When Liam Neeson's Zeus trumpets "Release the Kraken," out comes the Norse sea-beast that once again terrorizes citizens in far-away Greece in the box office-quaking remake of 1981's Clash of the Titans.
As for the gods of Hollywood, they are unleashing a dizzying myth-mash of derring-do upon moviegoing mortals. As the nation struggles through recession, war and divisive politics, apparently nothing provides relief like the spectacle-filled genre that kept the muscle-bound likes of Steve Reeves steadily employed in the '50s and '60s.
READ: More myths, more movies
Consider that Focus Features, best known for such tony offerings as Brokeback Mountain and Pride & Prejudice, has decided to enter the myth-based action arena for the first time with this fall's The Eagle of the Ninth, which centers on the disappearance of a Roman legion. "Something clearly is in the air," says Focus chief James Schamus. "We Americans are wondering about just what phase of our own empire we're in. And those anxieties certainly fuel mass culture's fantasy life."
Not since the Reagan era, when The Beastmaster, Conan the Barbarian and the original Clash of the Titans invaded multiplexes, has there been such a battalion of Greeks, Romans, Vikings and assorted other sword swingers swarming the big screen.
The year began with the kid-targeted Percy Jackson & the Olympians, the Bible-influenced antics of Legion and the serpent-studded How to Train Your Dragon— and that's just the tip of the saber. The summer lineup is fairly bulging with warriors of yore.
More movies on tap
Projects in the early stages include at least two Arthurian tales, Excalibur and Pendragon; a version of Paradise Lost; Young Caesar (a working title), based on Conn Iggulden's four-volume history; Odysseus and Hercules, both about Greek strongmen; a 3-DArabian Nights; and a possible update of Jason and the Argonauts. Mel Gibson, no slacker when it comes to valiant blood-letting, recently told the Los Angeles Times of his efforts to achieve his adolescent dream of directing a Viking epic. His choice of star: Leonardo DiCaprio.
He's not the only filmmaker who gets giddy over the sight of burly men in ancient military regalia. French director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) couldn't resist the chance to do his own Clash of the Titans, a childhood favorite. "I love these fantasy movies, even the bad Italian copies," he says. "I was brought up seeing and loving these films, going back home afterward with friends to put on costumes and play the parts. Now that I'm working as a director, it's the stuff I want to do." So much so he already has a story line plotted out for a possible Titans trilogy.
Buzz-cut-sporting Sam Worthington's Perseus is more of a working-class hero than Harry Hamlin's disco-haired demigod in the original. But he shares Leterrier's childlike zeal for dressing up in a man-skirt and rubber armor while facing off against such fictional beasts as "scorpions the size of dump trucks."
Though Clash touches upon serious themes of family, duty and destiny, Worthington and Leterrier wanted to avoid any sense of a history lesson. Says the actor: "It's a boisterous family film. Bright and light. We take our jobs seriously so that the audience doesn't have to take it seriously."
Still, the resurgence is rather mystifying, given the epic fatigue after a string of big-budget calls to war fell short at the box office in the past decade, including Troy, Alexander, The Alamo, Cold Mountain, Master and Commander and The Last Samurai.
An appetite for escapism
Like Poseidon's trident, however, the reasons behind this comeback appear to be three-pronged.
•The post-300 effect. Gianni Nunnari, a producer on 2007's surprise hit 300, denies that the highly stylized and ultra-violent account of the historic battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. is partly responsible for the rediscovery of such cinematic toga parties.
"It's totally responsible," he says with a laugh. The saga, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of how a small contingent of self-sacrificing Spartans held off thousands of Persian invaders, took in more than $450 million worldwide. Quite a few tickets were bought by women, the genre's toughest crowd, who were attracted by the film's strong queen character and a parade of beefcake. Naturally, a follow-up is in the works.
"We overcame the odds," says producing partner Mark Canton, whose newly retitled Immortals— a cataclysmic conflict led by half-deity Theseus that recalls Clash of the Titans — starts shooting this week. Thanks to its inventive use of digital effects that continue to advance, "it changed the landscape of film. What is needed are stories that are large enough, epic enough and entertaining enough to make use of that technology. It takes a big canvas to make a meal everyone wants to eat."
It helps that many of the legends the scripts draw upon are as old as mankind. Says Phil Contrino, editor of BoxOffice.com, "Most people have these stories in their head in the most basic form. The audience knows the characters in Clash, but after that, they don't care what Hollywood does with them. They just want to see cool action sequences. That is what 300 was about."
As for the epics that came before 300, he says, "Troy was the old-school approach. It had more in common with The TenCommandments than 300, and audiences are sick of the stale, crusty approach to mythology."
•The hunger for escape. For the first third of the year, two films have dominated the public's imagination: the paradisiacal realms of Avatar and the surreal splendor of Alice in Wonderland.
"During tough economic times, people go for escapism — we're proving that every weekend with the box-office numbers," Contrino says. "And nothing is better suited to escapism than mythology, when you are taken to another time and place."
Jerry Bruckheimer, the mega-producer who churned out such harder-edged, reality-based war epics as Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor, has switched to such breezier offerings as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Sorcerer's Apprentice as his choice of summer event movies.
"The audience is looking at their bank accounts and aren't happy," he says. "They want to drift away to something else. I make movies I would like to see right now. I feel pain around us. If you hit the right nerve, you can have a huge success."
•The need to feed the 3-D monster. Domestic box office rose more than 10% last year to $10.6 million, an increase largely boosted by the premium prices for 3-D showings of films such as Avatar and the growing use of the technology.
But to capitalize on the added depth, there has to be a sense of spectacle on-screen, such as in Alice in Wonderland and the computer-animated hit How to Train Your Dragon. And what better place to find such visual teasers than in myth-based epics?
Though Avatar was shot using director James Cameron's cutting-edge 3-D process, most films with live-action scenes are opting for the less-prohibitive transfer process, which can still add up to $10 million to a budget.
Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, says it made sense, both economically and content-wise, to decide weeks before Clash's release date to convert it to 3-D.
"We thought the movie worked well in 2-D," he says. "But when we saw the film with its creatures like Medusa and the swordplay, it made sense."
Beyond eye candy and escapism, though, there might be more deep-seated reasons for mythology's return to the multiplex. "These stories, as well as fairy tales, persist because they examine a core aspect of the human experience," says Maria Elena de las Carreras, a visiting film professor at UCLA.
"A family in turmoil, a hero who has to overcome obstacles and monsters, the experience of love, the desire for revenge. These stories have a built-in guarantee. It's what the moviemakers do with the conventions that make it interesting."
As for the gods of Hollywood, they are unleashing a dizzying myth-mash of derring-do upon moviegoing mortals. As the nation struggles through recession, war and divisive politics, apparently nothing provides relief like the spectacle-filled genre that kept the muscle-bound likes of Steve Reeves steadily employed in the '50s and '60s.
READ: More myths, more movies
Consider that Focus Features, best known for such tony offerings as Brokeback Mountain and Pride & Prejudice, has decided to enter the myth-based action arena for the first time with this fall's The Eagle of the Ninth, which centers on the disappearance of a Roman legion. "Something clearly is in the air," says Focus chief James Schamus. "We Americans are wondering about just what phase of our own empire we're in. And those anxieties certainly fuel mass culture's fantasy life."
Not since the Reagan era, when The Beastmaster, Conan the Barbarian and the original Clash of the Titans invaded multiplexes, has there been such a battalion of Greeks, Romans, Vikings and assorted other sword swingers swarming the big screen.
The year began with the kid-targeted Percy Jackson & the Olympians, the Bible-influenced antics of Legion and the serpent-studded How to Train Your Dragon— and that's just the tip of the saber. The summer lineup is fairly bulging with warriors of yore.
More movies on tap
Projects in the early stages include at least two Arthurian tales, Excalibur and Pendragon; a version of Paradise Lost; Young Caesar (a working title), based on Conn Iggulden's four-volume history; Odysseus and Hercules, both about Greek strongmen; a 3-DArabian Nights; and a possible update of Jason and the Argonauts. Mel Gibson, no slacker when it comes to valiant blood-letting, recently told the Los Angeles Times of his efforts to achieve his adolescent dream of directing a Viking epic. His choice of star: Leonardo DiCaprio.
He's not the only filmmaker who gets giddy over the sight of burly men in ancient military regalia. French director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) couldn't resist the chance to do his own Clash of the Titans, a childhood favorite. "I love these fantasy movies, even the bad Italian copies," he says. "I was brought up seeing and loving these films, going back home afterward with friends to put on costumes and play the parts. Now that I'm working as a director, it's the stuff I want to do." So much so he already has a story line plotted out for a possible Titans trilogy.
Buzz-cut-sporting Sam Worthington's Perseus is more of a working-class hero than Harry Hamlin's disco-haired demigod in the original. But he shares Leterrier's childlike zeal for dressing up in a man-skirt and rubber armor while facing off against such fictional beasts as "scorpions the size of dump trucks."
Though Clash touches upon serious themes of family, duty and destiny, Worthington and Leterrier wanted to avoid any sense of a history lesson. Says the actor: "It's a boisterous family film. Bright and light. We take our jobs seriously so that the audience doesn't have to take it seriously."
Still, the resurgence is rather mystifying, given the epic fatigue after a string of big-budget calls to war fell short at the box office in the past decade, including Troy, Alexander, The Alamo, Cold Mountain, Master and Commander and The Last Samurai.
An appetite for escapism
Like Poseidon's trident, however, the reasons behind this comeback appear to be three-pronged.
•The post-300 effect. Gianni Nunnari, a producer on 2007's surprise hit 300, denies that the highly stylized and ultra-violent account of the historic battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. is partly responsible for the rediscovery of such cinematic toga parties.
"It's totally responsible," he says with a laugh. The saga, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of how a small contingent of self-sacrificing Spartans held off thousands of Persian invaders, took in more than $450 million worldwide. Quite a few tickets were bought by women, the genre's toughest crowd, who were attracted by the film's strong queen character and a parade of beefcake. Naturally, a follow-up is in the works.
"We overcame the odds," says producing partner Mark Canton, whose newly retitled Immortals— a cataclysmic conflict led by half-deity Theseus that recalls Clash of the Titans — starts shooting this week. Thanks to its inventive use of digital effects that continue to advance, "it changed the landscape of film. What is needed are stories that are large enough, epic enough and entertaining enough to make use of that technology. It takes a big canvas to make a meal everyone wants to eat."
It helps that many of the legends the scripts draw upon are as old as mankind. Says Phil Contrino, editor of BoxOffice.com, "Most people have these stories in their head in the most basic form. The audience knows the characters in Clash, but after that, they don't care what Hollywood does with them. They just want to see cool action sequences. That is what 300 was about."
As for the epics that came before 300, he says, "Troy was the old-school approach. It had more in common with The TenCommandments than 300, and audiences are sick of the stale, crusty approach to mythology."
•The hunger for escape. For the first third of the year, two films have dominated the public's imagination: the paradisiacal realms of Avatar and the surreal splendor of Alice in Wonderland.
"During tough economic times, people go for escapism — we're proving that every weekend with the box-office numbers," Contrino says. "And nothing is better suited to escapism than mythology, when you are taken to another time and place."
Jerry Bruckheimer, the mega-producer who churned out such harder-edged, reality-based war epics as Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor, has switched to such breezier offerings as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Sorcerer's Apprentice as his choice of summer event movies.
"The audience is looking at their bank accounts and aren't happy," he says. "They want to drift away to something else. I make movies I would like to see right now. I feel pain around us. If you hit the right nerve, you can have a huge success."
•The need to feed the 3-D monster. Domestic box office rose more than 10% last year to $10.6 million, an increase largely boosted by the premium prices for 3-D showings of films such as Avatar and the growing use of the technology.
But to capitalize on the added depth, there has to be a sense of spectacle on-screen, such as in Alice in Wonderland and the computer-animated hit How to Train Your Dragon. And what better place to find such visual teasers than in myth-based epics?
Though Avatar was shot using director James Cameron's cutting-edge 3-D process, most films with live-action scenes are opting for the less-prohibitive transfer process, which can still add up to $10 million to a budget.
Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, says it made sense, both economically and content-wise, to decide weeks before Clash's release date to convert it to 3-D.
"We thought the movie worked well in 2-D," he says. "But when we saw the film with its creatures like Medusa and the swordplay, it made sense."
Beyond eye candy and escapism, though, there might be more deep-seated reasons for mythology's return to the multiplex. "These stories, as well as fairy tales, persist because they examine a core aspect of the human experience," says Maria Elena de las Carreras, a visiting film professor at UCLA.
"A family in turmoil, a hero who has to overcome obstacles and monsters, the experience of love, the desire for revenge. These stories have a built-in guarantee. It's what the moviemakers do with the conventions that make it interesting."
Clash Of The Titans
![Clash Of The Titans]()
Reviewed by Pakar Pupuk Tanaman
on
April 08, 2010
Rating:
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