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The Historical Accuracy of the Clash of the Titans
Clash of the titans is set in the city of Argos, Greece long after the three gods Zeus Poseidon and Hades have fought the titans for control of the earth were the gods had one. Zeus gains control of the humans poseidon the sea and hades being tricked by zeus gets the underworld. After king cepheus gains victory against the gods Hades demands that his daughter princess Andromeda the daughter of king cepheus be offered as a sacrifice or he will release Kraken the beast they used to destroy the titans. King cepheus decides to give perseus the challenge of defeating it. Perseus accepts because hades was the one person responsible for the death of his family.
The film has amazing set and costume design while very accurately portraying Ancient Greek culture. If you’re looking to comparing the architecture and art that is used in the film to the examples we learned about in class and other examples I found using my own research, the film is supposed to be set around time know as the Greek classical period and also features a lot of different influences from the Near East. this is mainly because.
In the movie the demigod perseus was supposed to have been born close to the mycenae which is a amazing greek piece of architecture that is in the city of agrolis. The classic Greek myth known as Andromeda and perseus was one of the first myths of ancient Greece. Also one of the most certain ways we can tell the tale is set in Greek times is because in class we learned that the gods have different names depending on weather there roman or greek for example the king of the gods for greeks is called Zeus were as if he were Roman he would be called Jupiter.
The film starts of on the greek island of Seriphos. Desmond Davis who is the director decided to have the movie shot in England because they wanted the film to be show in America for and since many American people are familiar with American landscape for example the Grand Canyon and coastal California are easily recognizable because they are used a lot on television, they decided to film in England. England has diverse landscapes not normally seen by north American audience. they also shot at a couple shots in Spain and Pestume in southern Italy for Medusa scene.This part in the research did not make a whole lot of sense because if they wanted to have authentic landscape to use they could have still used the greek landscape and thus would have made the movie more greek looking for people who already know this story and are not just watching is because it looked interesting. In the scene were there at Mount Olympus how ever you can see that this een was thought out a lot better because the goddess are seen wearing a big variety of toga styles, some with wide arms holes with open sleeves and slits which were very common at this time in ancient greece for women and others with v necks. Zeus is wearing a thin cloth that looks to be gold, and is also wearing a toga with long sleeves. Again this is greatly done by the costume designers because this was very commonly worn by older greek men especially men of power such as kings or in this case gods. Zeus has the appearance of an old man with beard and Poseidon appears extremely similar, this uses some of the traditional descriptions. All these different little parts about the movie help show the apparent time period of the movie in the ancient Greek classical period. The city of Argos has buildings with large columns and lots of wall paintings, It also features a large 30+ foot statue of bearded man, possibly King cepheus.The next thing to look at is the soldiers and how historically accurate they are portrayed in the movie. the soldiers of Argos are seen to have ancient Greek helmets with vertical horsehair decoration like those seen in many other movies and tales such as the trojan horse.
Also, the city of Joppa is in are time modern day Israel, which helps to explains why you can see so many Babylonian statues, this is a problem because although the word babylonia comes from greek language and culture in ancient times the city was mainly controlled by jewish people. This goes back to the previous statement about how they should have used greek landscape over all else.
The actor who becomes Perseus’s friend wears a gold theater mask and a cloak decorated in black which was common at the time. The theater is furnished with statues of naked women, which you can see all the time at the majority of ancient greek architecture even to this day. This is great because you cannot just take these statues from museums they are ancient artifacts and because of this it is clear that the producers would have had to have someone make them which helps with the movies ahenticity. The shield Perseus is griven as a gift from the gods is made of gold with a bird across the front which is normally seen around these times. The temple of Thetis in this movie is showing the classical Greek style with a huge statue kind of similar to and athena statue. The statue is being held up by two big white marble columns like the majority of greek statues.
In conclusion, the movie had many historically accurate portrayals of how things were during that age. The armour that the soldiers wore exemplified soldiers from ancient Greece, as well as the arts and architecture that was nearly identical. Any god goddess, king or queen was accurately dressed with proper togas and tunics. Every part of the movie was historically accurate other.
