Short version- Skip it. Rent the original instead.
Grade: F
I will begin my review for the remake of the cult classic fantasy film Clash of the Titans by assuring you that I am not “anti remake”. I have spoken to many people who think that all remakes are bad by virtue of the fact that they are remakes. That there is an inherent flaw in all remakes, that they are not the original and are therefore inferior. I feel that such logic is in a word, idiotic.
I generally look at remakes with a hopeful optimism. They can go one way or the other just as easily as any “original” film. It is a game of hit and miss with remakes in the exact same way as it is with any other story, some of them are great and some of them are terrible. In addition, I find personally that remakes are often a chance at redemption for weak films to be made into great ones. A few recent examples of this type of success are, Star Trek, 310 to Yuma, Ocean’s Eleven and Casino Royal.
I often considered Clash to be the perfect movie to be remade into a mega blockbuster. I had delusional dreams as a boy that I might be the guy who got to remake that movie one day, (such was my feverish dorkyness that I even had a dream cast assembled as well as the make up department and cinematographer). It had it all, swords, magic, monsters, boobies (I was a boy after all) and most importantly a fantastic story. It was an engaging fantasy spectacle of the highest order. The kind one rarely found at the movies, especially in pre Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings days. It was an artistic sort of escapism.
Sadly, the remake seems to be a failure, it contains none of the things that worked in the first go round, and joins the wrong side of the fifty-fifty split of remakes that are either great or are crappy. Were my expectations too high considering I’m such a (rabid) fan of the original? Possibly, but the truth is that the movie struggles not only with the story and the pedigree of its predecessor. The technical aspects were just as bad as the rest of it.
Let’s start with the good things. First off, the movie is beautiful. It was expertly shot and the locations they picked were all pretty damn cool. Second, most of the cast is awesome. Liam Neeson was born to play Zeus, Liam Cunningham and Mads Mikkelsen are the very definitions of cool and tough, (and in my opinion the best part of the movie). Many seem to be saying that Sam Worthington’s movie star status is undeserved or unearned but I disagree entirely. I’m a big fan of Worthington and have followed his career since Macbeth, his involvement was in fact one of the things that exited me most, and personally I couldn’t find anything wrong with his performance. There were a few weak links in the group but when you’ve got a great majority like this, the rest is quite forgivable. The issue I have is with these characters is that there isn’t much character to be seen.
The script has every character stuck in a one-note slump. It is hard to find yourself giving a crap about a character when you know that they will behave exactly the same in the next scene as they did in the last scene regardless of what is currently happening to them in the story. Each character seems to have a boring job to do in this film, Worthington broods, Mikleson growls, Ralph Fiennes whispers and Cunningham has the one-liners. However, the two who got the shortest end of the stick were the ladies. The princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) was the main love interest of the original. And Io (Gemma Arterton) an entirely new character who seems to have replaced the mechanical owl Bubo from the original. Both women are genuine babes and have proven screen presence, but are wasted here on…well, nothing. While Andromeda has been reduced to little more than a typical damsel in distress in this film, (her character may have done nothing in the original but was given far less to do here, a feat I wouldn’t have believed possible until seeing it), Io was sadly far more difficult to take seriously than the cheesy robot owl she has replaced which in turn left me longing for more than just the throw away cameo from Bubo we are treated to here.
Now we all know few people go to a movie like this for anything more than entertainment and cool digital effects so…On the note of the visual effects, they are sometimes impressive (Pegasus, Medusa), and sometimes underwhelming (the Harpies), overall they were fairly entertaining but in general, nothing special. Depending on your opinion of the old school, and awesomely low tech Ray Harryhausen stop motion effects used back in the 80’s version the effects could be called an improvement or a step backward in quality. The problem is that some shots feel perfectly handled and some feel rushed. In fact…
The movie as a whole feels rushed. The “story” moves very quickly and little of it makes any real sense. It bounces back and forth between what seems to be two separate movies starring the same actors. The script was full of contradiction and confusion. First Perseus hates the gods for killing his family and wants to destroy them. He sets out on a quest to do so, confusingly getting help…from the gods. However since Perseus hates them, he won’t accept their help. Nevertheless, by the end of the movie not only dose he accept their help but has basically sold out to them and become a company man and Zeus’s buddy forgetting his motivation for the quest in the first place. Not a great message to put in a movie. Also the romance between he and Io is very bland and seems awfully contrived. When Io first arrives, she tells Perseus that she is immortal and that having that eternal life is a curse. She then dies and is resurrected as a favor to Perseus. Then theres Zeus himself whom at the start of the film, thinks of Perseus as nothing more than his ungrateful bastard son. However, he decides to help him on his quest to destroy the gods anyway even though Zeus is a god himself. The confusion doesn’t end there but I think I’ve made my point. So I’ll skip over the involvement of some big wooden guys and the random appearances of Pegasus.
They also seemed to give us a story in which the hero is kind of useless. Most of the cool kills and fights are handled by Mikkelsen with a couple of clichéd moments going to Worthington. Peseus just dosnt do that much. The action overall was less that stellar with the exception of some of the medusas lair scene and the random giant scorpion attack.
But for me the two biggest offences were the following:
One:
The delivery of the line “Release the kraken!”
As I said before I think Neeson is perfect for Zeus and he looks just like the king of the gods should. However, when he delivers the great line from the original it feels like he just sort of says it instead of yelling in an awesomely cheesy, old school way like Lawrence Oliver did in the original. I used to yell this before cliff diving with my friends to get my nerve up, now I don’t know if I can anymore.
Two:
The character of Calibos.
Neil McCarthy awesomely played the character in the original and he stole the show. Calibos was a fine villain, a genuine badass with cool lines and a cool demonic look. He terrified me as a child, (in a good way) and made me think that having a tail and a pitch fork for a hand was actually kind of cool. Calibos was the first suiter of Andromeda and an integral part of the movie.
The updated version of Calibos is played here by the equally awesome Jason Flemyng, a great actor in his own right. However, the character suffered a complete loss of significance worse than anything or anyone else in the movie. he didn’t even seem to have a reason to be in the movie. Instead of being after Perseus for revenge over loosing his hand or his lady, he’s just pissed at Zeus so he tries to kill Perseus.
His makeup design was far less cool and also very poorly done (it looked like he was wearing rubber skin that was badly painted to resemble open wounds…which he was). No cool makeup, no cool lines and no more terrifying badassery, (the pitchfork hand wasn’t even included in this version. He still gets his hand chopped off, but doesn’t replace it with a cool weapon for some reason).
I could have ignored a lot of bad stuff had they just gotten that much right.
However, I don’t blame the director for the problems either. I imagine it all went sour when the studio took over. I get the feeling that the movie was taken away from the capable director Louis Leterrier’s hands (Leterrier directed the excellent Jet Li movie: unleashed, and the better of the recent Hulk films: The Incredible Hulk) at some point and re written and re edited to be whatever it is we were stuck with here. This would explain the convoluted plot and the confusing lack of logic in all of the character’s choices. Oh well, here’s hoping there is a great directors cut d.v.d. on the way that fixes a few of these issues.
Overall, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at the whole thing. It just isn’t a good flick. Personally, seeing this movie felt like being dumped by a girl. It just kind of…hurt. I wasn’t destroyed by it or anything but I didn’t understand what I did to deserve this. There was no reason this movie couldn’t be just as good as The Lord of the Rings. Or as a friend of mine who saw the movie with me simply put “This movie has no business being bad!” after the credits began, my other friend just looked at me and asked “Where were the boobies in this one?”(we are still boys after all). Anyway, I say skip it and rent the original it is WAY better and being old, it at least has the excuse of being dated for its cheesiness.
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