MOVIE REVIEW: CLASH OF THE TITANS

Clash of the Titans is a remake of the 1981 film of the same name. When humans begin to ignore the gods and stops praying to them, they grow angry and decide to show the humans how much they really need them. They have ten days to sacrifice Princess Andromeda or else the Kraken will be released and destroy there city. Sam Worthington stars as Perseus, a demi-god, who vows to take revenge on Hades for killing his human family, by killing the Kraken and then destroying Hades.

Every year, Warner Bros. tries to release a big budget film to gain some extra money before the summer movie season starts up. It has worked so far with 300 and The Watchmen. Clash of the Titans broke a record for best opening Easter weekend last week, so Warner Bros. are certainly on the right track with this strategy. However, they might not be making much more on the film.

We all learned from Avatar that when you do 3D the correct way, it can be an amazing experience. What Clash of the Titans did that I believe is going to severely hurt the film it’s second and third week in theatres, is that they filmed the whole thing, saw Avatar’s success in 3D, then decided eight weeks before the films’ release to convert it to 3D. The outcome was a horrible mess. James Cameron himself said that it looked more like 2.8D instead of 3D. What made Avatar so successful was that people wanted to go experience it again. No one will want to experience these effects again.

Aside from the effects, Titans still has other problems going on, mainly the story. The film just rushes straight into everything. There is really no character development. How can we care about a queen who is in danger if she is abruptly shoved in and out of our face very quickly? Everything is so fast paced; it is hard to enjoy the film. Even the epic battle against the Kraken that is built up the whole film, is just over and done within a matter of minutes. And then after the "epic battle" is over, the film just ends.

Another problem for me was the CGI. I have seen much better before. I don’t know if it was from the conversion or what, but I think it is sad when Medusa from “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief”, a kids film, looks better than the Medusa in this film. The scorpion scene was also a little hokey. It seemed that they just rushed through this whole production. If you want to make a movie great, you have to take some time on it, again a perfect example is Avatar.


I think a great cast was put together, unfortunately the director, Louis Leterrier, failed to deliver the rest. Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Finnes and the supporting cast all did a great job with what they had to work with. There were two characters however, who had the role as “comic relief” for the film that I could not stand. There is no need for “comic relief” in a film like this.

This needed to be a summer film. I get that Warner Bros. was only trying to maximize profit by not having to compete with other big budget films, but I guarantee that decision will end up hurting them in the long road. This was something I was really looking forward to, but in the end I came out feeling unimpressed and there was no urge to rush back and see it again. But hey, Hollywood is all about the remakes these days, so I’m sure in ten years, they will take another whack at it. I give it a two out of five.