It’s standard policy on websites like this to bitch like mad whenever someone remakes a classic. Most of the time, I’m happy to follow that policy, but for once I’m reporting a remake story that just might be a cool idea. The Hollywood Reporter says Lawrence Kasdan is writing a remake of Clash of the Titans for Warner Bros.
The original 1981 movie adapts the ancient Greek myth of Zeus’s son Perseus who must complete tasks set out by Zeus in order to save the Princess Andromeda. Those tasks include a battle with a Kraken, capturing Pegasus, and slaying the Medusa. More importantly this was effects master Ray Harryhausen’s last movie, and as you’d expect it was for the film’s special effects that the movie became famous.
Except now the movie’s effects work is spectacularly dated. I can appreciate the brilliance of Harryhausen’s work, but watching it through a modern lens the thing looks more like it was made in 1971 than 1981. Unlike some other 80s effects heavy movies, it just hasn’t held up well and let’s face it the script was never exactly brilliant. There’s plenty of room to improve on the script and let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to see those awesome Clash of the Titans monsters done up with the technology that brought huge creatures like the ones in Lord of the Rings to such spectacularly realistic life.
Done right a remake of Clash of the Titans could be a tremendous amount of fun, and Kasdan is the right man for the job. He has experience on movies like this. He wrote the scripts for Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, all three of which used a lot of the stop-motion effects that made Ray Harryhausen and Titans famous in the first place. A Kasdan script coupled with modern effects technology could make this great.
