Clash of the Titans: Review By ParkWilliams

Spoiler Alert...if you actually care. As a fan of the 1981 epic Clash of the Titans I was understandably excited to hear of it's return to the big screen with modern technology. Sadly I set my expectations far too high. Clash 2010 is a remake that trades substance for spectacle. Though the original wasn't perfect it succeeded for its storytelling but suffered in part from its below average effects (even for '81). All a remake really needed to do was give us Clash of the Titans with the special effects that it deserved, much like Peter Jackson delivered with King Kong. Instead, Leterrier decides to screw around with the mythology, add pointless characters, and leave out many of the parts that made the original so enjoyable. Gone is the romance between Andromeda and Perseus, the complete driving force behind the original plot, and in its place is a cliche revenge driven plot with Perseus coming across as a one dimensional character who acts like a rebellious teenager with daddy issues. Andromeda gets about five to ten minutes total screen time and, though she is portrayed well in her time on screen, is given no room to became a character we actually care about, which effectively makes the ending scene seem pretty dull. Io, a new character added seemingly just because Perseus no longer had a love interest, looks and acts kind of like she missed her cue in some other period of Greek mythology, wandered onto the scene of Clash and decided to just wing it. Pegasus, who is black, is used solely as a third act Deus ex Machina plot device to get Perseus back to the Kraken in time to kill before it eats Andromeda in a scene ripped directly from the script of King Kong. Don't get me wrong, there were some incredibly good parts to the movie as well. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes were both great and the Zeus/Hades rivalry that subtly surfaces throughout the film is played out well. I actually wouldn't have minded if that had taken center stage using Perseus' journey to Medusa as the metaphorical cosmic chess board with different gods and goddesses taking either side. Sadly this isn't the case. The film succeeds as campy, action fun, and the visual effects are rather stunning. I opted against 3D knowing and hearing that up conversion of a finished film almost always sucks. I will say that I was especially disappointed with Medusa, the one character they happened to be able to keep secret in the multitude of pre-release footage. Medusa is supposed to hideous, so hideous that she can kill any living creature with one glance, but instead of the grotesque monster I was expecting there is a normal (maybe even attractive) looking woman with snakes for hair and a serpent-like lower body. It was an okay scene but really didn't live up to the suspenseful and eerie scene that it could have very easily been. The scene of the Kraken's death was the one scene that really shone out of the whole movie. An epic flying battle over the cliffs outside Argos that involved Hades' flying, gargoyle-like demon monsters as well as the Kraken itself, and the actual turning of the Kraken into stone looks rather impressive. Clash 2010 is a decent rental for movie night sometime and maybe seeing it in 2D at the theater if you haven't seen the original, didn't like the original, and/or don't care about Greek mythology. Maybe I'm overreacting but I was pretty let down by how this turned out, and though I realize my expectations were far too high for a movie like this I still wish it could have realized more of its potential.