Louis Leterrier on Clash of the Titans

Image by Michael Kwan (Freelancer) via Flickr

Published March 30, 2010 in Movie InterviewsBy Fred Topel | Image property of Warner Bros

Louis Leterrier, director of the first two Transporter films and The Incredible Hulk, brought his high energy approach to a remake of Clash of the Titans. Instead of Ray Harryhausen stop motion monsters, Leterrier’s Perseus fights intense CGI creatures. There may be one easter egg for Harryhausen fans, but Leterrier wanted to stay away from too many references to the original film.

Leterrier Behind Clash of the Titans
“I met a few of the original cast members, but I didn’t want to do it,” Leterrier said. “Bubo was the only thing we wanted to pay homage to the artistry of Ray Harryhausen and not make it like an homage movie. We wanted to make this movie our own movie and just wink at Desmond Davis/Ray Harryhausen’s movie.”

For Perseus, Leterrier went a very different way from Harry Hamlin. “Obviously I met a lot of actors going from the Harry Hamlin idea of what Perseus would look like: golden skin, long locks and that stuff. I met a lot of people. There was this actor who had been shooting for four years with James Cameron on this crazy project that everybody had heard about but no one had seen anything and he was finally available, extremely tired, but finally available. He was in L.A. so I sat down with him and frankly I had seen one of his films, Somersault, which he was in. He was not the character. He was not doing any action in it or anything but he was a great actor and a great face.”

That actor, of course, was Sam Worthington. “I sat down with him and I loved him. Actually it was quite tough for us because our idea was that we had done this sort of doe-eyed Perseus discovering the world but with Sam I couldn’t do this. Sam has a true idea, a definite idea of where he is and everything. That’s what was nice with him because we could break him and I decided to go for him because we loved each other. We grew up in opposite sides of the world but we feel the same way. We just love the same movies. We like the same stories and this story spoke to both of us.”

Also, he put Worthington in a miniskirt for battle, as well as all the other Greek warriors. “Mads [Mikkelsen]’s skirt is very mini because he likes to show his legs. Mads is like, ‘Yeah. Bring it up a little bit.’ That’s part of the accent. Sam was like ‘Mate, you want me to do this thing, wear a mini-skirt, fight giant scorpions and then put on an English accent. I can’t.’ I said, ‘Yeah, concentrate on the acting.’ But it was a challenge. We thought about it. Will the mini-skirt look goofy? That’s also part of why we didn’t put the girls in togas because we didn’t want this boring look of togas on Mt. Olympus. It’s coming back. Watch out this summer. Lots of us will be wearing mini-skirts.”

Clash of the Titans opens to theaters April 2nd.