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The Kraken (originally known in Greek as Cetus the Whale) is a mythical sea monster of tremendous size and strength. It was born from the titans Oceanus and Ceto, both entities of the sea. Its tentacles are large enough to be able to pull entire ships under the water and destroy cities with relative ease. The creature possessed endurance to match its strength. In addition to tentacles it was armed with gaping maw full of many sharp teeth. The creature's many tentacles afforded it great speed in swimming.
The Kraken appears in the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans as an adversary of Perseus. The Kraken is seen in the beginning, when the narator explains Hades created it to slay the Titans. He was then tricked to rule the Underworld It is assumed that Zeus forced Hades to lock up the Kraken so he wouldn't harm anyone. The Kraken was released onto Argos to destroy it, but Perseus slayed it with Medusa's head that turned it to stone.
The Kraken plays a much more major role in the 1981 movie. In this movie, it is the pet of Poseidon, and Zeus orders it to destroy Argos to punish Acrisus, the king of Argos, from casting his wife and Perseus into the sea. The goddess of the sea, Thetis, then unleashes it on the city of Joppa as an excuse to punish Perseus. Perseus turns the Kraken to stone.
Trivia
- The original Cetus (Κῆτος) merely meant "whale" in Greek and was used to refer to anything from dolphins to whales to sea monsters. In Classical representations of the myth, the cetus is usually serpentine or draconian. The biggest inspiration for sea monsters in the Mediterranian was in fact whales, both the occasional sighting by fishermen as well as the beached bones.
- In English the word "Kraken" designates a generic giant sea monster, normally with squid or octopus-like attributes. The term is from 18th cent Scandinavian which meant "unnatural or unhealthy animal". Largely due to literally influences, especially the biblical Leviathan and Jona's giant fish, Tennyson wrote the poem The Kraken (1830) that ever since confirmed the image of the Kraken as a giant, tentacled primordial entity.[1]
- In both films it appears as a giant creature with a humanoid top half and an enormous tentacled lower half. This is largely due to Ray Harryhausen, the producer of the original 1981 film, who based the Kraken on his model of Ymir, the monster 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).[2] The kraken is simalar to an octupus or squid.this