Hollywood’s “summer” blockbuster season is officially upon us, and it has already delivered its first turkey in the form of Clash of the Titans. The film is a remake of the 1981 movie of the same name, which was released in the infancy of the special effects-driven Hollywood blockbuster.
The first, and perhaps most important, point to make about the new version of Clash of the Titans is that no one should pay the premium to see the film in 3D. The film was filmed in the usual two planes, and then hastily converted to 3D in post-production to cash in cynically on the post-Avatar swell of interest in the technology.
Apart from blurring the action scenes and colours of the film so that it’s difficult to appreciate the action, the 3D conversion adds nothing whatsoever to Clash of the Titans. It’s the first 3D movie that I have walked out of with a headache — and the kicker is that the image on-screen seldom looks anything like 3D.
3D also can’t disguise the fact that Clash of the Titans is not a very good movie.
Clash of the Titans pits the demigod Perseus (played by Sam Worthington) against the gods of Olympus after his adoptive father is slain by the god Hades (Ralph Fiennes). He’s a champion of humanity, which is growing increasingly wary of the capriciousness of the gods.
The main reason that audiences streamed into cinemas for Clash of the Titans in the 1980s is the same reason most will want to see it today: to watch Perseus ride a winged horse and do battle with mythological creatures such as the Kraken and the snake-haired Medusa. The stop-motion effects of the original film haven’t aged gracefully, but they still have some ramshackle charm.
By comparison, most of the creature design in the remake is dull and unimaginative. I can’t help comparing it to the fantastic artwork in the 300 comic and film or Sony’s God of War games, which feel simultaneously fresh and contemporary and true to the roots of Greek myth. It’s an event-film drained of any real spectacle, even if it’s hard to fault the technical workmanship.
In fact, Clash of the Titans feels like a film that was put together entirely by special effects technicians and moneymen without any help from a writer or an artist. It’s entirely devoid of dramatic conflict, humour (of the intentional kind, anyway), artistry or any reason to care about anything happening on the screen at all.
Given the talent behind the production, it’s surprising just how bad it is. Director Louis Leterrier has made a few enjoyable genre films such as The Transporter, Danny the Dog (Unleashed) and The Incredible Hulk, and he had a great cast to work with. The problem seems to lie largely in the ropey script and the fact that the 3D conversion process didn’t work for the charmless, one-dimensional characters.
Harry Hamlin and a shaggy, hair-metal hairstyle starred as Perseus in the original film. He’s replaced by Sam Worthington, who is as stony and impassive as he is in similar roles in Avatar and Terminator: Salvation. With a buzz cut, stubble and a flat monotone, Worthington comes across as one of those videogame space marines, just in a skirt. He reminds me a great deal of Russell Crowe, though he appears to lack Crowe’s depth and glint of ironic humour.
Clash of the Titans might have been more bearable, if only it didn’t take itself so damn seriously. The bombastic score strikes up in nearly every scene to remind you that you’re watching an Epic with a capital E, usually followed by a piece of portentous dialogue that falls to the ground with a clunk.
Most of the male supporting actors — including serious thespians like Fiennes as Hades and Liam Neeson as Zeus — cunningly hide behind bushes of facial hair as they mouth ominous lines about the war between men and gods.
How can Neeson bark the line “Release the Kraken!” in 2010 when he’s apparently not joking, especially wearing a glittering silver costume that looks like something out of Saturday Night Fever? The original Clash of the Titans was equally cheesy, but at least it knew it was ridiculous.
The Greek gods, always keen on inventive ways to punish those that displease them, might consider stocking only Clash of the Titans (the new one) in the DVD store on Hades. Prometheus, chained to a rock so that a giant eagle could tear strips out of his freshly regenerated liver every day for eternity, got off lightly by comparison. — Lance Harris, TechCentral
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