Clash Of The Titans
It's staggering that in this day and age, Medusa ends up looking like a badly-CGI'd blow-up doll, and it doesn't trigger a single moment of terror.
It's been many years since I saw the original 1981 Clash Of The Titans, but the film had a lasting impression. Ray Harryhausen's unforgettable stop-motion creatures scared the bejesus out of me. I fear Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier's glossy update of the ancient Greek myth of Perseus isn't going to be remembered for generations to come, except for being an enjoyable, throway summer flick.
Pete Postlethwaite gets the film off to a promising start, as only he can, as the fisherman who rescues the baby Perseus from his oceanic coffin. Postlethwaite brings the most heartfelt performance to be seen here, so it's a great shame he has to die to set the grown up Perseus, now a bronzed Sam Worthington, on his path.
Finding out he's a demi-god, the son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Perseus finds himself caught in a brouhaha in the ancient Greek city of Argos, where mankind is rebelling against the higher beings. Zeus's brother Hades, the resentful god of the underworld, is a swooshing, swirling malevolent being in the form of Ralph Fiennes, in full Voldemort mode. In one of the regularly scheduled Olympus meetings, he offers to induce fear into man so that they pray to Zeus once more. How will he do this? By releasing the Kraken of course. Hades warns Argos that they must sacrifice their princess Andromeda (an underused Alexa Davalos) before the eclipse, as it's the only way to sate this fearsome beast. The soldier Draco (Mads Mikkelson) drags the reluctant Perseus on a mission to seek Kraken-slaying advice from the Stygian witches (reminiscent of the creepy-as-hell Pan's Labyrinth ghoul). They are joined by an out-of-place Nicholas Hoult and a much-more-suitable Hans Matheson as they tackle giant scorpions, the monstrous Calibos (Jason Flemyng, looking like the make-up department threw the kitchen sink at him) and, eventually, the famous Medusa.
The special effects are very hit and miss. The gritty, sundrenched Greece of the original has given way to the uniform, artificial landscape seen in all big-budget blockbusters now. The legendary Kraken suffers from a lack of scale, being shot in close-up, with everything lost in the utterly pointless 3D - the wow factor from the trailers is greatly diminished. It's staggering that in this day and age, Medusa ends up looking like a badly-CGI'd blow-up doll, and it doesn't trigger a single moment of terror.
However, the scorpion fights are impressive - one of the few moments that hark back to the down and dirty feel of the 80s flick - and the underworld ferrymen are cleverly integral to the boat. If you fondly remember the original film's ingenious magical devices, they are sadly missing here - Bubo the mechanical owl only gets a humourous nod. In fact, the 90 minutes is mainly devoted to Worthington's internal struggles and newfound daddy issues, with Liam Neeson a strangely benevolent Zeus. These are articulated to the mystical Io, played with a misty-eyed maternal spin by Gemma Arterton, making their eventual romance unconvincing. There appears to have been a substantial amount of hasty character editing, with fine actors such as Danny Huston and Alexander Siddig pointlessly reduced to mere extras. Worthington, once more carrying a huge effects-laden movie, looks great, but, again, he understandably struggles to find gravitas in the dialogue, faring much better with the wise-cracks that cause his Aussie accent to break through. Clash Of The Titans is what it promised in the trailer: a good-looking, popcorn-crunching adventure.
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