Clash of the Titans

I don't mind remakes of old properties, and that's a fortunate thing for me. If I disliked them on principle, there wouldn't be very many movies being made that I would actually enjoy. I absolutely think that there's a place for a remake of 1981's Clash of the Titans, a movie that was so cheesy and over-the-top bad that it's fun. That movie has a sense of humor about itself and its B-movie caliber special effects that makes it endearing, and it couples it with a script that's just terrible enough that it almost feels intentional. So modernize the special effects, give it a competent script, and add in a little humor and flair and this is a movie that could work well and make a ton of money. Sadly, while the 2010 remake certainly looks better than the original, it actually takes a massive step back in the script and humor departments.

The remake and the original loosely follow the story of Perseus (Sam Worthington) from Greek mythology. In these adaptations, Perseus  is the product of the god Zeus (Liam Neeson) and a human mother Danae (Tine Stapelfeldt) after Zeus disguises himself as Danae's husband and impregnates her. Danae's husband puts Danae and baby Perseus in a coffin and casts them out to sea. Perseus, as he is a demigod, survives and is taken in by a fisherman named Spyros (Pete Postlethwaite). Perseus grows up and over this time, it's revealed that humans are becoming fed up by the gods and being subject to their whims. They declare war on the gods by destroying their temples and knocking over a gigantic statue of Zeus, which Perseus and his family are there to see. As a result, Hades (Ralph Fiennes) shows up and lays waste to the soldiers and, for kicks, he sends a fireball through Perseus' ship that winds up killing his family. Perseus is rescued by soldiers and taken to Argos, where he is taken to the palace. There we meet King Kephus (Vincent Regan) and Queen Cassiopeia (Polly Walker), who are throwing a feast for the fallen soldiers. There they compare themselves to gods and claim that their daughter Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) is more beautiful than Aphrodite herself. This causes Hades to arrive and kill Cassiopeia. Earlier, Hades had convinced Zeus to allow him to unleash the Kraken, a beast that even the gods were afraid of. The gods need human prayers to remain strong and, by their logic, the Kraken will cause so much fear that they will pray to the gods for their safety. Hades, being the god of the underworld, has other plans, but that's not important right now. Hades declares that he will unleash the Kraken on Argos unless they sacrifice Andromeda and he reveals that Perseus as a demigod before departing. The king, not wanting to sacrifice his daughter, compels Perseus to find a way to kill the Kraken, and this causes Perseus to leave for his journey. He's accompanied by another demigod named Io (Gemma Arterton) along with a legion of soldiers led by Draco (Mads Mikkelsen), and together they have to defeat a host of mythological creatures in order to find a way to slay the Kraken while Perseus struggles with his true nature.

As to be expected, the strength in this movie is the special effects. And that's not saying much. From the gigantic scorpions to Medusa (Natalia Vodianova) to the Cloverfield-esque Kraken itself, everything in Clash of the Titans is rendered in that 1990's CGI sort of way, with a disconnect between the graphics and the actors interacting with them. It takes talent to act against a green screen, and Worthington lacks that talent. In many ways, the movie is just drap visually. The landscapes are a drab stand-in for Greece, and you rarely get a color that isn't gray or earthy brown. The action scenes are exhilarating at least, and some of the creature-on-person kills in the movie are both brutal and unique to an almost comical level. If you're an action movie junkie, this movie is certainly going to be pleasing on that level, assuming you see it in 2D. I can not state this strongly enough. Do NOT see this movie in 3D. The decision to adapt the movie to 3D was made in January. It wasn't filmed in 3D, it was converted later. A similar process was done to Alice in Wonderland, and it still managed to look good because Disney spent six months converting the film. Clash of the Titans took two months and it reportedly shows. From what I understand, the action scenes are almost unwatchable in 3D, and at best, it adds nothing to the presentation. See it in 2D. This movie spent a considerable amount of money, time, and energy in the special effects department, and having them diluted by 3D is removing the one feature that makes this movie the tiniest bit passable.

I say passable because, outside of the action scenes and special effects, this movie is groan-inducing bad. There's a litany of reasons for this, but the one that stood out the most to me was the pacing of the movie in general. While the action scenes are spectacular, every scene in between them drags unnecessarily. This is a frantic movie that likes to slow down for unhealthy periods of time. The viewer is engaged enough by Perseus' back story that we really don't need further character exposition, but Clash of the Titans feels the need to expand upon his character in the worst possible way: by having him stand around growling his emotions into the camera. It's a lazy action movie trope, and it's one that Clash uses frequently. It should be said that Sam Worthington is a solid action movie star. He is not, however, a dramatic actor. It's distracting to have him try to draw anything else out of his character, and that's a mistake that this movie makes repeatedly. We don't get any emotion out of Perseus. We're explicitly told by his character how he's feeling about a situation, but his tone of voice and facial expression rarely changes. It's the same performance that helped drag down Avatar, but at least in that movie, the CGI could add layers of emotion to the Jake Sully character that Worthington cannot. What we get here is a performance very similar to the one he gave in Terminator Salvation. It's a very stiff and wooden delivery.

Aside from Worthington's short-comings, the rest of the actors in the movie performed solidly enough. Neeson is effective as Zeus, and Ralph Fiennes is extraordinary as Hades. That was an inspired casting decision. Fiennes' breathy, creepy performance as Hades carries the film through some of its lulls. Honestly, he's not on the screen enough, and neither are the other gods. Perhaps because I am fascinated by Greek mythology, I was absolutely riveted by the scenes that took place in Mount Olympus. The seeing the gods on their thrones, seeing Zeus' armor shimmer (a fantastic aesthetic effect), seeing Greece presented as a battlefield or plaything laying in the middle of the floor with people represented by tiny figurines, these were all details that I was interested in. They were effective and interesting to me, but very little time was spent on them. We don't get any background on why the gods treat the people as they do. We understand that Zeus is indignant by them declaring war on them because, well, he created them and everything they have is a gift from the gods. But we don't know why the gods feel the need to act the way they do towards them. It would've been nice to have seen that explained along with more scenes in Mount Olympus.

The most painful part of the film, by far, was the actual dialogue. There were numerous scenes that elicited almost a mocking laughter from the audience I saw the film with. Far too often, we drift into monologues delivered by characters we aren't invested in. The characters we do care about get very, very few words at all. During one of the death scenes, one of the characters feels the need to ramble on about Perseus' destiny for a solid three or four minutes before finally expiring. This is something that's done in most action movies, but in Clash of the Titans it felt like another in a long line of unnecessary and painfully cliche monologues. I'm fairly convinced that a high school creative writing class could have crafted more convincing dialogue between the characters. I would rather have read that script. Perhaps they wouldn't have added convenient pauses for the characters to make sure they strike their most heroic and dashing poses. This movie is everything that people wind up detesting about bloated action movies. There's no humor or wonder in this film. No sense of awe or sense of story. We don't care very much about the characters despite this movie's insistence that we do. And the ending is so painfully predictable that another series of groans came up right before the credits rolled. There's nothing that's remarkable about this movie outside of how screenwriters could take this property and eliminate everything that made the original entertaining, and that's a shame.

Truth be told, I would have much rather seen the original's claymation monsters again as opposed to seeing the remake's sloppy CGI. And I would rather not have seen Sam Worthington spend two hours snarling at me.