Have you ever walked away from a movie wishing that you had run away before you saw it? If not, and you wish to experience that feeling, have I got the movie for you!
Clash of the Titans is another Hollywood remake that strips the story of well, the story, and fills it with special effects. Like a jelly donut with the jelly removed, but at least they showered it with sprinkles. Only, the special effects weren’t all that special, making it more akin to dingleberry sprinkles. The movie rushes from scene to scene, trying to cut through that cumbersome obstacle known as a “plot“, hoping that as the viewer you will forget that a plot is usually necessary for a movie to be good.
Clash begins with a coffin floating to the top of the sea and being discovered by a man who gave up a successful career as Keyser Sose’s lawyer and is now a fisherman. The coffin contains a live baby Perseus and his deceased mother. This brings up one of the more puzzling aspects of this film: why a coffin and not a casket? And so, Kobayashi and his wife raise Perseus as their own child. We later discover that a king who had defied the gods had caught Zeus, in the guise of the king himself, impregnating his wife. In a fit of rage, he tossed his wife and child off of a cliff. In the process he was struck by lightning and horribly disfigured, unlikely to ever be able to toss a coffin, or salad, again. Guided by Perseus’ protector Lo, the coffin makes its way to the fisherman.
When he reaches adulthood, Perseus loses his entire family to Hades, god of the underworld. So begins Perseus’ quest for vengeance. Of course, while he was questing, it certainly would not have hurt for him and the others who joined him to look for clothes that actually fit. The scariest scenes in the movie occurred not when they were battling the film’s many creatures, but rather when they bent over in their dangerously short skirts, threatening to reveal their manly secrets to me. Russell on the other hand has always enjoyed a good secret.
Mythology was one of my favorite studies back in high school, it’s where I learned how the sun made its daily journey across the sky. Today’s kids have to learn it from some nonsense called science. Maybe that’s why I’m so disappointed in this movie, very little mythology was learned or explored. In fact, the only thing they got right about the gods involved the humping of Perseus’ mother by Zeus, whom we all know had a taste for mortal women (but even Percy Jackson & The Olympians got that right).
Zeus, the almighty leader (Liam Neeson) does little more than strut around in armor that is supposed to radiate shimmering immortality. Instead it appears like the movie screen is getting bad reception. Hades (Ralph Fiennes, pronounced/ “hay-deez”) does a decent job as the backstabbing brother of Zeus. He at least gets to wreak some havoc even if it is mostly through his minions and prank phone calls.
Medusa, as far as I’m concerned, was nothing more than a poorly rendered overgrown snake. They could have done a better job than just slapping a reptile’s body on her and calling it a night. She could have and should have been one of the movie’s more terrifying villains. Instead, they did no better a job with her than they did in The Lightning Thief.
You would think from the advertisements that the terrifying Kraken (pronounced/ “reif fainz“) would be a key character in Clash of the Titans, but sadly he only shows up twice. Once to be quickly defeated by Perseus, the other in a gag reel where Zeus mistakes him for the king’s wife. Yes, I know he didn’t show up much in the original movie either, but it’s not like this version really sticks to the original plot anyway. Perseus’ involvement with saving Andromeda is strictly business, as she is no longer a love interest. It seems now he’s more smitten with his protector, Lo. Then again, so was I, so I can’t blame him for that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Andromeda was hot and all, but Lo was SMOKIN’ hot!
Perhaps the best part of the entire film is what they DIDN’T do. In one scene, they bring out that wretched metal owl from the original movie, then discard it. As if the producers were teasing us by saying, “See? We could have made this whole thing much, much worse, but we chose not to. We ditched the owl, now be grateful for that!” On a scale of zero to ten, zero being the worst and ten being the best, I can’t give this movie any better than a C-. It would have been a D, but I really am grateful they ditched that metal owl.