Starring: Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Alexa Davalos, Nicholas Hoult, Danny Huston, Jason Flemmyng, Hans Matheson, Vincent Reagan, Polly Walker, Liam Cunningham and Pete Postlewhatie
From the director of The Incredible Hulk comes Clash of the Titans, the story of a demi-god who decides to go to war against the Gods to avenge his father's death. If you watched the trailer, you could really only think one thing after seeing it: bad-ass. But this film certainly does not deliver. Lets put it this way, Mads Mikkelsen is the best thing about the movie, everything else pretty well sucks. Well actually there is one or two elements that do work really well. Despite some pretty shoddy and unbelievable CGI, the Pegasuses... Pegasai(?) come off really well. The Argonauts are pretty good too. They are given a little depth; Hans Matheson is Red from Shawshank Redemption, he is prepared for anything. Nicholas Hoult is the wide eyed kid in his first battle who is nervous about everything. Liam Cunningham is the old man who should have retired years ago, but is needed, he's also the comic relief. And Mads Mikkelsen is bad-ass, almost Muldoon from Jurassic Park levels of bad-ass. Even some of the stuff on Olympus between the gods is pretty good. The problem is, these functional and entertaining elements of the movie have to take a back seat to the movie and Perseus' quest. While I thought that Sam Worthington was serviceable in Terminator 4, and pretty good in Avatar, he is not great here. He does the action well, he gets angry and hurt, but when he comes to mourn a death, there is nothing in his eyes, he stares blankly at the character, like we do at the screen because there is so little put into that relationship that we feel no connection between the characters. Well there is one connection:
[SPOILERS]
See when I saw the movie, I was expecting one of the two principle women to be with Perseus, either Andromeda or Io, but after finding out who Io was, I assumed it would be Andromeda. See Io has been watching Perseus since he was a kid. When she is introduced, she's sort of a mother figure. She even shows up when they fight the giant scorpions to save her surrogate son. And then while they're on the boat to Hades, (which inexplicably is a houseboat instead of a small raft or something) they come within inches of banging. I understand Perseus' point of view, he barely knows her and she's insanely gorgeous, but she's watched him grow up, she watched over and protected him. If it isn't quite nailing his mother, its the equivalent of nailing one of his mother's close friends, the kind you call aunt despite no blood or marital relationship to. See I found that weird and bothersome.[/SPOILERS]
Neeson and Fiennes ham it up pretty well as Zeus and Hades, and are again one of the more entertaining elements. Its interesting to see them communicate. More interesting than say watching soldiers fight giant scorpions that they clearly could not see, or fighting Medusa who they clearly could not see. (and looks CGI-wise like the Scorpion King from The Mummy 2). But there is very minimal usage of the gods, and we don't get enough insight into the political workings on Olympus, its like they all stand there and listen to Zeus talk. Apollo gets a line, Poseidon gets two lines I think, but not much else happens. We also don't spend enough time knowing anything about Argos. The King (poorly played by the ever unconvincing Vincent Reagan) is meek, and clearly ruled by Attia of the Julii. Not having the guts to give her a stiff backhand for provoking Hades and the Gods. The scenes where we are with a crazy religious zealot are pretty awful too, not by virtue of the writing, but they totally mis-casted the zealot. He was unconvincing, and no one would ever follow someone who looked/sounded like him.
The whole film is poorly mashed together, this is a story that needed more than two hours, but didn't have the writers or a skilled enough director to do that well (I say that despite loving his Hulk movie). By the last 25-30 minutes or so, I was wishing it would end. It began to drag and get incredibly boring. The solution to this?
Insanely enough, making it longer. Because everything was pounded together like a hamburger patty, you don't know or care enough about the characters or what's happening, so by the time we see the Kraken released and Argos in peril, all we can feel is "meh". If this had been say, a mini-series on HBO, they could have done six hour long installments, using this could have eliminated the red-shirt extra argonauts that are killed by Jason Flemyng and the Scorpions and we could have expanded even more on the stories of the few Argonauts we know (Matheson, Hoult, Cunningham and Mikkelsen) and more importantly, we could have spend more time with the Gods. Unfortunately however, we're left with a two hour movie that is jumbled and mashed together.
One of the most aggravating things (not mentioning the stolen designs from Pan's Labyrinth and the idiotic wooden sand people) was the 3D. The jury is in for me, and I don't like 3D. I kept longing to take the glasses off and watch the movie on a regular screen. The glasses are annoying enough, but the filters darken everything far too much and blur all the action, it becomes impossible to understand anything that's happening. This is the problem, Avatar was made for 3D, and like I said, the animated scenes worked great. The live action, not so much. Clash of the Titans was re-done in 3D after they saw the fad was taking off. So not only is there nothing special about the 3D but it makes the experience far worse than it could have been. The movie isn't a complete waste, there is some fun with the gods and the argonauts, and Mads Mikkelsen is genuinely great as Draco, but the movie is a mess of epic proportions, and I found myself bored and angry at the end, and actually hating the movie after the fact. This (spoilerful) diagram should explain:
Legend: Tembo = Postlewhaite, Attia = Polly Walker, Crazy Lary = Jason Flemyng
Rating: 3/10
0 comments:
Post a Comment