Released April 1, 2010
The original 1981 Clash of the Titans was a plodding fantasy epic made enjoyable by the special effects of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen. The creator of innumerable beasts in the Sinbad movies and, most famously, the skeletons at the climax of Jason and the Argonauts, his designs were masterpieces of creativity and subtlety. These are qualities absent from Louis Leterrier’s frenetic remake, a wash of bland CGI monsters, ADD action and self-important dialogue.
Current bigshot Sam Worthington (still struggling with his pseudo-American accent) plays a non-descript, monosyllabic Perseus. The son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), he is none too pleased with his demi-god status after his adoptive parents are inadvertently killed by the malicious god of the underworld, Hades (Ralph Fiennes, in slithering Voldemort mode). As punishment for their rejection by man, the gods decree the city of Argos to be destroyed by the monstrous Kraken – inflated this time to Bruckheimer-sized proportions – unless the beautiful princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) is offered up as a sacrifice. It’s up to Perseus and his disposable band of warriors to avert disaster.
The plot makes little sense, especially since Perseus’ affection lies not with the in-peril Andromeda but towards the helpful demi-god Io (Gemma Arterton). Saving the princess, hence, seems like a plot convenience. Worse are the messy visuals. Already a victim of Leterrier’s poor spatial sense, the post-conversion to 3D is at best perfunctory and at worst, downright atrocious, simply too dim and muddled to be coherent.
Technical ineptitude aside, it’s the creature design and scene construction that reek of laziness and indifference. The suspenseful Medusa confrontation of the 1981 version is here replaced by an improbable battle in a cavern that’s a cross between the gravity-bending maze of Labyrinth and the fires of Mount Doom. It might have worked if, Mads Mikkelsen’s Draco aside, the characters were not already made of stone. I was cheering for Medusa, her demonic cackle one of the few moments of original inspiration.
There’s a joke early on about the absence of Bubo the mechanical owl, the R2D2 cash-in from the original. Bubo’s presence would have helped this movie. And that’s saying something.
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