Clash of the Titans
My name is Louis and I make movies.
by Louis Leterrier
It has come to my attention that there are people who are unhappy with my new film Clash of the Titans, which is in fact amazing and is based on an older, sillier film of the same name. It is truly the case that this remake directed by me is much more profound and entertaining than the original, which was mostly a showcase for Harry Hamlin’s giant hair. You will notice that Sam Worthington’s haircut is short and firm, much like his buttocks. But I digress.
Being from France, I come to this film with a long tradition of philosophy and realism. Americans cannot understand the Greeks and only want to make movies with special effects, but my movie is filled with profound statements about religion and the evil of the gods. One of the best of French philosophers, Voltaire, once wrote, “All men are equal; it is not their birth, but virtue itself that makes the difference.” I do not know what he means by virtue, but it is very important to accept that being born half-god is not an impediment to being set against the gods and promoting equality for all people. He also wrote, “If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.” This is a theme very important to my movie, as the highest god on Olympus is actually portrayed by a human named Liam Neeson. He does however yell very loudly and pound his fist just like I imagine a god would probably do.
These themes about gods and religion lead into what is in my movie the ancient Greek equivalent of the French Revolution, which was the best thing to have happened to France because it rid us of superstitious nuns by means of the guillotine. Here, in my film, the Greeks lay siege to Mount Olympus itself, and demand that the gods’ women be sent out to be decapitated for telling the little Greek children to eat cake instead of giving them meat and gold. The gods are also bad people because they do not cause fish to jump directly into a fisherman’s net, which is sad and brings an old man to tears almost. Zeus, who is ruling on Olympus, turns into an eagle and impregnates the Greek king’s wife, which is what great writers call an “inciting incident.” This impregnation grows up to be Sam Worthington in the role of Perseus, who is very manly and not godly at all, except in my dreams.
One of the things I learned from the Harry Potter movies is that Ralph Fiennes is great as a bad guy, and so I cast him as the baddest god of them all, Hades. As the god of the underworld, Ralph flies around in billows of black smoke and casts spe… I mean, shoots around his divine power at the humans he dislikes. Liam Neeson is also a bad guy, but he is of course the least bad of the baddies, and I think that counts for something, and so Zeus and his son finally get along at the end. The other gods do not appear so much, even though they wear very luminous clothing that is shiny and causes lens flares like those in J.J. Abram’s amazing Star Trek remake.
Another thing I learned from directing such films as The Incredible Hulk and Transporter 2 is that audiences love a good action sequence. And because they love the action so much I decided to cut down the boring parts that involved talking and explaining and focused on fights and swords. It seemed silly to me that in the original Clash of the Titans Medusa moved very slowly and took her time killing the soldiers, because she has a snake tail and I have seen garden snakes in my garden and they are very fast. So in my movie Medusa is very fast and scary like a garden snake. I also decided to make the giant scorpions even bigger and faster than in the original, although the warriors in my film can kill them more easily because they are better at fighting. The Kraken was also redesigned so as to be a mix of the monster from Cloverfield and the Rancor from Return of the Jedi, with some extra tentacles added for fun. That reminds me that I would like to make this film into a trilogy that would also feature such Greek heroes as Daedalus, Icarus and Percival, which would be amazing.
I sincerely believe my Frenchness has contributed much to the exaltation of this film out of American kitsch and into European art that says a statement about religion. The French have produced many masterpieces like La Femme Nikita and The City of Lost Children, which Americans should watch and aspire to copy. Like Perseus stealing the Stygian Witches’ eye and holding it hostage, so am I grasping your round little pop culture and threatening to squeeze. So far I have squeezed seventy-five million dollars out of it, which proves my point.
Thank you and please watch my movie.
Rating: Five out of five Medusa heads
Written on April 7, 2010 by Jonathan
Points of Interest: Adventure, Fantasy, Greek Mythology, Louis Leterrier, On DVD, Sam Worthington
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Dear M Letterier,
I liked your movie very much, even though I’m American. It has everything that we look for in a movie. It has lots of CG, a stirring score with strings /and/ drums, and retractable swords. It also has some recognizable stars, so we pay attention to its promos, English accents, so we believe that what the characters say is important, and it looks kind of like Gladiator, which was a good movie. If it had a flaw, though, it was that it didn’t have any giant robots.
All the gods are bad guys, but I disagree that Zeus is a bad guy. He’s the perfect father. He offers Perseus lots of stuff, and even though he rejects his gifts and his fatherhood, Zeus never gets mad at him. He even brings his girlfriend back to life. That scene when they were almost making love on the River Styx and she was impersonating Medusa, the horribly ugly and viciously killing victim of divine anger for preserving her virtue, was totally sophisticated and hot.
Yeah, Perseus was awesome, too. He was fighting all these gods and monsters even though he was just a man, although he was half-god, because Zeus was his father, even though he killed his father but he didn’t know it was him, I mean I guess he was his step-father because it was his mom that was his wife, but he hated the gods for killing his family and he disfigured his step-father with a lightning bolt and he was fighting them only as a man. That was totally epic.
Plus, the movie was like politically correct because the Djin, who carried his weight and more with no thanks and then got killed off, was like a person from another culture.
Um, I didn’t really understand what you said about religion and philosophy in the review, but the harpies that flew around and merged to become the body of Hades were really cool.
Sincerely,
Rolf
P.S. Could you have an American flag in the next one, and maybe Perseus standing under it or crouching next to it, with the sun shining in the background?
Comment by Rolf — April 8, 2010 @ 7:29 pm