“Clash of the Titans”: the class of 2010 has a lot to learn

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Ancient Greece. Perseus, son of Zeus and a mortal Queen, is netted by the fisherman Spyros and raised as his own child. Grown to manhood, Perseus fails to save his adoptive family. Hades drowns them in a fit of rage after they witness the destruction of a titanic statue of Zeus by soldiers from Argos. They’re collateral damage in the war between the Gods and man, and Perseus wants his vengeance now! Well, his chance comes quickly, in a flurry of poorly executed exposition.

Most of the soldiers are slaughtered, but the survivors pull Perseus from the ocean and take him back to the kingdom of Argos. During a raucous banquet celebrating the statue’s demise, the King and Queen announce, “We are the Gods now!”

Blasphemy doesn’t sit well with Zeus, and Hades is unleashed once more to devastating effect. The rest of the soldiers are annihilated. Hades delivers a chilling ultimatum: the destruction of Argos by the almighty Kraken or the sacrifice of the princess Andromeda in ten days. His demigod status revealed, Perseus reluctantly agrees to lead a quest to find a way to defeat the Kraken and, more importantly, Hades himself.

The Greek myths can be played fast and loose with and that’s their enduring quality. Robert Graves wrote of them, “The fullest or most illuminating version of a given myth is seldom supplied by one author.”

Hollywood, then, is just another contributor to their ancient and fluid legacy. Movies like “Jason and the Argonauts” and the original “Clash of the Titans” were often an audience’s first taste of the classics alongside books that used them as inspiration, like The Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter novels.

There is nothing wrong with the Disneyfication of the classics as long as you are left with a rip-roaring yarn that thrills, entertains and hopefully leaves you wanting to find out more about their source material. Sadly, this version of “Clash of the Titans” has no sense of scale or grandeur. The CGI effects are in-your-face, and consume the screen like Cronus devouring his children.

Sam Worthington plays Perseus as a reluctant hero. No self-serving Greek demigod would be so bashful. There was a lot wrong with “Troy,” but at least Brad Pitt gave Achilles a sense of rampaging arrogance that towers over every scene he’s in and permeates everywhere he isn’t. Pitt brought his genuine A-list game, but the promising Worthington is still trying to find his, hiding under it under armour and a neat crop.

Is this further a problem of familiarity breeding contempt? Worthington is fast becoming the Charlton Heston of the 21st century, with a trio of messianic roles in quick succession: “Terminator: Salvation,” “Avatar,” and now “Clash of the Titans.” Even Jesus only repeated himself once and we’re still waiting for the sequel 2000 years later. Worthington did his triple in a single year.

Still, one of the more interesting themes explored in the film is the nature of religion and the concept of faith. The mortals want self-determination, to be freed from the shackles of the Gods. We are told that, “Man’s prayers fed the God’s immortality” and who would let that gift go without a fight?

Better yet, the Olympians are like Hollywood movie moguls, scratching their heads and performing greater miracles to keep their audience from deserting them for the Internet and video games. Zeus doesn’t cast down lightning bolts – he casts down colossal 3D remakes of films we used to worship as children in a calculated attempt to lure us back into his cinematic temples.

“Take everything,” a soldier is advised whilst preparing to leave on Perseus’ quest, but when the mechanical owl from the 1981 version is uncovered, he is sneeringly told to “just leave it.” “Clash of the Titans” – Class of 2010 no doubt wet themselves at this in-joke and think they’ve given us what we want. The monsters are all there, the scorpions, Medusa, and the Kraken itself, but the heart of the original just isn’t.

If the gods on mount Hollywood want to keep their immortality, they need to do much better. They could start appeasing us with Spielberg directing a remake of “Jason and the Argonauts.” After all, he has the beard for it.