With the release of Percy Jackson and the Olympians:the Lightning Thief a couple of months ago and this weekend's big movie offering being the remake of Clash of the Titans,it's not improbable to wonder if Hollywood hopes to gain some new green at the box office by polishing up the Greek gods of old for more of their spiffy 3-D laden blockbusters.
As someone who adored reading about the follies and furious wrath of these devious yet delightful deities,I am all for a Greek mythos revival here. They've never really gone away from the fantasy realm but have not always been in fashion(mainly due to some of the less than flattering depictions of them for cheesy pop culture fodder over the years).
The new Clash of the Titans may turn the tide for Greek heroes and gods in a positive as well as profitable direction,a sign of better things to come from this classic set of entertaining action adventure stories. It's worth crossing your fingers for,folks,at the very least:
One place that Greek gods have maintained success in steady story telling is in comics,with even Batman having a member of his infamous Rogues Gallery take on the menacing mantle of an ancient Olympian.
Maxie Zeus was just another crime lord with barely legal business dealings who took his playacting as the king of the gods way too far and while he wasn't as big league of an enemy like the Joker or Two-Face,Maxie could still throw a few threatening shocks into the system when need be:
The ultimate comic book hero who is pretty much on a first name basis with the ancient Greeks is Wonder Woman and amongst her enemies list are the likes of Circe and Eros,with several demi-gods tossed into the mix.
Most of those small size deities were doing the bidding of her ultimate foe,Ares the God of War. His feud with Wonder Woman is a family affair,based on his past relationship with her Amazonian mother,Queen Hippolyta and carried on in her Justice League adventures on that recent animated series.
While a live action film of her exploits has yet to get off the ground in Hollywood,her battles against Ares have come alive on the small screen with a direct to video animated movie that showcases Princess Diana in all of her warrior woman glory. If and when we get a non animated Wonder Woman film,it certainly will have a lot to live up to,especially in the Greek mythos category:
There have been a couple of flesh and blood versions of Greek gods and goddesses who have caused trouble beyond the caped and cowled set. Scarier than the usual pack of vampires on last season's True Blood was the mad maenad Maryann,who warped the entire town of Bon Temps with her blood-sex-crazy magic powers and planned as her main event of mayhem to offer up shapeshifter Sam Merlotte to her god lover Dionysus.
Her plans were foiled(in a rather gruesome manner)but even with her well justified demise,Maryann's loony legacy will live on for both the characters and fans of True Blood alike:
Even Xena,the warrior princess herself tangled with a few of the Greek divinities on her epic journeys and like Wonder Woman,Ares was one of the main beings she clashed with. However,her dealings with the patron of warfare were more of a love-hate kind,emphasis on the love part in the bad romance sense of the word:
There are plenty of books that keep the Greek mythology standards riding high such as Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunters series and the upcoming Carrie Vaughn novel Discord's Apple this summer yet it would be great to see some inspiration from this beloved genre resurface on the visual media waters,too.
Amongst the numerous otherworldly entities on the Greek mythos playing field were the nine muses whose duty it was to plant creative ideas into the minds of artists and if ever we needed a few fresh thoughts in Hollywood for better quality entertainment,it surely is now. If it takes a roller skating muse to gobsmack someone with a brilliant notion,then so be it(better than releasing the Kraken,anyway):
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