Clash of the Titans
Movie Review
Clash of the Titans
by Eric D. Snider
Grade: D
Released: April 2, 2010
Directed by:
Cast:
The first thing you should know about "Clash of the Titans" is that if you pay extra for a 3-D ticket you are being ripped off. The film wasn't shot in 3-D; it was retrofitted for 3-D in post-production, when Warner Bros. decided people would think the studio was an old fuddy-duddy if it didn't release every single film in 3-D. And it's obvious that it was an afterthought. I watched most of the film without the glasses and barely noticed a difference. Certain elements of the picture were slightly blurry here and there, but not many, and not much. The 3-D on this film is a sham. Don't pay for it.
The other thing you should know about "Clash of the Titans" is that you shouldn't pay for it anyway, no matter how many D's it has. Anemically directed by the usually energetic Louis Leterrier ("Transporter 2," "The Incredible Hulk"), this remake of the 1981 cheesy classic is dull and serious, without an ounce of personality or flair. It feels prefabricated, factory-assembled. To put it bluntly, it just isn't fun -- the one thing you require a movie like this to be.
So you got your Greek gods, noble Zeus and his sniveling brother Hades. They are played, respectively, by Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, which is pretty impressive, considering Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes are the same person. Zeus made sexy times with a mortal woman and fathered a baby, who wound up in the foster care of an old fisherman and his wife, who named him Perseus. Perseus grew up big and strong and is now Sam Worthington, who you will recall was also bland and forgettable when he was in "Avatar" and "Terminator Salvation."
The people of Argos have declared war against the gods, which naturally hurts the gods' feelings. "You have insulted powers beyond your comprehension!" says Hades, and I'm totally stealing that line. But it's worse than that: the gods need the mortals' prayers to fuel their immortality. To get the folks on their knees again, Hades suggests releasing the kraken, a terrifying monster that he made for the sole purpose of terrifying people. He tells everyone they have 10 days to prove their devotion by sacrificing the beautiful Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), or else it's kraken time. Perseus, proudly wearing a short skirt and an Australian accent, has some god-blood in him, and he has a beef with Hades anyway, so he's chosen as the hero to help thwart Hades' plan.
How do you defeat a god? Ugh, you'd be amazed how many hoops you have to jump through. You have to ask some blind witches for advice, and deal with Medusa, and fight giant CGI scorpions that rise out of the sand, etc., etc. First, though, Perseus assembles a team of brave men. This group resembles the Fellowship of the Ring, except that you're not sure what anyone's name is, or why they joined, and there's really only one character who matters (Perseus), and he's pretty uninteresting. The others are played by actors with names like Mads Mikkelson, Liam Cunningham, and Nicholas Hoult. Along for guidance is Io (Gemma Arterton), who, like Perseus, is a demigod, and can give support and counsel when it's needed (i.e., when the movie remembers she's there).
Also, there's a pair of brothers who are wacky adventurers looking for thrills, and they are eager to join the heroic quest to stop Hades, and they do approximately 1.5 useful things, and then they chicken out and leave, and you wonder what their names were, or why they were in the movie to begin with.
Meanwhile, there's a weird skinny guy back in Argos (Jason Flemyng) who believes, quite reasonably, that the best way to prevent their city from being destroyed by the kraken is to just do as Hades requested and sacrifice Andromeda. He actually gets quite a little Hades-worshipping cult going. People always turn to a god during times of trial, especially when the source of the trial is a god threatening to let a monster eat them.
Where's Zeus in all this? Isn't he in charge? Yeah, but he kind of lets Hades run things. Zeus is a laissez-faire kind of god. He's in charge of Hades' pet kraken, though. Hades may NOT release the kraken unless/until Zeus says so!! If he does he'll be in sooo much trouble.
Wow, this is stupid. But it's not even the stupidity that bothers me. It's the laziness. They wanted to cash in on the fond memories people have of the old "Clash of the Titans," and so they made a remake that barely resembles it. Tens of millions of dollars in the budget, and the special effects still look cheap. (Medusa is embarrassingly unconvincing.) Gone is the charm of the stop-motion animation. There's no wit in any of the dialogue. Even the kraken proves anticlimactic -- and brother, if you can't stick the landing when your movie has a damn KRAKEN in it, then you shouldn't be making movies.
Grade: D
Rated PG-13, a fair amount of action violence, some scary stuff, nothing too graphic
1 hr., 58 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 12 comments
April 2, 2010 at 8:07 am
When I see previews for this, I just sit on the couch and wish that Percy Jackson had gotten that kind of a budget. But, it sounds just as boring.
But which Medusa was better. The CGI one for Uma Therman?
April 2, 2010 at 10:56 am
Well yeah, by just merely seeing the trailer, I can already smell the lameness of this movie.
Thanks for the warning btw, I shall not watch this on 3D....or not watch this at all.
April 2, 2010 at 11:15 am
Too bad they didn't title the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy 3: The Preeeeeequel" If they had done that, I might have gone to see the movie.
April 2, 2010 at 11:17 am
Uma Thurman is absolutely a better Medusa. Her head of snakes were wonderfully rendered, and very believable. I liked their theme of incorporating the mythological world into our world. And the movie didn't take itself too seriously, which is a key thing when making movies like this. You either have to do it "Lightning Thief" style or "Lord of the Rings style." You can't do a halfway job. If you do it LOTR-style, you have to flesh out characters and take your time in developing the plot.
I give Clash of the Titans a C-
April 2, 2010 at 11:40 am
As soon as I saw the cast list for this a couple of weeks ago, I was really, really hoping you would comment on Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes being the same person, since you did it for the bad movie Krull. You didn't disappoint.
...And yeah, I'm never going to waste my money on this movie. Thanks for going through this pain for us, so that we don't have to.
April 2, 2010 at 12:42 pm
I thought that the timing of this movie was intended to piggyback off of Percy Jackson, which wasn't that great a movie either.
Technically, doesn't this movie have four Ds? The 3Ds that the movie was allegedly made in, plus the D that it got in this review! :D
April 2, 2010 at 3:37 pm
That's where I had seen the main guy before! Avatar. Duh.
Yeah, Uma Thurman was so much better as Medusa. The CGI Medusa looked to me like the spitting image of Princess Fiona from Shrek, who is so obviously animated. That is how bad the CGI was. They totally weren't even trying there.
I didn't like that Ralph Fiennes used his Voldemort voice when he was first introduced. They even sound-mixed his voice to have the breathy creepiness that generally goes along with his Voldemort voice.
Anyway, amen to Eric. Don't waste money on this one, even though I somehow was able to enjoy the movie.
April 2, 2010 at 8:15 pm
I went and saw this before i saw your review Eric(unfortunately) and you definitely hit the spot on this one. Very lazy writing.
Couple of things that come to mind, after visting the witches we see Perseus walking by himself in the mountains where he has an encounter with Zeus. What was he doing in the mountains by himself? Where did everyone else go? Was he taking a leak? Who knows, we are never told and noone asks him when he returns from the mountains to the group waiting.
And then when he exits the Medusa's lair and Io is standing in the WIDE OPEN area with no cover, shows a shot of Io, then back to Perseus, then back to Io and suddenly there is a guy right behind her? where did he come from?! Did he just teleport in? :P
Bah! Annoying movie to say the least. And a ripoff for 3D indeed. The only 3D i saw in the movie was the bit before the movie where they advertise the 3D in movies. Excuse the long rant.
April 8, 2010 at 8:57 am
Got dragged to it with the boyfriend. We wanted to see it in 2D, but that was not available at our theater. There were about 8 people in our group and every one of us got a headache from the craptacular 3D. To stave off boredom, I was constantly comparing with and without the glasses throughout the movie. Many, many times it looked better without the glasses on! As soon as the movie was over, though, the headache stopped.
April 15, 2010 at 4:30 pm
I wanted to see this for Ralph Fiennes. I thought for sure Double-Dark-Lordedness would be enough for the price of admission. Sadly, since I have found that I usually agree with Eric's reviews, I'll just wait for the DVD. Or download it illegally. Whatever.
April 24, 2010 at 2:04 am
Still chuckling over this one - maybe your best line ever, and that's saying something:
"Even the kraken proves anticlimactic -- and brother, if you can't stick the landing when your movie has a damn KRAKEN in it, then you shouldn't be making movies."
Just read that to the spousal unit as well and she also loved it.
Nicely done!!
July 11, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Percy Jackson was so much better, and it wasn't even that good. I thought it was funny that the story is changed around completely, but every single event that takes place in the original film happens in this one too. They couldn't even create a new movie. Like Eric said, I just didn't care about anybody in the entire movie. That were all boring and forgettable. Ugh, glad I only paid 75 cents to see it.