The Yawn of the Titans

Every generation, it seems, feels the need to put its stamp on the ancient myths handed down to us. But one wishes that the storytelling tools of today were placed in the hands of our Hellenic forebears. What might Homer had done with the IMAX format in giving us the Iliad? What would Euripides have done with CGI giving us Medea? What would Aristophanes have done with 3D giving us The Clouds?

The easiest answer is that they would not have given us the upcoming Clash of the Titans remake. Indeed, one strains to wonder why Ray Harryhausen's last great stop motion epic, made in 1981, needed to be remade at all. In all probability, it was Sam Worthington's fallback vehicle in case Avatar didn't go so well. All things considered, after Avatar, Titans could only come up short, which it does.

The first problem is that there is barely any coherent narrative. There is a struggle between men and gods. There is a struggle between Zeus, played by Liam Neeson (who has had better roles), and Hades, played by Ralph Fiennes (who has had better roles). There is the obligatory and incoherent long journey through distant lands, the juxaposition of which makes no sense geographically (think 10,000 B.C.). There are the battle sequences. And there is the love interest, Io, played by Gemma Arterton.

Nobody is particulary well served by this story, because, well, there isn't much story. The 1981 version was an amalgamation of the stories of Perseus and Belerophon as the winged horse Pegasus assists Belerophon in his battle with the chimera, after being born of the blood of the Medusa, having been beheaded by Perseus. In the original myth, Perseus gets around wearing the winged shoes of the god Hermes. This version of Titans is a sequence of CGI events periodically rendered in a 3D environment and there seems to be no good reason for the use of 3D as a storytelling device. And the most obvious nod to the original falls flat.

There is a truly subversive idea embedded in this film. The idea is that there truly is a struggle between a creator and his creations and it is a struggle that has happened before. It is an idea that humans can overthrow their divine forebears, a punishment for their bad management of the universe. But the idea requires more than director Louis Leterier can muster. It is something that requires the surer hand of an Aeschylus or an Aristophanies and is at best given a bad venue in this loud and overdone film. Pick up Bulfinch's Mythology or Edith Hamilton's Mythology instead.

Poster's Note

Ladies and gentlemen. I do apologize for the lack of postings. This has proven to be a much more intense season professionally than I had anticipated. I am also in dire need of Internet access and computer upgrades at home. 

I am also in the process of re-examining how best to use this blog in concert with my other sites, and thus tying together the various strands of my sizeable Internet footprint.

Be that as it may, there are postings in the offing and I expect that this site will experience a revival in the near future. In the meantime you can keep up with my postings to Twitter.

That is all. You may now return to your regular program already in progress.