Review: CLASH OF THE TITANS

“A titan against a titan.”

That is one line of dialog that is carried over verbatim from the 1981 original CLASH OF THE TITANS to Louis Leterrier’s CG-laden and quite stagnant remake.  Why is it stagnant, you might ask?  In the original film, the Stygian Witch who makes this exclamation said it with a fury, with absolute gusto that what is about to culminate in the film’s final moments could very well change the course of their world.  In this new version of the film, it’s more a passing sentiment, a casual thought that really doesn’t amount much in the end.

That is pretty much where the entirety of the remake lies, in a series of …s when it should be and probably wants to be relying more on its !s.  It’s neither epic nor romantic, something the original film had in droves, and, while it’s not exactly cooth to compare, it’s simply impossible not to gain such a sense from a film that could have been more.  The missed opportunities in Leterrier’s CLASH OF THE TITANS run rampant, moreso even than the titans or the Gods themselves.

It begins in the Kraken-less opening, where we see a coffin surface from the ocean.  Inside lies a dead woman and her crying baby, Perseus, who will, eventually, grow up to learn his place in the world as a Demigod, one who looks an awful lot like Sam Worthington.  After encountering a group of defying mortals and a vengeful Hades, played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes, Perseus, who has been raised by a fisherman and his wife, finds himself alone in the world once again.  He sets out for vengeance against the lord of the underworld, a quest that will, coincidentally, lead him past those Stygian Witches; the Gorgon, Medusa; and the Kraken itself.

It’s not that CLASH OF THE TITANS is without enjoyment.  There are casual nods that will have any fan of the original film grinning like an infant.  One nod is not so casual, however.  It involves Bubo the mechanical owl, and it is probably the only perfect thing this film does.  But nudges, nods, and winks aside, the adventure itself has more than its fair share of ups and downs, and not in the literal, mountainous sense.  In essence, this new version of CLASH OF THE TITANS is a road trip movie, as Perseus and a band of roguish soldiers trek across dense forests and barren deserts to seek out a way to defeat the Kraken.  While this adventure served as the final half of the original film, it is the entire, standard plot found here, and you wonder which of the three screenwriters who worked on the film decided to trim all the fat.

By “fat”, of course, I mean emotional bond and any sense of character development.  There are notions of character here and there.  Mad Mikkelsen plays a soldier with a relatively decent back story.  Gemma Arterton plays Io, the lone female on board the adventure who has a bit of back story to her, as well.  But the main characters in this theater have very little, and you begin to lose interest in much of the key players.

Perseus himself suffers the most from this.  There is never a sense of bond built between the main character of the film and any other character.  His adventure is one of vengeance, even if it follows the same path as that of one saving a damsel in distress.  He is on a quest at first to find the Witches, then to kill Medusa, in order to defeat the Kraken, but it’s not in order to save Andromeda, played here by Alexa Davalos.  It’s to weaken Hades so that he defeat him in the name of revenge.  Saving the damsel from the monstrous sea beast is ancillary.  Because of this switch-up in the story, and the inclusion of Hades in any sense, we never know a Perseus that cares, only a Perseus that seeks vengeance.  It doesn’t help Perseus as a character that Worthington has very little in the way of emotional range.

The Gods in the new CLASH OF THE TITANS aren’t given much more to do, either.  Liam Neeson and Fiennes have a few, nice, key scenes as Zeus and Hades, two brothers who are at odds but who may have to come together to take on the defiance of man.  But every, other God in this film is reverted to window dressing, glorified extras who stand around a computer generated room waiting for Zeus to ask them to leave.  Even Danny Huston makes an appearance as Poseidon, but he literally has one line of dialog and then disappears.  The work of the Gods, though, is left strictly to Neeson and Fiennes, and, though this might not be a complete drawback on the film, it, like so much else, makes you wonder what more it could have been.

A few aspects that don’t tease you with the prospect that they could have been better, though, lies in the glitz and flare of the film’s currency.  There has been much said about the film and the decision to convert it to 3-D after the fact.  Simply put, do not see this movie in 3-D.  It is the biggest distraction found in the film, and, with Leterrier’s inability to hold the camera steady or pull back from extreme closeups, it makes it nearly impossible to tell what’s going on half the time.  The CGI in CLASH OF THE TITANS is lackluster at best, absurd at its very worst.  Even the scene where the group of soldiers enters Medusa’s lair, enticing as it may be, feels hollow once the Gorgon herself enters the picture.

In fact, the whole film feels like a hollow statue, one that crumbles with an ever so gentle touch.  The problems lie a bit in the thin story, a bit in the wooden acting, and a bit in Leterrier’s flimsy direction.  While it may serve as chintzy entertainment, it is impossible to see the film in any other way than through the goggles of what it could have been.  There is no grandness to it, no sense of romanticism, and all of that could have easily been dispersed throughout.  It’s missing in the humans, in the titans, and in the Gods themselves.  And say what you will about those humans who defied the Gods.  At least they acknowledged them.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 stars