Clash of the Titans (1981)
An Epic Entertainment Spectacular!
Tonight we dive into the past for a little bit of Greek fun. It’s an oldie that got remade for the more modern crowd a while back - but hey, we don’t want the new one before we’ve done the old one do we? Well, put on your togas because we are going for an adventure as we check out Clash of the Titans.
The story here is one of gods causing grief for mortals, and acting like the mortals are the one to blame. To be specific, Zeus has a penchant for getting things pregnant, and when a ruler takes a bit offense to one of those things being his wife, the story gets set in motion. The royal puts his wife and not-kid into a coffin and sends them out to see, to which Zeus rages, destroying the place. Years go on, and we see that the Gods are a bit… hows the nice way to say it - “unhinged.” When Zeus decides to make one’s kid a hideous creature because it went and killed all but one of the winged horses, the other decides to place upon the town a curse and attempt to mess with the prized son of Zeus. This sets into course a whole lot of trouble for the son of Zeus - who over the course of it falls in love and has to undergo many trials to make sure that love doesn’t end up being dead since it’s the woman the hideous creature feels owed.
Yeah, it might be a bit of a dated tale, but some of the concepts there have been around forever. The hero’s journey, the trials from the Gods, the fact that Zeus can’t keep it in his pants - all classic. It is enough of a story that it lets everything happen as it needs to happen, but it also doesn’t provide a whole lot of depth. In fact, with the characters in particular, you won’t find a whole lot of depth to sink your teeth into at all. The problem with being Zeus’ little favorite is that despite having a head for mercy and justice, the lead is also somewhat handed a lot of things to make his life easy-mode. Magic invisibility helmet? Magic Sword? Guide mechanical Owl? Magic Shield? It hardly feels like an intense struggle with all the gifts - despite him still having some struggle. That said, he doesn’t really change at all across his adventure - perhaps he becomes more tired or beat up, but it’s not like he starts as a bad person and then became good from the trials - he pretty much just stays the course of “I was destined to do things.”
Still, the actors do a pretty decent job with what they got. It feels a bit more stage production style then what you’d classically think of movies at times, but it also somewhat fits the subject that way. That said, it’s not quite the black-and-white acting where everything can feel overly dramatic, so it’s not really hammy or anything of that sort. It does feel a bit fitting for the God characters to have that little extra bit of gravitas though. There’s also a bit of detail and character given to some of the creatures - but that’s a little less for the acting department and a little more for the effects department. Although there is some damsel in distress action here, it wouldn’t be unbelievable for her in a different age to be some kick-butt lady, as she does have a bit of fire in her with the sassy retorts - regardless of how it actually ends up playing out in the movie.
A regal dude for a regal place.
Now of course, probably the big element of this one people would pick up on isn’t necessarily the actors or story - it’s probably them sweet effects. Of course, by sweet effects I mean more for the time - when things were largely still stop motion and in-lens tricks. I’m just prefacing it with that because the modern crowd isn’t going to be all that impressed with it in comparison to the stuff they’ve seen these days. For the time, they were pretty good, with plenty of the stop motion feeling pretty fluid itself, even allowing for some little extra character in things like the robot owl or Pegasus. As a whole the stop motion and miniature stuff does look pretty good - but I’d be remiss to say that the implementation of them with the live action parts isn’t quite as well done. Lighting tends to be somewhat off on them (always a bit of a problem with the movies that used to mix the two), but also perhaps due to modern technology, a lot of the stop motion creatures look better quality then the movie around them when it comes to things like grain.
Costumes look appropriate for what you’d have grown up with on swords and sandals movies. Plenty of color, lots of robes, not a whole lot of pants, and plenty of man-chest on display. There are a few scenes containing a bit of un-clad woman (a few butt scenes and a breast feeding scene) that some with more modern sensibilities would probably flip over (but to someone like me who watches crap horror flicks all the time it barely registers on the radar). There’s more violence to be had there, although as far as things being grotesque you don’t get a whole lot of that here - the “worst” of it is the Medusa fight, where you get some gooey monster-blood kinda just glorping on out of her like some kind of Blob-themed lava cake. Still, it’s a sword and sandals - red shirts be getting got one way or the other, someone looses a hand, an entire city gets “flooded” and destroyed by a Kraken - but it isn’t overly horrific to watch or overly graphic.
The scoring tries to provide a lot for the movie. Despite there being many steps on the quest, there also isn’t a ton of things actually happening during the movie - so the background music cuts in and out as it wants to feel appropriate. You would expect some more action, given that there is a few fights in here, but most of them feel almost more horror then action - slight tense moments where the music can really pitch that it’s a dangerous and scary situation instead of some high and fancy swashbuckling warrior flick. It fits the movie fine, but isn’t going to really stick around too much afterwards. Background sounds are done quite well, giving you plenty of animal, mechanical, or general population sounds to help fill things out.
That’s a snake you don’t want in your boot.
Perhaps it sounds like I’m being a bit rough on the movie - I still enjoy it pretty good. Some of that is surely nostalgia I admit, things like my love for old stop-motion effects and a classic hero story only backing it up. That said, not everyone can stomach stop-motion, even when it’s done at it’s highest form and quality, and some might look for a bit more in depth a story then just destiny and characters that don’t get a ton of room to develop at all. Perhaps next week we’ll compare it to the newer one, and see just where they improved and what they didn’t grasp well enough.