Clash of the Titans

Disappointment is the only word I would use to describe how I felt exiting the theater. “Clash of the Titans” suffers mainly from the same thing that brought down “Alice in Wonderland.” The 3D effects were awful simply because the movie was transformed into three-dimensional instead of being filmed that way. Also, I was extremely let down by the special effects. All of the best scenes for CG action were given away in the previews. The original story was messed with too much, and ended up not making much sense. This film had potential to show up the 80s original, but instead it totally botched it.

“Clash of the Titans” was originally filmed for 2D, but in post-production it was hastily converted to 3D. As such, the effects looked worse than those old View-Master toys we had as children. They actually dwarfed the visuals. Your eyes feel like they are being pulled out of your head because the visuals look like they have been stretched back into the screen instead of towards you. It is a very unpleasant experience, and not at all worth the extra cash.

In a movie such as “Clash of the Titans” it is absolutely necessary that the special effects be perfect. And they succeeded in that area. The effects were very, very good, all the way through. In the previews, we saw main character Perseus battling various evil creatures. And that was about all that happened in the movie. In other words, all of the good action scenes were spoiled in the previews, which took all of the fun out watching them. “Oh yeah, I remember that, I saw it in the trailer…” was all I was thinking throughout the two hour running time. You could get the gist of the entire movie without ever having to pay money to see it.

This film is, of course, a remake of the 1981 “Clash of the Titans.” In the original, the hero Perseus killed monsters and traveled to the Underworld all to save his one true love from Hades’s wrath. In this version, he does all these things because he’s ticked off at Hades for killing his family and because he has daddy issues with Zeus. Not only is this identical to the storyline of February’s “Lightning Thief,” but it also totally changes the essence of the film, in a bad way. At least in the original, Perseus had a good reason for risking his life over and over again for the girl. In this film, it just doesn’t add up.

Overall, “Clash of the Titans” was just a bad remake of the original film. It’s best special effects were all shown in the theatrical trailer, and they were worsened by cheap, headache-inducing 3D effects. The story was screwed around with, and the end result was terrible. This film isn’t worth seeing in theaters, and especially not in 3D. It gets 4 out of 10 stars. You’ll get what you want in the original.