Clash of the Titans | Little White Lies

Clash of the Titans

02 Apr 2010 / Released: 02 Apr 2010

A man in military-style armour with a serious expression, standing in a dimly lit area.
A man in military-style armour with a serious expression, standing in a dimly lit area.
3

Anticipation.

The original is a classic. The modern remake could be an awesome spectacle.

1

Enjoyment.

Two hours of life you will never reclaim.

1

In Retrospect.

Thank the gods for Gemma Arterton.

A big-bud­get 3D remake of a clas­sic and pop­u­lar spec­ta­cle film star­ring the guy from Avatar.

Sam Wor­thing­ton plays Per­sues, the orphaned demigod of Zeus and the queen of Argos. Per­sues becomes caught up in a quest to pro­tect Argos against Hades, the God of the Under­world (Ralph Fiennes) and broth­er of Zeus (Liam Nee­son). Hades man­ages to con­vince Zeus to allow him to reek hav­oc on the increas­ing­ly arro­gant and rebel­lious mor­tals, lead­ing to the immor­tal line: Unleash the Kraken!”

Fol­low all that? Exact­ly. Euripi­des didn’t exact­ly write air­port nov­els, and the need to pro­vide reams of expo­si­tion and duti­ful­ly explain the mythol­o­gy to a pas­sive audi­ence weighs heav­i­ly on the sword and san­dals sub-genre. After the jus­ti­fied suc­cess of Glad­i­a­tor, we’ve been forced to endure Troy, Alexan­der and King­dom of Heav­en, to name a few. They were over­ly-long, episod­ic and baggy.

Clash of the Titans, it seems, appears to be attempt­ing the oppo­site. Like Zack Snyder’s 300, this is a thin­ly veiled excuse for one mas­sive set-piece after anoth­er. There’s lit­tle con­cern for char­ac­ter devel­op­ment or nar­ra­tive arc, lead­ing almost every sin­gle actor to descend into over-act­ing. Campy and retro, it’s less Ben Hur, more Flash Gordon.

There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly wrong with this. Watch­ing Fiennes dressed like an extra in a pri­ma­ry school pro­duc­tion of the Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show could be quite fun after endur­ing his po-face for two hours of The Read­er. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, Clash of the Titans is a big­ger mess than the mod­ern Greek econ­o­my. The dia­logue is blunt, the expo­si­tion relentless.

The action sequences are repet­i­tive and you’ve seen the Mon­sters before. The 3D does noth­ing to hide the all too appar­ent real­i­ty that this is not offer­ing any­thing new. So the only thing left to do is become bored, and then irritated.

And so on to the accents – the Medusa of epic films. Some­one should real­ly hold a con­ven­tion or some­thing, or maybe, you know, make a film where they speak Greek? After Col­in Farrell’s Alexan­der from Gal­way and Pitt’s Achilles from Soho, Sam Wor­thing­ton seems to have plumped for some­where between Mel Gib­son Scot­tish and Croc­o­dile Dundee. Gem­ma Arter­ton breezes along in a monot­o­ne that sug­gests she’s had a cou­ple of vod­ka mar­ti­nis and a val­i­um. She could have saved some for us.

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