This is basically all spoilers, just so you know.
I was really looking forward to this, because the original Ray Harryhausen stop-action film was so much fun. But instead, I’m infuriated!
It’s cynical, misogynist, and arrogant. The main problem is that they completely erase the role of most of the other gods of Olympus, making it a God VS Satan dualism between Zeus and “Hades”, which is what they’re calling the god of the Underworld. People: Hades is a PLACE. The god’s name is Hephaestus. [I've been reminded that yes, there is a god named Hades, but the '81 version it was Hephaestus, the metalworker. He made Bubo.] And Hades is not the equivalent of Hell, in the Christian sense. But I guess they don’t trust the American public with polytheism, or maybe they don’t want to offend the fundamentalists by suggesting it.
But it’s important: the original film (and Greek mythology generally) showed the gods arguing, bargaining with each other, and finding compromises. That helps explain the seeming randomness of fortune back on earth: there are consequences to intervening in our lives. In order to prevent utter disaster, someone else might have to suffer. It’s a very complex system, and no one on earth can understand it from our very limited point of view.
In the original, Perseus is an innocent, thrust into a confusing world at the whim of the gods. In this new CotT, Perseus is an angry young man who just wants to spit in the face of the gods who “killed” his family. He is singlemindedly vengeful, and is not even interested in adventure for its own sake, or the love of Andromeda. You can even see it in the way they represent the character, physically: Perseus in CotT (1981) is a curly-haired, nearly nude young Harry Hamlin, guided by the playwright Ammon (Burgess Meredith). He learns that the privilege he has is not an accident: his father is a god, and he understands that every man is presented with opportunity and fortune as a result of a history that has nothing to do with him. He fumbles his way through, forgetting his sword but being grateful for the help that he gets.
Perseus 2010 has a shaved head like a military man and rejects any of the help that the gods offer. He is played by Avatar’s Sam Worthington. But even though he prefers to make it on his own, it’s not because he aligns himself with humanity: when he is given a chance, he refuses to take on a leadership role, even when his men need it. He is entirely self-centred, thinking only of his need for revenge. In a Greek play, this hubris would usually lead to something terrible happening; in CotT, he is rewarded.
And women in this film are virtually invisible, and when they appear, they are powerless. In 1981, Hera (Claire Bloom) Thetis (Maggie Smith), Aphrodite (Ursula Andress) and Athena (Susan Fleetwood) all had a say in Olympus. It was love that motivated Perseus, not revenge. By eliminating the role of all but two gods, we remove just about all womens’ voices as part of the cosmic plan. And it’s shocking to hear Perseus 2010 refer to Medusa as “that bitch” after it is explained to us that she is cursed by Athena for being raped in her temple– victim-blaming at its most horrible. And Io, the only other woman with any significant role, is barely a presence; in fact, she becomes a PRESENT, literally gifted to Perseus by Zeus as a reward. She has no say in it, and doesn’t indicate any interest in him along the way, unless you count a parental role or a rape-like scenario where Perseus pins her down during a training fight.
Sure the animation is better now and the Kraken looks pretty cool. But in hindsight, there’s so much more charm in Ray Harryhausen’s stop-action compared to the fascistically perfect CGI of the 21st century, especially combined with the questionable politics of the new Perseus. They even make reference to the Harryhausen film, by finding the mechanical owl Bubo and throwing him away! Heartless.
And that’s the problem with Clash of the Titans ’10. The playwright Ammon was our guide in 1981. In 2010, we have only soldiers. It has no poetry in it, literally.