Crackin' the Kraken

SPOILERS!! - Don't read the below unless you've seen the movie or unless you're fine with finding out what it's all about ahead of time.

Clash of the Titans: The Remake released today to millions of fans of the original movie adaptation of Greek Mythology's 'Perseus and The Gorgon' from 1981 starring Harry Hamlin as Perseus. If you saw the trailers and teasers and thought, "Damn I need to see this!!" you'll get everything you expected and then some. It's amazing to see the difference in filmmaking when you drop 30 years in between the remake of a title, especially one that was enjoyed as much as the original was.

In some cases, there were classic elements of the original movie dropped into the new film's story. Most of the characters return along with Calibos, the twisted, horned, devil-like creature that plagues Perseus' quest throughout. It's the twists on the storyline and how these characters interact and move the story forward that really caught my attention though.. especially if you consider the events that happened in the actual myth of Perseus and the Gorgon.

Medusa - 1981 Original

The new movie introduces Hades for the first time as the evil centerpiece and mastermind of the people's hate towards the Gods; masterfully played by Ralph Fiennes. Rather than write a novel here about the complete change in plot, I'll just pick out some of the finer twists and hopefully not bore you to tears with complex details.

Calibos, for example, is not a character that really exists in Greek Mythology whatsoever. In the original movie, Calibos was the son of Thetis, originally a handsome man and betrothed to Andromeda, he's punished by Zeus for killing the sacred herd and turned into a monster as punishment. In the new movie, Acrisius the King of Argos is transformed into Calibos when he curses Zeus for sleeping with his wife, impregnating her with Perseus... strange twist but it worked. Even stranger was that they made Acrisius' daughter Danaë his wife and actually has her perish in the coffin that he condemns to the ocean rather than live to help raise Perseus. So in this case, Calibos hates Perseus because he's the bastard son of his ex-wife and Zeus, not because he shacked up with his ex-fiancee.

Medusa - 2010 Remake

The purpose of the entire adventure has changed as well. The first movie followed close to the original story of Perseus seeking a way to defeat the Kraken in order to save his love, Andromeda, from being sacrificed to it. In the new movie, even though Andromeda is set to be sacrificed, Perseus' interest is not in saving her, but rather killing the Kraken so as to weaken Hades and send him back to the underworld. Instead of choosing Andromeda as his queen after killing the Kraken, Perseus accepts the resurrected Io as his wife and they set off to be "human".

There were a lot more twists and turns that were interesting, but all-in-all it's a great movie in its own right and is definitely worth seeing (even if Sam Worthington is hard to buy as Perseus). There is even a cameo of Bubo, the annoying robot owl from the first movie. My favorite character in the movie is the Djinn, a wielder of dark magic that controls the massive sand scorpions. I'm planning to see this again in 3D IMAX when I get the chance. Let me know what you all think of the movie! ^_^