What do you get when you take a highly revered all-time genre classic and give it a modern makeover? You might think this would be difficult to pull off, and with the new release if Clash of the Titans, you’d definitely be correct.
Overall I certainly enjoyed the movie more than not. It got a lot if things right, even improving on a scene or two, and in the end left me not regretting the cost of the ticket. Spoiler stuff here, so if you don’t want to know anything about the movie stop trading until the last paragraph.
In the ‘positives’ category there was the increased focus on mythology over the original. The theology of the gods was really light in the 1980 movie and just a backdrop for Ray Harryhausen’s work to shine. Here it is front and center and Zeus’ and the rest of the gods’ rage is thoroughly understood and apparent. And despite many of the scenes on earth being better in the original, I will defend to the end that Medusa’s confrontation was handled much better here. I also liked Andromeda’s reduced role here. The love story in the first was a bit far fethced and tacked on.
Now the negatives. Outside of Medusa, every other set piece in this movie was lesser. Maybe it’s nostalgia speaking, but you could see the time and effort put into the original stop motion effects. In this movie, the effects were frankly aboutas cookie cutter as they come in Hollywood these days. Perfectly fine mind you, but I just can’t see a young kid coming out of this movie today wondering how they did all of that like children coming out of Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts years ago. The Kraken is a perfect example. Sure the old one is a bit corny nowadays, but there is a cohesiveness and specific design to it. This Kraken was “Let’s throw Godzilla 1998 with a bunch of tentacles in the movie!”
And that is really my biggest fault with the movie. It tried to hit all if the right notes, but never seemed to strive to go above and beyond. Entertaining but I simply doubt it will end up being memorable. In the end perfectly average.
Rating: 3 out of 5