Clash of the Titans (1981)

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Movie
German title battle of the titans
Original title Clash of the Titans
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1981
length 120 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Desmond Davis
script Beverley Cross
production Ray Harryhausen ,
Charles H. Schneer
music Laurence Rosenthal
camera Ted Moore
cut Timothy Gee
occupation
synchronization
chronology

Successor  →
Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans is a 1981 American - British fantasy film directed by Desmond Davis .

action

King Akrisios of Argos exposes his daughter Danae and her illegitimate son Perseus to the waves of the sea in a wooden box. But Perseus is the son of Zeus and is therefore under his protection. Zeus instructs Poseidon that they both get safely to an island where they can live happily; Akrisios and his empire, on the other hand, are destroyed immediately after the crime by the last of the titans , the Kraken (in German just called the "sea monster").

Perseus grows up to be a young man in the seclusion of the island. Calibos, the son of the goddess Thetis, is less well off . Zeus turns him into an ugly monster as punishment for his malicious deeds. In revenge, Thetis brings Perseus to Joppa , which is haunted by Calibos. Calibos once wanted to marry the princess of the city, Andromeda , but his curse made him repulsive in the eyes of all people and the evil in him only deepened. In order not to treat Andromeda to anyone else, Thetis and Calibos set a condition for every potential suitor: each of them is given a riddle, the answer of which only Calibos knows; anyone who cannot solve the riddle finds death.

To support him, Zeus sends his son some magical weapons: a sword, a shield and a helmet that makes the person who wears it invisible. With this Perseus penetrates the palace, where he meets the sleeping Andromeda and falls in love with her. But immediately afterwards he witnesses how Andromeda's dream is brought to Calibo's swamps by a giant vulture. With the help of his friend, the clairvoyant Ammon, Perseus catches the winged horse Pegasus and tames it. In the swamp he finally gets the answer to the next riddle, but is discovered by Calibos and a fight ensues.

The next day Perseus takes on the challenge, solves the riddle and wins Andromeda as bride. But Calibos, whom Perseus mutilated but not killed, begs his mother for assistance. When Andromeda's mother Cassiopeia puts the beauty of her daughter above that of Thetis during the wedding ceremony, the latter uses this as an excuse to grant Calibos his revenge. She orders that Andromeda should be sacrificed to the sea monster in thirty days.

The only way for Perseus to save the princess is to find the terrible gorgon Medusa , whose gaze turns all life to stone. Again the gods support him in this task. Zeus orders his daughter Pallas Athene to give Perseus her owl Bubo as a guide. Since Athena does not want to separate from Bubo, she instructs Hephaestus to create a mechanical version of Bubos, which soon joins Perseus and stands by him. Despite Calibos' attempts to sabotage the task, Perseus wins the head of Medusa, kills Calibos and the sea monster and, at the decision of Zeus, gets Andromeda as his wife.

Reviews

"Trivialized film adaptation of Greek legend motifs [...]; Staged in the style of fantasy films. The template, richly peppered with additional attractions, becomes a standardized Hollywood fairy tale, possibly interesting in a few trick sequences. "

- Lexicon of international film

“All in all, an entertaining excursion into Greek mythology. The film translates the most important stages of the Perseus story into imaginative images and has an eye for coherent details [...]. "

- Peplumania.com

“Unfortunately, the time was not very kind to Ray Harryhausen's last work. Even if the stop-motion monsters have their undoubted charm, the film never reaches the class of " Sindbad's Seventh Voyage " or " Jason and the Argonauts ". […] The story and the staging, with their indecisive oscillation between trashy self-parody and pathos, leave a lot to be desired and make Clash of the Titans one of the weaker films by the stop-motion grandmaster. "

- Moviepilot

background

  • MGM provided a budget of $ 15 million. For Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen it was the most expensive of their previous productions and, after Jason and the Argonauts, the second film that had Greek mythology as its theme. The film was shot in 1979. Harryhausen worked with Jim Danforth and Steven Archer for the first time to create the stop-motion scenes . For Schneer and Harryhausen it was the twelfth and final film after 26 years of working together.
  • The film grossed no less than 41 million US dollars in the USA and was ranked 13th in the US box office in 1981. In Germany, 989,749 viewers saw the film and thus ranked 19th on the German box office charts in 1981.
  • Harry Hamlin lent his voice to Perseus in the video game God of War II from 2007. The appearance of Perseus was modeled after Hamlin.
  • Warner Bros. released a remake of Clash of the Titans in 2010 . The special effects were created with the computer. The film was reworked in 3D after completion.
  • The film had its US premiere on June 12, 1981 . It had its German premiere on June 26, 1981. On August 16, 1985, the film was shown in GDR cinemas ; on January 3, 1987, it was shown on DFF 1 for the first time on GDR television.

Voice actor

The voice actors for the German version:

Awards

Differences from Greek mythology

The film plot is mainly based on the Perseus legend , contrary to what the film title Clash of the Titans suggests. The film is based on material from Greek mythology, but several elements of the legend have been changed or added:

  • In the film, Perseus meets the beautiful Andromeda and tries to marry her. Andromeda's mother Cassiopeia claims at the wedding that her daughter is even more beautiful than the "goddess" Thetis , whereupon she angered and expects that after a period of 30 days Andromeda should be sacrificed to the sea monster. Perseus is now trying to get to the head of Medusa in order to defeat the sea monster. In Greek mythology, the whole thing takes a different course: Perseus got the order to procure the head of Medusa long before he met Andromeda. Only on his way home did he accidentally see Andromeda, who at this point was already chained to a rock and waiting to be sacrificed. The reason for the sacrifice was that Cassiopeia had claimed that she (herself) was much more beautiful than the Nereids . At the request of the offended sea nymphs, Poseidon sent the sea monster Keto to devastate the land. Perseus defeated the monster (presumably only in a fight with the sword and without the help of the head of Medusa) and got Andromeda as his wife in gratitude for this deed.
  • Thetis is not a goddess, but as the daughter of Nereus one of the 50 Nereids and therefore does not reside on Olympus , as it is shown in the film.
  • Pegasus , the winged white horse, is referred to in the film as the last specimen of the winged flock of Zeus and serves Perseus as a companion in his adventures. In fact, Pegasus is a descendant of the sea god Poseidon and the Gorgon Medusa and was not a companion of Perseus, but of Bellerophon .
  • The two-headed dog that guards the temple of Medusa in the film and has to fight Perseus does not appear in the Perseus saga. He is Orthos , the brother of the hellhound Kerberos . Orthos guarded the cattle of Geryoneus on the island of Erytheia .
  • The character of Calibos, the son of Thetis in the film, and the events around him are unknown in Greek mythology. According to Harryhausen, it is reminiscent of the figure of the deformed son of a witch Caliban from The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Nor does Athene's owl Bubo (one of her symbolic animals) have a name in Greek mythology.

literature

  • Alan Dean Foster : Clash of the Titans. Fantasy novel. (Original title: Clash of the Titans ). German by Krista Herkenrath. 3rd edition, Heyne, Munich, 1983, 204 pages, ISBN 3-453-30715-1 .

Web links

Commons : Film locations of Clash of the Titans (1981)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bubo- Theseventhvoyage.com ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.theseventhvoyage.com
  2. ↑ a b Clash of the Titans in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  3. ↑ Oliver Lysiak: Battle of the Titans on moviepilot.de .
  4. ↑ Clash of the Titans at rottentomatoes.com
  5. ↑ synchronkartei.de: Clash of the Titans. Retrieved January 12, 2015 .