Harry Hamlin talks Clash of the Titans
The actor reminisces about his days on the set and who might have played the role of Perseus instead!
The 1981 version of Clash of the Titans is one of the most iconic films of its genre. It is #9 on my Top Ten Sword, Sandals and Sorcery Movies of the Last Thirty Years article. The remake will be out this April 2nd while the original just came out on blue-ray last week. "Clash" helped Harry Hamlin rise to stardom. The actor looks back on the film and what it means to him in an interview with MovieWeb.
The new movie already has the trilogy word attached to it. Hamlin was asked about there being any thoughts to his movie starting a franchise:
"The word franchise at that time had never been applied to movies...No one was speaking about it as being a four or five movie deal. With Clash Of The Titans certainly no one thought of it as being the beginning of a franchise because the producers had done several movies in their lives that had been quite famous but none that had inspired multiple movies. I think Jason and The Argonauts had a few rip-offs after that. I know for a fact that I did not think of Clash Of The Titans as being the beginning of series of films. I never thought of it that way and I'm afraid that I pissed the producers off so much during the making of the movie the film that they never would have used me anyway if they had done a multiple series of films."
The former Perseus went on to talk about his differences with the producers with one of the squabbles being over one of the most famous scenes:
"...they wanted me to kill Medusa in apparently a different way and I quit the film when they told me the way they wanted me to do it, so I quit half way through. That caused a little friction with them. But as far as it being a franchise movie, no and I certainly didn't expect it to live on as it has lived on over the years."
If things had gone just a little differently, Hamlin would have never done this movie:
"You know it was the fifth film I had made and I was kind of renascent about it. I wanted to do a movie at the time that was called Tristan & Isolde that Richard Burton was in. I was offered that, Kate Mulgrew played Isolde. A guy named Nicholas Clay played Tristan and he had wanted to do Clash Of The Titans and it just so happened we ended up doing the opposite things than we wanted to do. I thought the Clash Of The Titans script was a little hokey myself and I spent a lot of time trying to dust it up with the producers and the director...But the movie did end up having a real impact on a whole generation of kids who loved the movie and to this day are still kind of die hard fans of it. You know I think it was an important moment for sure and wow it was a really fun movie to make. It's one of those toga movies that lives on, a lot of actors would rather have their toga movies disappear and kind of drift away into the fog but this one didn't."
On the updated technology for the film and its new star...
"Now of course the appetite is really only for CGI and I think people who do stop-motion are considered a relic and it gets appreciated as a relic but I don't think it's considered current. It'll be very interesting to see Clash Of The Titans using CGI and all the new technology. I think Sam Worthington is a great young actor and I'm hoping that he uses the same sort of Joseph Campbell template of the hero as he created the part because I think it's important to follow the hero's journey even in an updated version of this and I'm pretty sure he will."
Interesting stuff indeed. Can you imagine Nic Cage in this role? For the full interview, click the link below.
DISCLAIMER: This posting was submitted by a user of the site not from Earth's Mightiest editorial staff. All users have acknowledged and agreed that the submission of their content is in compliance with our Terms of Use. For removal of copyrighted material, please contact us HERE.