Classical World

ABSTRACT:

When viewed as an intertextual narrative in the same way in which we read ancient literature, Clash of the Titans (1981) reveals a multifaceted story with links to literature, art, architecture, and cinema that reveal an underlying engagement with the theme of succession and replacement. Years after the film was released, the revered animator Ray Harryhausen acknowledged in his autobiography that his celebrated three-dimensional stop-action model animation had given way to computer-generated imagery (CGI). As it happens, the various intertexts within what would be his last film ironically align with Harryhausen’s reflections about the end of his distinguished career, when, like Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest alluded to in the film, he too relinquished his magic.