When the story of a film is loosely based off a plethora of Greek myths there is a lot of leeway. Both the original and the remake follow many myths wrapped up into one story. In this version Perseus, the son of Zeus, is thrown into the ocean with his mother to die by the king. But Perseus survives and is raised by a fisherman. Years later when Perseus is now a man his family ends up sailing to Argos where the people have decided to defy the gods. Hades decides to let loose on the people and Perseus is the only one of his family to survive. Then upon arrival in the palace of Argos the queen decides to boast the beauty of Andromeda, her daughter, which leads Hades to plot against the humans and destroy Argos by unleashing the monstrous creature known as the Kraken. Perseus then ventures out on a quest to defeat the Kraken but only for the sole purpose of getting his revenge on Hades.
If there is one major thing I must say about this film is that it BARELY resembles the original film only made about twenty years ago. The remake is a revenge film with a shallow story, some great looking CGI, and a mighty lack of character development. When it comes down to it, even though it looks cool and there are a couple fun action scenes, the film is more epic than it should be. Characters were pulled from the original and thrown haphazardly into the script in various places where they hardly fit. The only character that seems to have any real meaning is Perseus and even then sometimes it is hard to care for him other then the fact that Sam Worthington is a pretty likable guy. But not much can really be expected from this nearly failed epic.
In the knowledge that this is a remake it must be understood why this version is so terrible in comparison. I would admit two things are better in this version; the effects and the action scenes. But that is where it stops. The original cast (for it's time) was just as good and the original story followed Perseus on a quest to defeat the Kraken to save the princess Andromeda. It was a story of heroism and chivalry, something noble. Although on occasion there was a character or two that might have seemed a little cheesy (namely Bubo the owl who has a cameo in the remake), the characters worked better in the story. In the original there was more a reason to Perseus' journey and something we could root for. In the remake we must suffer through what is thankfully less than two hours of modern day CGI action nonsense.
The other grand part of the original is that it housed one of the last great works of Ray Harryhausen, one of the greatest stop motion animators to ever work in film. Even though it is an older film the original still holds up even now because it focused more on the character and a decent story. Even the gods in the original feel like they have more purpose. And to think that I was truly excited for the remake. My advice would be, don't waste your money in theaters. If you decide to see it, wait until its on DVD. Better yet, just go rent the original.
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