New pictures from Clash of the Titans

[Paul Martin]

It is set to be one of the major blockbuster releases of next year, and we now have five new stills from the Clash of the Titans remake at which we are free to marvel. The pictures carried by Empire provide a good look at central protagonist Perseus (A. N. Other headline outing for T4 and Avatar actor Sam Worthington), as well as offering a glimpse of a few of the supernatural oddities he is set to encounter during his quest to slap the brakes on nefarious deity of the dead, Hades (Ralph Fiennes). 

So as well as the above shot of the closely-cropped Perseus and his posse shaping up amidst some fire-strewn ruins, we also have the hero seemingly being crept up upon by some kind of sizeable ghoul-creature.   

 

The original 1981 Clash of the Titans centred on the efforts of Harry Hamlin’s Perseus to capture the snake-garlanded head of Medusa, in order to use it to save his beloved Andromeda from the Ray Harryhausen-animated Kraken. Apparently the new version retains some of these elements but in somewhat amended form, as Perseus gathers a fellowship of warriors in order to save the world from Hades. Judging from the below picture this collective includes the ghoul-thing from the previous shot.   

   

The 1981 Clash featured three crones who shared a solitary eyeball, which they then passed between them depending on who wished to see at any given time. And this trio would appear to have received an update for the remake. However, the original movie saw their eye stolen by Perseus’ cutesy clockwork owl Bubo, and the suspicion has to be that the little tweeter has failed to also make the transition into the revised edition.   

Lastly we have a still of Perseus again looking moody, albeit on this occasion handling a big ol’ sack. Does this contain the severed head of Medusa, just ready to be whipped out and used to petrify his opponents? It seems likely, and one thing we can be sure about is that the new Perseus has no qualms about putting his foes to the sword. Worthington is quoted as remarking that;     

“When my Perseus starts out, he should be this bombastic tank. The gods have killed his family. He’s Charles Bronson! He’s gonna go for revenge, and the best way to achieve that is to kill the Kraken. Well, to kill the Kraken you gotta kill Medusa. To get to Medusa, you gotta take on the witches. Then once he kills the Kraken, he’s gonna kill fuckin’ Hades and Zeus and everybody else! But along the way he needs to learn to calm down, ask for help. And out of that comes the true hero.”

The Australian actor also appears to be keen this toughness extend beyond his character and be infused into the fabric of the movie itself, noting that “we're not in fuckin' Harryhausen mode anymore”.

Co-starring Liam Neeson as Olympian head honcho Zeus and Danny Huston as sea god Poseidon, amongst a cast of numerous other big names, Clash of the Titans is due for release in late March 2010. On directing duties is The Incredible Hulk’s Louis Leterrier, who is quoted as favouring a character-based approach to the material.     

“Yes, I was really interested in doing the big monster fight at the end of that, but what was really interesting for me was the human side of it. Perseus is a conflicted hero, he hates it, which is so much better than a ‘real’ hero.”

There does not seem to have been too much excitement generated by Clash of the Titans to date, thanks to the lack of enthusiasm from the movie-going public for fantasy epics that have not at some stage been touched by Peter Jackson, and the fact that the original movie does not exactly enjoy classic status. I do very vaguely remember the videogame tie-in for the first flick though, which consisted of precisely ONE screen. Now that was truly epic.     

 

Source: Empire