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Starring a young Henry Cavill as Theseus who approaches the labyrinth, this Greek “reimagining” has deep mythological implications. But ace Tarsem Singh’s pictures give a vivid and oppressive look. Memorable scenes include the Titans trapped in their magical prison as table football players, the bottom and top a vision of the gods fighting at the end and the camp of Mount Olympus in the cinema – like the glittering set of Siegfried and Roy Vegas.
Modern CGI steals a lot of magic from Ray Harryhausen’s predecessor—the giant scorpion and Medusa in this remake, and that ambition extends far beyond the realm of Lord of the Rings fantasy. Praise the gods, for a post-Voldemort Ralph Fiennes for delivering the best Greek god that ever lived – all smoke, convincing dialogue and the fury of a Hades-like brother.
18. Troy (2004)
There is no place for Olympians in a film worshiping the god of A-list buffness Brad Pitt, playing the great warrior Achilles. It’s satisfying enough as a visual, even in the heavily CGI’d noughties vein, but the Homeric concept of the hero is about to be overshadowed by the Hollywood one. Instead of a big romance with Patroclus, we get Achilles beating up Troy beachhead like a one-man Saving Private Ryan.
A very rude hero named Ulysses is trying to get back to his wife, Penny. Songs to sing prayer songs. John Goodman replaces Cyclops as a Ku Klux Klan member with an eye. The Coen brothers’ second film could play it loose by moving Homer from the Mediterranean to the American South – but it messes up the pace. Odyssey is so relaxed it’s surprising that the prodigal son is back.
Historically speaking, Robert Eggers’ story is still steeped in Norse mythology – which has received little attention in the movies (unless you’ve read Marvel’s Thor). There is a secret place to seek revenge for Amleth; Willem Dafoe’s Jester and Björk’s Scandi-shaman show the way. As the truth about her heritage emerges, she must enter Hel’s realm, the bowels of a volcano, to explore her destiny. If two blokes popping out of a lava field isn’t a myth, what is?
A solid and visual touch, Uberto Pasolini’s Odysseus returns to his home in Ithaca yet sends up heavy headlines. With his rigid body of Iggy Pop, Ralph Fiennes makes a veteran of the war from a great wanderer, who is crippled by his pain and violent disturbances. There is no fairy tale reunion for him and Penelope (Juliette Binoche) – just a hard reckoning that reinforces the deadly cycle.
14. Noah (2014)
It’s tempting to include Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain as a rare Mayan landmark. But this Old Testament sensation sounds like a myth in both theme and form. Aronofsky musters a clear take on the origin story: The Genesis sequence weaves together millions of years of evolution into one sequence, and takes a wrong turn from biblical sources with its tale of fallen angels. His eco-laws are undoubtedly of our time.
Marcel Camus’s semi-self-reflective film weaves a floating, sun-kissed dance around the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, Breno Mello as a womanizing tram driver able to bring out the sun with his guitar. They are often criticized (and Barack Obama, among others) interesting Afro-Brazilian people, still falling dangerously in the carnival life; and then, the bereaved Orfeu descends the steps of the homeless shelter, to the spirit world.
Loosely based on the 16th-century book Investiture of the Gods, the animated film itself sits on the box office Olympus: it’s the world’s richest animated film and the fifth-largest film in the world. Like his famous contemporaries, Journey to the West, many Chinese myths, legends, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, director Jiaozi tells about this conflict a very interesting, very interesting story of a god who wants to protect his village.
11. The Nibelungs (1924)
Dedicated to the “German people”, rumor has it that the two-part version of Fritz Lang’s national poem was Hitler’s favorite solace watch. Filled with fantasy imagery and elements borrowed from Tolkien (hidden dragons, hobbit-like stand-ins, invisible artefacts), it feels like Lord of the Rings of the silent era. Der Führer apparently had a childish taste in heroism: with his leading heroes, harassing a poor old dragon who seems to have lost his way in Fraggle Rock, Siegfried comes across as a proud prig.
Not always as brilliant as Life of Brian, but Python’s original style remains unsympathetic and undermines the lofty ideals essential to all fairy tales. Strange women twirling swords of legend, Sir Robin’s most faithful herald, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, the police arriving too late to call time on the Round Table… choose a bath.
This gets its top 10 spot thanks to Ray Harryhausen’s perfect stop and some VFX work: the fight between the bones of the hydra’s teeth is very impressive, and Poseidon – who seems to be controlling the local swimming pool – opening the rocks to fight is also interesting. But whisper it: the whole movie is beautiful. Todd Armstrong is a no-nonsense Jason, and the Argonauts are a bunch of sleazeballs who reveal their five virtues from Hera in the first 45 minutes.
Heavily mocked and hit by the controversies of raising competition on release, Alex Proyas’s film is not a rare departure from Horus, Set and co, but perhaps the closest the 21st century has come to the joy of Harryhausenesque fairy tales. There’s an abundance here that’s worthy of Egyptian novelty: the gods shed gold, Geoffrey Rush’s Ra battles a roaring dragon every night, a thieving hero must escape black and white cobra-riding gods.
7. Oedipus Rex (1967)
The first, confused, punk take on the story Freud loves to sleep in, written by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Franco Citti, a self-made self-fulfilling prophesy, wanders the desert as if in a spaghetti western Hellenic before sleeping his own father, taking the throne of Thebes and marrying his mother, Jocasta without eyebrows. Unwilling to see the naked truth, the king uses violence and oppression to hide it; Pasolini, writing his myth and modern myth, criticizes the blindness of the authoritarian and Marxist anger.
“It wasn’t just a game was it?” When Groot’s brother comes to call on Christmas Day with the special idea of Arthur’s Round Table, David Lowery reveals the paganism outside the social building in this terrifying picaresque. Is the Green Knight’s challenge to test the strength of social standards? Or are they here to tell us all that is meaningless in the eyes of the universe? Big questions, which will require Dev Patel’s courage to endure.
5 Mayabazar (1957)
The most respected group in the Telugu industry, this Mahabharata remix is full of epic and godlike fun and the Pandavas try to stop Krishna’s niece, Sasirekha, from marrying the wrong ‘un’. SV Ranga Rao is a knockout as the demon warrior Ghatotkacha, who gleefully destroys marriages. Special effects – flying weapons destroying each other in mid-air, and self-recovering parties – are the first of this time. And, as we can see, the gods are always facing each other, in visual devices and vignettes; all the presence of the central proscenium.
Although it is not a straight fairy tale (otherwise it would have been placed at the top), the Hayao Miyazaki classic brims with borrowings from Shintoism. The theirslater dust assistants in the bathhouse are in the line of yokai The household spirits, Haku the demi-human dragon may have been derived from the spirit of the Mizuchi river, and the chain-smoking witch Yubaba roams the Yama-uba desert. This haunted house is where Studio Ghibli prepared its finest hour.
3. Clash of the Titans (1981)
Harryhausen’s score isn’t as impressive as Jason and the Argonauts, but the story is just as good. This is due to the great awareness of ancient wisdom about the gods playing games with people, and Harry Hamlin Perseus moved around like a chess piece of the goddess Thetis. But contemporary influences also creep in, such as Burgess Meredith as a Rocky-esque mentor and Bubo the owl in the sidekick R2-D2 slot. It was the most famous of the Greek wild animals, including the catchphrase “Krrrr-aken”, it was the TV season of Christmas for a reason.
Believe in a nation where polytheism is still true to teach the world to create myths. SS Rajamouli’s two-part Telugu colossus is not based on popular mythology, but its basic stories of royalty, rival brothers and warring kingdoms are based on the legendary Mahabharata. Even considering how Indian movies often multiply banal action and fantasy, Rajamouli turns the dial up to 11, and then pulls it off. The hero’s first step is to carry the metal temple down the river on his shoulder like an Amazon package, and with about five hours to go, you know you’re in for a treat.
1. Orpheus (1950)
A fictional movie can be great, like Baahubali, or it can show what the ancients knew: that the divine is eternal and lives every day. “Fiction is worthy of transcending time and space,” opens Jean Cocteau’s take on Orpheus – before choosing a small bohemia, with Jean Marais fired up as the old-time poet looking for sharp new colors. It seems that Cocteau may have been a film lover: Orphée has the prim Eurydice (Marie Déa) expecting a child at home, but he is more attracted to the femme fatale (María Casarès) who caused the death of a fellow poet outside the local cafe.
Some of his contemporary letters are inspired: a Rolls-Royce radio calling Orphée into the infinite ether of inspiration; domestic paintings that replace the exit of Orpheus, when the undistracted artist does not have to look at his wife; and sixty eight Bacchantes, led by the hip Juliette Gréco, whom he eventually creates. If David Lynch’s penchant for revolutionary surrealism owes no debt to Orphée, there can be no doubting the mirror image of The Matrix’s meniscus. All convincing proof of Cocteau’s greatness of art – even if he leaves the door open to his life at the end.
