Clash of the Titans (2010) – at AMK Hub. I’ve been wanting to catch this remake of the 1981 classic and been keeping my fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be a mess even when the first production photos showed a Liam Neeson as Zeus ridiculously clad in shiny armor that seem more in line with Nordic than Greek mythology. But a two hour movie screening at Ang Mo Kio Hub this morning, in a word, Clash of the Titans is disappointing.
The story is only loosely based on the original film, which in itself took only bits and pieces from the widely-known legends. Perseus (Sam Worthington) is the offspring of Zeus and a mortal human woman, gets abandoned as a baby, gets picked up and raised as his own by a fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite). Years pass, and on returning from a fishing trip, Perseus’ family is killed in a crossfire between Hades, God of the Underworld against humans who are rebelling against the Olympian Gods. With nothing to lose, he embarks with other Greek heroes to save the city of Argo before it gets wiped off the map by Hades’ plaything, an impressively CG-created Kraken.
The problems with the film are many. Starting off: Worthington with his US Marine grunt crew-cut is all wrong for the film. Many of his most recent films have seen him playing characters of split lineages or personalities. In Terminator: Salvation, he was half-human half-machine. In Avatar, he was a crippled human in the body of an 8 foot agile giant. In Titans, he’s a demi-God: half-human half-God. Playing characters with divided loyalties should be all familiar for him, but here his portrayal of Perseus is surprisingly disinterested. There’s an early scene where he’s lost his family – but his attempt to exhibit sadness then anger is more bored than either of those two. Even worse is that he makes absolutely no effort to even sound like he’s coming off a mythological age. Granted, no one knows how Greeks talked 3000 years ago, but I’m guessing they don’t sound like 2010 Californian surfer dudes – which is what Worthington’s Perseus sounds like in this film.
As for the supporting characters: Ralph Fiennes plays Hades, or the Greek version of Voldermort here. Heck, he even appears, snarls, sneers in exactly the same fashion as the Dark Wizard of Harry Potter. Neeson shows up with God visual effects (courtesy of badly done CG) and looks positively ridiculous. You never get the feeling that he’s the Ruler Supremo of the Olympian Gods. Rather, in Titans, he’s played like a powerless buffoon who supposedly omniscient couldn’t even guess his brother Hades was plotting against him. There’s also a bunch of a dozen of so characters who play Perseus’ band of heroes, but you know they are the Redshirt equivalent in the film – you’re just waiting for them to get killed off one by one by the mythological beasts the band encounters just to show how serious those things are.
The women fare better – if nothing else, they’re at least attractive to look at. And in Andromeda (Alexa Davalos)’s case she delivers real emotion with those few scenes she has. Gemma Arterton’s Io though also stunningly beautiful was a disappointment however. Once you get over the fact that her character really feels like an fifth wheel in the story – the original film significant ‘woman’ heroine/character of virtue was Andromeda – Io as a main character oscillates through the length of the film: she starts off as an observer at the start of the film, changes into a prophetess when Perseus arrives in Argo, then Amazonian warrior in those big battle scenes, almost-lover of Perseus when the party reaches the River Styx, and then finally someone with no peripheral vision towards the end. You never really get a sense of who she is and she seems just filler for the story to get on, much less buy-into the supposed romance between Perseus and her.
Then there’s the story. Perseus goes a questing on account that the Kraken is going to destroy Argo. Problem is that while the city of Argo is prettily rendered in computer-graphics, the film barely spends any time developing anything resembling a personality for the city, whether through the city’s background, it’s culture, or its inhabitants. There’s a reason why you feel some sadness when the Agammenon’s Greeks sack Troy at the end of Petersen’s epic film. But in Titans, you won’t feel a thing when the Kraken shows up at the end that does his thing on the city. And the three witches’ big scene of the prophecy that Perseus will meet his end with the Kraken. Why bother with making a big deal of this story point if it’s not gonna get resolved?
The CG is also a mixed bag. Medusa looked soooo CG, surprising in this time and year when technology is capable of generating far more believable human-looking fantastical characters. The city of Argo looked fake. The Kraken on the other hand looked positively fierce-some, though it doesn’t get much screen time in the film.
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Truth to tell, there just isn’t a lot of films based off Greek mythology of late. There’s been Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy epic – blogged here in a four part post – 300, the Hercules television series with Kevin Sorbo in the title role, and the odd telemovie on Jason of the Argonauts and Odysseus, but little else. There’s a rich mine of material; stories of the Greek heroic legends and their Gods – I hope that this mediocre effort in Titans won’t put off viewers or productions off revisits to the material.
So, it’s one epic down and a disappointment at that – and another upcoming: Prince of Persia, also starring Gemma Arterton. Here’s to hoping it’s a lot better than Titans.
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