I am a fan of Ray Harryhausen. While I do not activley seek his movies, I acknowledge that he is a revolutionary genius and has given us some undeniably iconic moments of cinema, ranging from the Skeleton men from Jason and the Argonauts, to the collapsing Washington Monument from Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.
His final professional work was the classic film Clash of the Titans. The acting maybe wasn't the best, and it was pretty campy, but on a whole, it was an awesome film. A big part of it's fame was the iconic moment where Zeus ordered the gods to Release the Kraken! and the battle between Perseus and Medusa, filmed with Stop Motion (Virtually Harryhausen's only special effect method) with flickering fire in the background, something even today's films have difficulty with.
So naturally, when it was announced that the film would be remade as a Hollywood blockbuster...People were enraged. The film would definatley work, but do you really think you need to update a classic? I know it's not one of the 'Classic Classics' and heck, I liked 05' King Kong, but that was pretty damn close to the original (sorta), and was really good. Anyway, I was one of the people who thought that the film would be okay, so me and my friend Robert (random_fan) went and saw it in 3D.
Oh boy.
To start off with, I groaned before the story even started. They felt that a prologue was required. Prologues can help, and they're not always bad. Lord of the Rings worked pretty well, and god knows that Star Wars owes at least a bit of it's popularity to the awesomeness that is the space crawl. And I will admit, here it wasn't overdone, we saw constellations representing the gods as opposed to the real thing. Ironically, this is much cooler than how they actually appeared in the film.
Perseus is the son of Zeus, birthed through the wife of a king who dared challenge his rule, and later adopted by a fishing family. Despite assuring us that he has never needed to wield a weapon, and has been raised as a fisherman, Perseus is ripped beyond all hell, and can wield a sword like a grade A badass. They say it's because he has Zeus's blood in his veins, but nobody points it out other than that.
Plot holes abound, with Adaption decay for good measure. They think that instead of giving the gods a mysterious presence, we want to see them in all their lame ass glory. Yes, they are big and have shiny armour, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief had them seem more epic than that. And you've gotta love how the humans think that they stand even a chance against the gods, just because they need their prayers to remain immortal. Yeah, piss off the gods who...what am I saying, why would you even try to piss off a GOD? It's not even portrayed in the sort of Did you just Punch Out Cthulhu sense, they just think the gods are weak. These people get whole armies killed trying to just insult the gods, and consider it a victory, I'll admit it's lampshaded, but just think about this.
They are trying to fight the gods, to actually dethrown them, claiming that the gods need their prayers to survive and they don't need anything from the gods. Wait, aren't you pissed off BECAUSE you need crops and animals from them and they aren't giving you any? YOU FAIL!
Talking about the gods, they barley leave an impression. I never thought that I'd prefer Jim Wood's Hades in a serious Fantasy flick.
And Zeus, one minut he's saying how the world has betrayed them and that they do not deserve life, next minute he's going on about how they need the humans love more than anything. Not prayer, love, always love. What? Do you want a hug, Zeus? Almost every time you see him it's, love this, love that. Do you know what image you put into my head with all this talk about Love?
And the editing is weird. Perseus bursts out of a giant scorpion, I didn't even see him get eaten! And don't get me started on the 3D. I know the film was converted into 3D afterwards, but the still frame adverts reminding us to put the glasses on looking more like they were coming at me than the goddamn monsters! Oh, and did I mention Andromeda barley does anything aside from give one rousing speech, talk to Perseus and her scenes where they're fretting about the Kraken before her rescue. The classic actually set her up as a character!
This film has barley anything to stand on. If you're going to remake a classic, you need more than one positive! I guess you want to know what that positive is, rigth? Okay then. The film is f*cking awesome.
I can't honestly say the film is great (I just spent half an hour talking about it sucking), but halfway through, it suddenly becomes awesome! Calibos (who I think is the King whose wife had Perseus) is fricking kick ass. Perseus gets points for punching him in the face, but Calibos can take out the whole gang! And then, cutting his hand off only summons giant scorpions! The heroes have some serious balls for even trying to fight the thing, letalone winning. I even felt sad when it died, cos I wouldn't get to see it kick ass any more. Then there's the scene at the River Styx. "The ferryman only ferries the dead" says one man, "Any volunteers?" says another, brandishing his sword. That's equal to one of the few good moments of Percy Jackson ("Only the dead may enter here. Go die, and come back.").
Then there's Medusa. While not really comparable to the classic version, she's definatley cooler than what we saw in Percy Jackson, played by Uma Thurman. Did anyone bother to tell her that her perfromance as Poison Ivy was bad? Cos, looking at that, I think they forgot.
With actors, I have to say that...Wait, is that Liam Neeson as Zeus?
Holy crap it is! Liam Neeson is Zeus...I can't say it's completley unexpected. I'm still going by what I said. He looks cool in that picture, but in the film it just seems campy. But come on! It's Liam Neeson!
The film even manages to make something easily considered girly like Pegasus awesome. All you need to do is change his color.
And can anyone say, 'Giant Scorpion Mounts?'
But all of that fails in comparison to the Kraken (or as Hades says, Krarken). It is epic. Oh god it is epic. An awesome leviathon of a beast which genuinley gives you the feeling of a giant goddamn monster! This thing is epic! And even it's defeat (turned to stone) is done cool.
You may also remember Bubo, the talking clockwork Owl from the original, which has been called a rip off of R2-D2 (actually a coincedence). At one point, someone pulls out the robot from a chest and asks about it, another person tells him to forget about it and put it back. I loled.
So, I guess if you like awesomness, definatley check out Clash of the Titans. It dosn't really compare to the original, but it's definatley awesome. I'll admit to having accentuated the negative a fair bit, but trust when I tell you that this film spews awesome from it's eye sockets. Just expect some wallbanging.
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