I think it was in spite of him more than because of. I don’t regret the money or the two hours, but I think it would have been much better suited for a Sunday afternoon on basic cable.
But let’s get to the real question here: is Gemma Atherton more breathtakingly beautiful here with the black hair, or in Quantum of Solace with the red hair? Having her show up was quite the pleasant surprise.
The only redeeming quality of this movie besides the special effects was when they left that damn mechanical owl behind.
“Hey, what’s this?”
“Leave it!”
At least they were smart enough to leave out the Jar Jar Binks variant out of it.
Already made my review.
I tried to switch my brain off while watching it, but I kept getting distracted by thoughts like, “Wait, isn’t that how Hercules was conceived?” and “I thought he used the Medusa on some king?” and “Where the hell have I seen that Draco guy before?”
I think it was worse because it’s been forever since I’ve read Greek mythology so I wasn’t 100% sure if I was right in my doubts. It was super distracting.
Same thing happened when I watched Alice in Wonderland. I enjoyed it more the second time around because I was no longer taken by surprise by the incongruities. Not planning to watch Titans again, though. It was entertaining, but not that entertaining.
I went with a friend to this movie, and we had a good laugh.
I don’t understand why they made some changes, especially Perseus’s mother. And Io. And… well OK, I’ll just stop.
The thing that irritated me the most was the million times Perseus said: “I’m not doing this as a god, I’m doing this as a man!”. Argh! It didn’t help that his high horse could fly. I mean, really, what the hell was that all about, and why was it as subtle as an anvil to the head?
“I’m a fisherman, not a fighter”
“but only you can stop Hades”
“Ok, I’m apparently a fighter now”
This made me laugh.
Yes! That was hilarious, the best part of the movie. Obviously a joke, since it has no connection to anything at all in the (new) film.
Late to the par-tay.
- Ralph Fiennes needs to play Rasputin next. Holy hell man, every role you do is either romantic leading man or hideously ugly villain. How do casting directors figure him out?
- Speaking of casting, someone saw Rome. I was waiting for Cassiopeia to chase after Andromeda with a whip…
- Usually action movies start with the minor battles and go to the epic climax. In this movie, it went the opposite way. Each fight was less and less epic.
- Boy, Perseus, you can barely piss by yourself. In 10 days he went from being the weakest link with the warriors to winning it all.
I really should finish this up. It’s the completist in me.
I went to go see it again, just so I could see it in 3D. What everyone said is right – the 3D really isn’t worth it, and looks rushed. Some of the 3D is OK, but too many times the shapes of their heads don’t look right, and the furthest-away pert of it looks kind of flat and floating around behind the rest.
All those scenes at the end, with Perseus going through the city and through the arms of the Kraken, should’ve been really great 3D, but they’re not really memorable. Throughout the movie, many scenes actually looked flat. i actually took off my glasses tto look.
Back to the ffilm.
So they go to what looks like a volcanic crater to get to the Underworld. the djinn throws in the one golden obol they have to call Charon*. The whole "Crossing the River Styx’ thing is lifted from the first film, where, to my suirprise, Harryhausen didn’t animate the skeleton. In no version of the myth does Perseus have to go to the Underworld or cross the Styx to get to Medusa. She libves in Libya or Hyperborea or an island out in Ocean. But I guess they wanted a dramatic scene, this being a visual medium. And they couldn’t have Perseus fly there on his winged sandals – he doesn’t have any, because they look dumb. Furthermore, he couldn’t fly there on Pegasus, for reasons I’ll give below. So you needed some way to get there that would show him going Beyond Our World, with companions.
There is also a sliver of justification for this in myth. Homer only seems to know of the Gorgon as a disembodied head that’s extremely scary. The mere thought that Persephone might send it up is enough to scare Odysseus into cutting short his goat-blood seance in book 11 of the Odyssey. Homer knows that danae had a child with Zeus, but not what his name was, or that he had anything to do with killing or decapitating a gorgon. But, centuries later, Apollodorus, in his Library, had to reconcile the story from Homer with that of Pherekydes and others about Perseus. Aha! He had the obvious Gorgon in Hades being the soul of Medusa, killed by Perseus. He has Hercules encounter her when he goes to Hades to rescue Theseus. Later writers kept her in Hades, or put Gorgon-like creatures there. So crossing the Styx to find a Gorgon has precedent.
The original film’s skeleton poling a small boat becomes Charon as a boat, drawn by the Dead. Everyone climbs aboard. Io gives Perseus a lesson in fighting Gorgons (the second fighting lesson Perseus gets – and both of them too late to do much good – by that point he can either kill the gorgon, or he can’t.) But at least it sets up the fight scene with Medusa. And the boat ride gives Io an opportunity to tell the story of Medusa which, like the one in 1981, is lifted from Ovid’s late version. No monstrous mother, father, amnd sisters for our Medusa.
I do like the idea that Medusa can hurt people in ways besides petrifying them. Although the written versions of the story have Perseus coming upon her asleep (so he decapitates a sleeping monster with help from Athena and Hermes, and with a magic invisibility helmet, a sword, a shield, and flying slippers. Some hero!), artwork until relatively late shows him attacking a wide-awake Gorgon. That had to be a challenge, especially if you couldn’t look at her at the same time.
Harryhausen’s conception of her as lizard-tailed and as a archer is original with him, although snale-bodied characters are by no means unknown in Greek mythology, and there are lots of vase paintings of them. The 1940s edition of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology also has a snake-bodied Cecrops, done by engraver Steele Savage, which might have given him the idea. In any event, Harryhausen had already used a snake-bodied dancing girl in his seventh Voyage of Sindab. The archerey kit, though, was original. AFAIK, he was also the first to give her reptilian scaly skin, although Medusa was already hideous, in legend. The beautiful Medusa came later.
the new CotT, of course, keeps the retilian body and the archery, but gives her a supermodel face. She kills some of the companions with arrows, and petrifies a couple of others. This, of course, is why perseus can’t be ther alone. film is a visual medium, so you have to show somebody being turned to stone to make the threat clear. Besides, you audience won’t forgive you if you don’t show it. Almoast every gorgon movie has a sacrificial lamb who gets turned to stone. Nobody did in the first Percy Jackson book, but the movie gave us a hysterical tourist who’s only there for the purpose of beimng petrified for our edification and pleasure. we also got such petrified people in he movies Son of Hercules Against Medusa, The Seven Faces of Doctor Lao, the original Clash of the Titans, and The Gorgon.
So Perseus loses all of his companions, but sees Medusa reflected in the metal inside of the scorpion-hide shield the Mario Brothers gave him. (Presumably they braced the inside with metal, although where they got it is a mystery).
He cuts off her head, wraps it in his bag, and takes it back to Io just in time for her to be killed by Calibos (Huh? How’d he get there? Didn’t he have to cross the Styx, too? I suppose Hades could’ve just given him a free pass, but his unexplained presence there and his pointless killing of Io feels pretty out-of-place and abrupt. Kinda like when Ash showed up in the Computer Room on the Nostromo in alien without any good reason for him getting in there unobserved, and then turning out to be a robot. I still haven’t forgiven Ridley Scott for that one.
So Perseus kills him, of course. Io dissolves in a shower of gold (can they have meany that to echo Perseus’ birth? I doubt it – there hasn’t been any evidence that the filmmakers cracked open a single mythology book up to now) Sudden;y, for equally no good rreason, Pegasus is there like an Equus ex Machina, just in time to whisk Perseus off to Argos to save Andromeda.
The Kraken comes, hugely and ponderously. I’ll give them this – they really do come up with an impressive, greakin’ huge monster. He looks like the Love Child of the Rancor and the Cloverfield beast, and he does a fair amount of damage even before he sees if Andromeda is there to much on, which seems like cheating to me. Perseus gets there in time, bt, of course, we can’t simoly have him show the head. Havinf Hades split into his Gargoyle Army parts is better than the originals’ not having perseus be able to untie the kibisis, but I can’t help thinking that Hades sp[lits his intelligence at the same time. If he just had the gargoyles gather together they could simply kill Perseus. Or, if killing isn’t allowed, they could just tickjle him into inability until the Kraken has had a chance to chow down. But, as I say, he seems to get stupid when he splits himself up. If he stayed in one piece he could have just dropped a boulder on Perseus, or something.
But, of course, he doesn’t. Perseus and the Mario Brothers defeat the gargoyles and get the Head back, and use it to petrify the Kraken. Which strips away a lot of Sauron’s – er, Hades’ power, since he’s invested so much in the Kraken, so Perseus can use the sword to dispatch him to the underworld.
In later versions of the myth, Perseus didp use the head to petrify the monster. Centuries later, guides pointed out a rock in the harbor at Joppa as the crumbling remains. But in the earlier version of the sory, Perseus used his sword. Or threw rocks at the Beast.
He dives in to rescue Andromeda, but then refuses the kingship of Argos, and ends up livimng alone, with the Zeus-recons=tituted Io. In the myth, Perseus certainly did accept the kingship of Argos, although he later switched cities with his uncle, Proetus 9whom some said was his real father), and became King of Tiryns.
The 1981 version ended with Zeus putting the figures in the sky as constellations – which is, indeed, what happened. The constellations are overdone at the start, but the stars fade to reveal what are essentially accurate. The figures of Perseus, Cetus the Sea Monster, Andromeda, Pegasus, King Cepheus, and Queen Cassiopeia are, indeed, grouped together in the sky, and I have argued that thier appearance and behavior suggested portions of the myth. We know that the constellaytions were assiociated with the myth by at least the 6th century BC, whnen the fact was mentioned in a now-lost play. But the new version doesn’t seem to be aware of this – it has the stars telling the story at the beginning, with no suggestion that the constellations are still there.
So there it is. On the whole, the effects are good. I think the acting was pretty decent, given qwhat they had. Especially Mikkelson as Draco. But I’ll still take the earlier version.
*Obols were no more gold than the drachmas in the Percy Jackson books were, but Riordan explains that one.
Finally saw this tonight (I wait until movies get to the cheap theatre).
Wow, that movie was bad. Bad story, bad plotting, bad characterization, bad dialogue. Even the special effects and fight scenes were not that great.
An early moment of dumb that I don’t think anyone’s mentioned. Hades attacks the fishing boat and capsizes it. And it sinks to the bottom of the sea.
It is, of course, made entirely out of wood.
They probably should have made the boat out of something that floats better. Like stone. Because at the end of the movie when Perseus swims down to rescue Andromeda, she’s sinking down past a bunch of pieces from the busted up kraken. So I guess the stones are more bouyant than a human body.
Or the part where they’re chasing the zombie king. And Perseus comes up with a brilliant plan, “We should split up and follow the trail of blood.”
How does that work exactly? Everyone follows the trail of blood but you maintain fifty foot intervals?
A ggod point. I was surprised when Perseus spontaneously gives his pre-battle speech about what great comrades everyone’s been right before they go into the Medusa’s cave. My thought was “Why now? This isn’t the big battle. You’re only going to kill Medusa so you can use her head to fight the Kraken. And you’re only fighting the Kraken so you can then defeat Hades. And you’re only fighting Hades to get to Zeus. This isn’t the big battle. You’re not even in the playoffs yet.”
Everybody else should have been saying, “Wait a second. Perseus is giving us the big battle speech now? Oh shit, that means we’re all going to get killed in this battle. Damn, I knew I should have left with those other two guys. They get to live and they’ll probably reappear at the end of the movie.”
I love a wonderfully bad film. I think I’ll have to show this one at an upcoming Bad Film Festival.
A couple of merchandising notes: A comic store nearby was closing up, so I got a Medusa bobble-head doll at half price.
And I saw the neatest shirt – it says “Release the Kraken!” Only, instead of a picture of a scowling Liam Neeson/Zeus, or that Cloverfield/Alien Kraken, it has picture of a Kitteh with outstretched paws, straight out of Lolcats.