Review of Clash of the Titans (2010) by Kenneth E — 10 May 2015

Normally, I would have said "leave well enough alone," except for the fact that I disliked the original "Clash of the Titans" starring Laurence Olivier and Harry Hamlin. The 1981 so-called "classic" was one of those 80's action genre films where the movie poster was far more interesting than the actual flick itself. With today's technology, filmmakers had the potential to improve upon the original and create something truly memorable and lasting. Boy was I disappointed.

As much as I didn't find the original to be my cup of tea, it was an Oscar Winning Best Picture compared to this 2010 cinematic mess, which visually, thematically, and stylistically tried to imitate "Lord of the Rings" with its forced "the time of man has begun" message and the deep-voiced wannabe Cate Blanchett "the world has changed" introduction. The settling looked less Greek and more Middle Earth. I also got an uncomfortable dash of "Harry Potter," as filmmakers desperately tried to push Ralph Fiennes' suave, raspy-voiced Voldemort persona into the storyline. Halfway through the film, I just wanted to throw a brick at the screen and just read Homer's "Odyssey.".

There was some dazzling computer generated imagery towards the end of the film, particularly in the form of the horrific monster Medusa. However, this CG feat fell short of the original. Ray Harryhausen's original stop-motion puppet may have been rickety and jerky, but the character possessed a threatening presence, a soul you might say, which was reflected by the careful cunning way she moved, removing arrows from her quiver one-by-one in a contemplative manner. This new Medusa? Yeah, it looked realistic. Yeah, it had a lot of scales like anything you'd see on the Discovery Channel. Yeah, it was photorealistic and had great rendering and detail. But the moment she appeared, she just jumped out and went "Boo!" and slimed over objects like an eel out of water trying to rejoin its friends in the fish tank. In short, this new Medusa was cool, but was as threatening as a ghost on Scooby Doo.

The "final straw" was the mechanical owl. True, I never was a big fan of the mechanical owl in the original, party because it seemed like a cheap cash-in on a certain squeaky droid invented by George Lucas. In this film, Sam Worthington's Perseus picks up the owl, looks at it, and is rudely told to "just leave it." It was intended to be funny, but it came off as a blasphemous slap in the face to the original; come on, just include the darned owl or leave it out completely; this cheap in-joke only made me want to see the older (and far more tolerable) film.

The only thing I can think of that truly worked was Pegasus; boy, there was an awesome flying horse. Changing the equine's color from white (as seen in the original) to pitch black was a really fine choice. Too bad Pegasus couldn't have dropped in for a visit more often. Sam Worthington should have stayed at Pandora.