REVIEW: Clash Of The Titans

From Epic Feature To Epic Fail!

I was looking forward to this film! It was a remake of a film I had loved as a kid, an epic tale of action and adventure with amazing stop motion effects by Ray Harryhausen and some slightly dodgy eighties hair! I liked the characters, the edge of humor and the fantastical nature of it. It rocked! So when I saw the trailor for a remake I thought "Woohoo! I've got to go and see that!" And so I did and it was... abysmal!!

We're all special effects nuts here, right? So let us set aside the complete lack of character development and a script so bad that it didn't even make the characters unlikable just unmemorable. Lets forget, just for a moment, the uninspiring performances by the films 5 star ensemble cast. Lets even put a pin in the fact that the story, that was neither true to the original film or the myth, limped a long at a speed that made you want to eat your own spleen by half way through! Let us not dwell on any of this and instead lets get right to the heart of the matter... the special effects sucked!!

That was perhaps the cruelest blow, that where as the original (dated as they look now) had effects that were so beautifully crafted and wonderfully animated so that everything from the golden owl Bubo (who merely makes a guest appearance in the new version) to the scaley faced Medusa was full of character. There was no doubt with whom you sympathised, the bad guys were scary, the good guys were couragous and the film even had a none too subtle moral at the end. Now of course films like Jurassic Park and more recently Avatar have made Harryhausens stop motion effects look dated, now even kids programs use cutting edge CG - but then nowadays I can use the same software that makes Hollywood blockbusters on my laptop, so times change - which is why I was so horrified to see that Clash Of The Titans effects looked so ropey. From the unrealistic movements pretty faced Medusa to the giant scorpians none of the effects seemed quite there, instead appearing to have escaped out of a PS2 game to hijack the film!! The most engaging characters in the movie had to be Pegasus, the winged horse who had had a slight make over since his 1980's incarnation but who moved and flew realistically and the fleeting introduction to the cursed and powerful desert people, the djin, of whom it would have been nice to find out and see more of.

But these two elements were too small and too fleeting to save the film and in the end the main feeling the film left was disappointment. It was something with so much potential and promise and, I will admit, a cracking trailor and it was such a shame that it came out as less epic feature film and more epic fail!!