Clash of the Titans: Movie Review

So, I got to see this as a sneak preview, as I know a bunch of 'insider' friends. I, like many people of my age, grew up thinking the original Clash of the Titans was a classic and Ray Harryhausen's best stop-action work. Well, experience now tells me otherwise, but you can't take away that the original in many ways shaped my love of the Greek mythological genre, and of adventure movies in general. The original (which, unfortunately for it, opened the same week as Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the latter becoming an all-time money maker and classic, and the former more of a cult classic) was one of the great Greek mythologic tellings in Hollywood history.

And that is why I was looking so forward to this remake.

And that is also why, overall, I am sorely disappointed.

Frankly, this is a boring action movie, and nothing else.

Now, couple caveats to begin with. This 3-D movie? It isn't a 3-D movie. Oh, sure, there are occasional uses of depth perception, but this is more like a 3-D movie of 10 years ago than current standouts Avatar and Alice In Wonderland. In fact, I recommend you avoid the 3-D version...it is more distracting than entertaining.

The second caveat is that apparently, the producers didn't like much of the original movie. Andromeda? She is an afterthought. Really. Andromeda, who is the 'muse' for the entire adventure is neither a knowable or likable character. In fact, you could have replaced her with a cardboard dummy, and I am not sure you would have noticed much of a difference. In the original, Andromeda was the only reason Perseus kept fighting against all odds. In this movie, I wonder why Perseus could just have picked up a number of other chicks along the way.

And...no Bubo. Well, o.k., Bubo is there for about an eyeblink. And I know...as an adult, Bubo seems ridiculous beyond belief. But it helped move the story along. How else did Perseus know what to do along the way? Bubo was a messenger of th gods, in a sort of way. In this movie...he is a gag reel, and nothing else.

Now, the Gods were probably better characters here than in the original. Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson as Hades and Zeus were great. But, in many ways, they are better than Perseus and Andromeda.

Now, this was a relatively entertaining film. I could imagine worse ways to spend a couple hours and ten bucks. But the 3D is almost unwatchable. And the story is, to say the least, subpar. If you go into this movie to waste two hours with minimal entertainment, fine. If you go to be amazed like you were a child during the first one, and have your affinity of the Greek Gods and myths to be enlivened, you will be sorely disappointed.