Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Monday, May 03, 2010

Review: Clash of the Titans 3-D (2010)


So I was one of the last few people on the planet to catch the new Clash of the Titans film in the theaters before it left to make room for the oncoming Summer movie tidal wave. First off I'd like to bring to light a real cleaver trick my movie theater is employing to suck more money from my pocket as if they aren't doing that already. Since 'Clash' has been out for a little while they had it playing in one theater, nothing surprising here. I had heard and read that the 3-D in the film was not good so I was planning on seeing the regular version of the film and save a couple of bucks in the process. But to my dismay the theater (as well as other theaters in my area) were only showing the film in 3-D all day. So I was FORCED to pay $15 (as opposed to the usual adult price of $11) to see the lousy 3-D version. Mother. Fuckers.

Well after that delightful incident I sat down to watch the movie. Without going into the whole backstory we have some guy Perseus who is half-god but is adopted and raised by a mortal and his family. has said family taken away from him when the gods punish a band of human soldiers who claim to not worship the gods anymore. The gods want to teach mankind a lesson by threatening to release the Kraken upon the city of Argos if they do not offer the sacrifice of their princess and Perseus becomes the one who must try and save them.


To be honest, I didn't care for this remake. I was really looking forward to a fresh look at the greek mythological story but you know what? It didn't do anything for me. I didn't care much for Liam Nesson as Zeus, Fiennes was ok as Hades although it was like he was just doing Voldermort with a Ted Nugent hairdo. Sam Worthington did absolutely nothing for me. I understand he's mad about what happened to his family but I really didn't care. For all his declaration of stopping the gods as a man in the end he still had to use his godly abilities to foil Hades' plans so why the hell didn't he take advantage of his demi-god status earlier!!! In the end the god's still reigned on Mt. Olympus and man would still end up believing in them, what's the point?! And having Perseus falling in love with Io rather than Andromeda kinda doesn't make sense for his motivation for wanting to save the people of Argos so badly. In the original Perseus loved Andromeda so he was willing to do anything to save her, in the new one once he found out that he was a demi-god he really didn't need to help any of those people. His beef was with Hades, he could have technically gone on his own quest to go after Hades without the help of any of those people. He wasn't even from Argos! Oh and one more thing Calibus was WHACK!!!!!

As for the look and effects, the Kraken was cool looking but I thought the battle ended quickly, Medusa was pretty...why is this? And why the hell was Pegasus black (not that there's anything wrong with black horses...some of my closest horse friends are black) but...why? Give me Harry Hamlin and some stop motion creatures any day. Despite the dated look of the original 'Clash' and some slight cheese to the performances I felt that that film had more charm and more of a fantastical element to it than this 2010 redux. I mean it's Greek MYTHology, ham it up people! Oh yeah and the 3-D was garbage, but I knew that from reviews. It was never originally filmed with 3-D in mind and it's obvious.

Overall 'Clash' 2010 was just a 'meh' film. I was really excited to see this film but in the end I wasn't awed by it. The storyline was a little thin and the character motivations for the things they did during their adventures didn't make sense at times. I see they are setting up a couple of sequels and I hope that they improve upon this first film, but I doubt it. If there's one positive to take away from seeing 'Clash' is that it just makes me want to see a God of War movie even more.