Clash of the Titans: A True Greek Tragedy
What do you mean you’re out of Chunky Monkey?!?!
Rating: 2 out of 10
People kick and scream all the time about the desire and need for original story ideas and mostly I am right alongside them, but we shouldn’t count out remakes, relaunches and re-imaginings of classic films. They do serve a grand purpose to the cinema audience (as well as the movie studios whom get twice or thrice the bang for their original buck). Some of these films are far enough back in the annals of film history to be forgotten or completely unheard of by today’s film-going audience. In cases like these, a remake can actually help drive these younger audiences, or those who just missed it the first time around, backwards into the video shelves and dusty pages of their Netflix accounts to dig up these original works. Sometimes the originals are brilliant classics that should be viewed by all film lovers, while others were great concepts but poorly executed due to the technological restraints of the time period. Some, including a handful of my favorites, are so bad they run full circle into being good. In those particular cases, remakes usually fail to capture the novelty and attempt for a more serious and quality version of the original, thereby almost guaranteeing box-office failure. If you need some recent proof, let’s take a glance at the new version of Clash of the Titans.
Clash of the Titans tells the epic tale of Perseus, born half man/half god and plunged into a quest to rally the mortals against the immortals and their control over the mortal world. Along the way he must find allies, battle incredible monsters, defy the will of the gods at every turn and decide what destiny he will write for himself.
Certain films get a good running start, but stumble in the home stretch and leave their audiences feeling unsatisfied in the end. Clash fails to even get its feet squarely underneath it. From the opening moments you get a sense of something out of place, something missing and I narrowed it down to this: quality. From front to back, every aspect of this mostly-animated adventure feels half-assed. For the points I gave for the thrilling CGI mega-monster, the Kraken, and smoke effects around Hades, I had to simultaneously remove points for terrible CGI-effects on the ferryman over the river Styx and the silly glowing around the remaining pantheon of gods. The same formula could also be used for the exciting scorpion fight scenes, which were incredibly reminiscent of the scorpion-type robot fight scene in Transformers 2, followed closely by the laughable costuming used on the mystical desert people, who just end up looking like weird tree folk. Clash never finds a balance between having crappy effects and going the novelty route or using the high-class CGI tools and attempting for action blockbuster status.
Moving away from the unreal monsters and onto the living, breathing actors unfortunately does not improve the situation. Briefly in the beginning I was thrilled to see Pete Postlethwaite, but he only gets a few brief moments on screen and even he couldn’t make the ridiculous dialogue sound palatable. Sam Worthington, starring as Perseus, continues his ascension of the blockbuster ladder (recently starring in Termination: Salvation and Avatar), but he is teetering on the edge of only being cast for his stone-cold glare and not for actual acting ability, which James Cameron was somehow able to access in and out of the ‘blue man’ suit. Liam Neeson, who some might argue was born to dictate orders from the clouds above, found his performance of Zeus pushed off the screen throughout by the more leering and sinister Hades, played by Ralph Fiennes. I think to really find the error here, we need to climb all the way to the top, director Louis Leterrier. I am a devout fan of his work on the first two action-filled chapters of the Transporter series, but their main reason for awesomeness is their sheer logic-avoiding car chases and tracer bullet addictions. We knew they were ludicrous going in and therefore could enjoy it, but Clash tried to be something more, something meaningful along with action-packed and it ended up failing at both.
PS: Just a small note here, but if anything could actually make this movie experience worse it was the terrible quality of picture and sound at the AMC Citywalk theaters. Usually I only have to deal with the crowd being slightly more rambunctious than those found at the Arclight or Landmark theaters, but this time the sound faltered a handful of times, the coloring wavered in and out and at one point I was fairly sure the picture was about to drop off altogether during a reel change. I’m not saying avoid the AMC Citywalk screens, but if you readers begin to see a pattern of crappy sound and picture quality up there, let me know. Maybe we can rally some effective change up there.
The End of the Page recommendation: Get some popcorn, soda or possibly your alcoholic beverage of choice and rent the original Clash of the Titans instead. Relish in the wonderment of Ray Harryhausen’s amazing animation of the time period and chuckle at seeing Harry Hamlin attempt to become a Greek hero. Plus, Bubo rules!
[via 
DandyID
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