Clash of the Titans

"Clash of the Titans" actually did something I've been advocating, taking a flawed film to remake it. Only idiots and movie producers think it would be a good idea to remake "Casablanc" (but this time in 3-d). While great fun, and the last film to have wonderous Harryhausen special effects, the original "Clash of the Titans" is juvenile in script and sometimes painful in acting. Plus it had a damn R2D2 owl. A remake had every chance of improving upon the original.

Based on that, the new "Clash of the Titan" fails. When Evaluated on its own merits it is an entertaining film that equals the original in many ways. I did not see it in 3-D, but I am given to understand it made it even that much cooler.

The story is essentially the same as the original. Our hero is caught up in a game between gods and men and to save the princess from the horrible kraken he must go on a fearful quest and gather up the head of Medusa. In the first film, our hero Perseus was way cool about discovering that he was a son of a God, and took their gifts quite happily. Our new hero though is all angsty about it, almost to the point of pouting "You aren't my DAD," and running to his room. So that's sort of a fail there. On the other hand ladies have pointed out to me he's much hotter than the first Perseus so that has to be a point in the favor of the remake.

Ok, in the original film someone made a passing remark that princess so and so was equal to the gods, which some gods used as the casi bella to have the whole krakenator thing happen. In this version, there is open rebellion against the gods and soldiers are seen overturning statues of zeus. This really makes no sense to me, in a world where you KNOW gods are real, open rebellion is just stupid and begging for thunderbolts. Fail.

As a subpoint, like in "The Lightning Thief," they protrayed Hades as being tricked into the underworld. Now as I remember the three brothers (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) drew lots for their kingdoms. While everyone wanted the heavens, the underworld wasn't a bad place to rule in classical greek mythology. The worse you can say is that it was a little boring. In the original the gods bickered and fussed and plotted but there wasn't the feel that anyone really had gotten the shaft. I perfer the original for that.

Now this is a weird one, and only a geek man like me can get into it. But the djinn are an instant fail. There is MORE than enough in greek myth that you don't need to go into arab myth for characters. Now this is a minor quibble for obvious reasons not the least is that the original already stole from other myths for kraken (not a creature of greek mythology but rather from the north) That being said, I have to admit the Djinn were pretty cool, and they'd be great in their own film. That's a HINT hollywood, remake a damn Sinbad film.

Big thumbs up on how the Medusa looks, I like she still had the beauty that cursed her. It makes for a nice contrast. I'm not hot nor cold on Kraken itself. Calibos was a lot more badass in a "300" type way. Overall the computer special effects were slick and professional but I'm still a sucker for the old style stop animation. But I bet the kids think differently on that.

So, as I said, this is just like the original in that the kids will love it and it is entertaining. Really, that's a win over all here since that is what the original film did. I wish we would see more films like this.