While the rise of a brand new action star in Sam Worthington (Avatar) made sure a movie like Clash of the Titans was bound to happen, the film is unimaginative in almost every way.
It’s flat in both writing and visual effects and dependent solely on star power and testosterone. The only reason to see it is to zero-out your rating scale in the wake of much better action flicks.
The plot, based loosely on Greek mythology, has humans going on the offensive against the Olympian gods. After Hades (Ralph Fiennes, The Hurt Locker) appears and scares the crap out of the humans, he gives them an ultimatum — either show your loyalty by sacrificing a princess or we will unleash the Kraken, a beast originally birthed by Hades himself.
From then on, it is up to Perseus (Worthington), who quickly learns he is the son of Zeus and a demigod, to find a way to kill the Kraken and send Hades back to the underworld.
The first thing to fall by the wayside in a movie like this is the writing. Character development is at an all-time low, with the script basically pointing at people and saying “hey, this person is important, care about him or her.” Or, in the case of Hades: “Hey, look, he’s totally evil, hate him.”
The one exception is Zeus (Liam Neeson, The Wildest Dream), whose internal battle between his love for humans, his love for Perseus and his god complex is the only dynamic aspect of the movie. Unfortunately, Neeson doesn’t get nearly enough screen time.
The actors do their best to support the cliché script, but in the end are powerless to fix the monotony of it. Take Io (Gemma Arterton, The Boat That Rocked), Perseus’ attractive guardian. Arterton nearly manages to make a likeable character out of Io by injecting her own personality, but the one-note nature of the writing strips all this away.
Without any discernible thought behind the writing, at least there’s a plot to hold on to, right? Nope. The story plays out much like a video game, throwing one objective after another at the protagonist until all evil is undone. While this sets up for some interesting “boss fights” against various mythical creatures — Medusa being the most entertaining — there is no innovation in the plot development at all. The structure is very basic and, as a result, very boring.
Without plot, the last hope for Clash of the Titans would be its visuals. But even here, the movie fails to deliver. Unfortunately, we live in the post-Avatar world, where entire worlds are created and the 3-D is carried out perfectly. With Clash of the Titans, however, the creatures seem to come straight out of a bad game. The 3-D is an afterthought.
There are two types of 3-D movies currently out there: Some are made with 3-D technology from the ground up, and others, like this movie, are retrofitted with 3-D effects to sell some extra tickets.
This retrofitting technique just doesn’t match up to the more genuine efforts out there. The images look layered, as if someone had merely placed one movie on top of another. For some reason the glasses make the image much darker, unlike in Avatar or the more recent How to Train Your Dragon.
Generally, the 3-D is distracting and pointless, save for a few close-ups of the massive Kraken. If you really want to see this movie, you should save yourself a headache and a couple bucks by watching the standard version.
There are a couple redeeming moments, which isn’t to say they make up for the rest of the movie, but are worth mentioning nonetheless. The tense battle with Medusa is possibly the high point of the plot, where soldiers are hopelessly turned to stone as they blindly wave their swords.
Also, the ferryman — a skeletal looking creature literally attached to his boat — is particularly creative. While there are some other interesting character designs, none are quite as clever.
There’s no good reason to see Clash of the Titans unless the viewer has a strong desire to see the creatures of Greek mythology on the big screen. For some, this may be a strong enough reason to put down the money. But for most, the lazy writing and offensively bad visuals will be major turn-offs.
RATING: 2 stars out of 5
diversions@umdbk.com
