Clash of the Titans (2010)

 

Reboots or reworkings are very often hit-or-miss. It's always tricky: either you're not appealing to fans of the original enough, or maybe a little too much. And while arguably the heart was in the right place for this one (you can tell the makers were fans of the original), that still leaves the fact that this film is, in essence, a hot mess of a project. 

No, it really isn't any good. A shame, though. They did try.

Also based very loosely on the myth of Perseus, this one roughly follows the same outline of the 80s version, but with a lot of tweaks and additions/changes. Here, Persues' mom Danae doesn't survive and Calibos is actually not some prince but Danae's real world husband. He also doesn't get morphed into an evil satyr, but is struck by lightning and thus becomes deformed. 

Okay then. Fair enough.

Perseus is raised as a fisherman, but his family is one day unceremoniously offed by Hades. A case of wrong place, wrong time, so Persues of course wants revenge on the gods. He is taken to the city of Argos, where it turns out princess Andromeda is to be sacrificed to the Kraken in ten days time. 

Again with those weird time limits and opportunities to screw it over. The gods really are idiots, aren't they?

So it's off to find a way to kill the Kraken. They pass by the Stygian witches, have a brawl with massive scorpions, meet up with the Djinn (this is new) and eventually make it down to Medusa's lair for her head and then it's off to Argos again to stop the Kraken. 

So, in spite of some minor changes, this keeps fairly close to the original, storywise. And yet, here none of the beats really work. Sure, it's all flashy and modernized, especially in style and tone. But the magic is nowhere to be found. There was a sense of wonder and awe in the original and - perhaps more importantly - you actually cared for the characters. Yes, even the ones with limited screentime. They felt alive. These are just cardboard cutouts of characters and serve no purpose, other than just being there. 

You know what's even worse? They assembled quite a lot of capable actors for the roles. Sam Worthington is slumming and is straight up boring as Perseus, but there are people like Mads Mikkelsen, Alexa Davalos, Gemma Arterton and even Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson for cripes' sake! But Neeson and Fiennes are actually the best part about this, as their Zeus and Hades work well off one another. It's a shame that Fiennes felt the need to use his Voldemort-voice for Hades, as it is hugely distracting. 

Still cool how Neeson says: "Release the Kraken!", though.

The special effects are bland and uninspiring. It's just too bloated and too akin to literally any other actionflick of the same era. And to point out that the original was better in every respect: compare the scenes in Medusa's lair. The original was slow, but had tons of atmosphere, it felt creepy and Medusa was threatening and mysterious. Here, she's just a hyperfast, sexy snakelady that has absolutely no menace or weight to her role. Nope, it has no impact whatsoever and the soldiers that die are so generic that you won't give a rat's arse whether or not they die. 

And yes: we were meant to care. 

Sure, it all flies by at ridiculous speed, but there is nothing remotely memorable or enthralling about this one. Go check out the original. 

To be fair: the sequel to this one did fare better.