This name change divergence from the myth first appeared the 1981 movie but they at least had the creature “let loose” by Poseidon and not the god of the underworld, and that is just the first taste of not just how far this remake goes to diverge from the Greek myths but on how much it completely abandons the plot of the movie it was supposedly remaking. Then we have this bit where Hades is the master of the Kraken, which is idiotic on so many levels, for one the name Kraken derives from Norse mythology and the beast in Greek mythology that Andromeda was to be sacrificed to was a sea monster known as the Cetus, a creature set forth as the wrathful act of Poseidon when Queen Cassiopeia compared her daughter to the Nereids, sea nymphs most known for accompanying the sea god. His ruling of the underworld kind of got blended with the Christian myth of Lucifer governing Hell thus turning him into an easy target. Some interpretations of the myths hint that Hades may have not been all that keen with his prize but he certainly was never the villain as he has been portrayed in many movies such as Disney’s Hercules for example, in fact, he was the more altruistically inclined of the gods, even the famous story of his kidnapping of Persephone was done at the request of Zeus. The movie opens with narration by Io ( Gemma Arterton), who in Greek mythology was a mortal lover of Zeus and would be Perseus’ great great great great great great great grandmother, as she explains to us of how the gods defeated the Titans with the aid of a monstrous beast called the Kraken which had created by the god Hades, and that after that they divided the universe up with Zeus ( Liam Neeson) taking the skies, Poseidon the seas and poor Hades ( Ralph Fiennes) being tricked into getting stuck with the underworld. Though naming it after the Ray Harryhausen film didn’t stop it from being a pretty terrible movie, one that veered so far away from the source material that it made the campy 1981 original look like a scholarly t reatise on Greek mythology. There is no greater example of Hollywood’s love for “Brand Recognition” than the Warner Bros remake of the 1981 fantasy film Clash of the Titans, as no one owns the copyrights to the Greek Myths the only reason to use that title was in the hopes of cashing in on the nostalgia people felt towards the original and thus bring them into the theatre to see this new version, sadly, that could very well have been right as the film managed to make almost $500 million worldwide.
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