Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
4/9/10
Movie moguls, like Greek
Gods, shape our cinemagoing destinies with their slightest whims.
For us, it's about being transported and entertained. For them, it's
all about the money. And current thinking about where that money
is to be found leads in every way to Warner Bros.' Clash of the Titans.
It's a remake of a well-known, if not necessarily well-loved, old title
from the studio vaults (although only shareholders and accountants believe
there's actually a difference between money spent paying writers for original
ideas and paying the same writers to reimagine ideas other writers had
for you decades before). It's filled with name actors, including
the red-hot star of all-time Box Office Champ Avatar.
And even better, it's in 3D! Well, it's kinda in 3D (we'll get to
that later) but it looks the same on the poster either way. To put
it mildly, from the suits' point of view, the Clash of the Titans
we paid our money to see couldn't be more of a cynical money grab.
Congratulations, then, to director Louis Leterrier and his writers (Travis
Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi are credited) for doing their best
to give us our money's worth, seeing in Clash not only a chance
to restage the famous scenes from the original with modern big-budget flair,
but also to explore themes of the relationship between Gods and Men that
really resonate in our world of haves and have-nots. The result runs
long in the middle as our heroes wander the desert, but Clash of the
Titans marks a significant improvement over its campy predecessor,
which should only help it to put even more gold in the studio's coffers.
It is the time of the Greek
Gods, after brothers Zeus (Liam Neeson), Poseidon (Danny Huston) and Hades
(Ralph Finnes) used the monstrous Kraken to defeat the Titans and assume
reign over the universe. Zeus created man so his prayers would fuel
the Gods' immortality, but tricked Hades into reigning in the Underworld,
where only man's fear sustained him. But humans have grown weary
of the Gods' whims and become rebellious, leading Zeus to agree to Hades'
plan to put them back in their place. After King Kepheus (Vincent
Regan) and Queen Cassiopeia (Polly Walker) declare themselves superior
to the Gods and their daughter Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) more lovely than
the Goddess Athena, Hades declares that the Kraken will rise and destroy
their city unless they sacrifice Andromeda to it. Only one man in
the room is not brought to his knees by his power: fisherman Perseus
(Sam Worthington), revealed by this to be a Demigod, the son of Zeus and
a human woman. Encouraged by Io (Gemma Arterton), who's secretly
watched over him all his life, Perseus leads a group of soldiers on a quest
to learn how to destroy the Kraken. But Hades has other things in
mind, dispatching half-human Calibos (Jason Flemyng) on a mission to stop
them as a religion begins to take root in the doomed kingdom: one
that sends prayers and power to the God of the Underworld.
As the last great Ray Harryhausen
FX-spectacular, the original Clash marked the end of a movie era,
and indeed the look of it and this remake seem separated by far more than
29 years. Leterrier takes pains to place his Titans in a visually
believable world, and for the most part succeeds. From the Gladiator-inspired
costumes of the humans to the glowing armor of the Gods, every effort is
made to avoid the appearance of set-bound Greek spectacle. But in
other ways, it's a surprisingly faithful remake, following the map laid
out by Beverley Cross' original screenplay as though searching for treasure.
And as well it should, because her structure is sound: it's depth
that the original lacks, and Beacham et al do their best to fill in textures
and motivations. Does Perseus spend a little/way too much time waxing
about how awesome his adopted father (Pete Postlethwaite) was? Hell,
yeah, but the dialog contains quite a few clues that the role was written
for someone 15 years Worthington's junior. Did I have a such a hard
time telling many of the soldiers and supporting Gods apart that even their
photos on IMDB don't help? Yup. Is the Living Tree dude who
accompanies our heroes almost as ridiculous as the original's robot owl
Bobo? Pretty much. Does the story get bogged down in the desert
and seriously overestimate my interest in watching Perseus and company
fight one giant scorpion after another? Cha-ching. But lots
of stuff goes right as well, starting with the Gods and their troubled
relationship with the mortals that worship them.
Greek mythology scholars
may blanch in horror at the decades of corrections they're going to have
to make to the historical worldview of kids who saw this movie, but the
writers have done a terrific job with that most daunting of theological
questions: explaining the relationship between man and God.
It seems Clash's Zeus and company wouldn't live forever without
their subjects: Zeus created Man so that his emotions would feed
power and immortality to the Gods. Zeus feeds off their prayers,
Hades off their fear, and presumably so on and so on (while name actors
are cast as most of the other Gods, they mostly settle for single lines.
Perhaps the DVD will flesh them out a bit). What does Man get out
of the deal? Well, he gets to exist, but gratitude for the fact of
a life of suffering and toil gets old in a hurry and Clash finds
its mortals not just uppity, but legitimately aggrieved. Perhaps
the remake's most interesting addition to the story is the cult of Hades
that grows during Perseus' quest. If you can work some legitimate
material about the way human suffering begets religious extremism into
a 3D movie with the Kraken and Medusa, you're doing your job.
Ah, yes, you were wondering
when I'd get to Titans' most famous mythological poster children, weren't
you? I can happily report that the Medusa sequence is tense and fun,
as is the creepy visit to those three nasty witches who send our heroes
in her direction. But the selling point for any Clash of the Titans
(and this one in particular) is that Kraken. The original's four-armed
terror, for all his awesomeness to my 8-year-old self, bears a more than
passing resemblance to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's Abominable
Snow Monster. The new Kraken is a significant upgrade: utterly
colossal, cleverly designed and just plain mean. He doesn't get a
ton of screen time, but he sure does live up to the hype engendered by
months of movie geeks shouting “Release the Kraken!” in imitation of Neeson's
Zeus. He's probably the movie's only effect you'd call truly extraordinary
(the many forms of Hades are quite creative but not visually groundbreaking),
but the new movie's visuals generally get the job done.
Of course, most audiences
will be disappointed by the look of Clash of the Titans because
they're paying extra for an awesome 3D spectacle, and Warner Bros.' decision
to retrofit the movie for the third dimension is, to say the least, overreaching.
An opening sequence pointing out the heroes and villains of Greek myth
among the constellations really pops, giving the viewer hope, but once
we've settled into the footage that was shot with real actors, it becomes
clear that the best the conversion process could do is to make the actors
in the foreground noticeably closer to us than the mountains behind them.
Sadly, there are moments when a little shaft of sunlight hits Worthington's
otherwise shadowed neck and it too seems to be several feet behind the
rest of his head. Letterier used handheld cameras and the same general
blurring of the backgrounds that create the illusion of depth in most movies,
and both work against the 3D effects that create a certain amount of vertigo
on their own if not properly shot and viewed. Nobody's a bigger 3D
geek than me (at least, I don't THINK so...), but truth be told I'd have
probably had a better time at the 2D Clash many theaters are carrying.
It's really the same deal as colorization or lopping the tops and bottoms
off of pre-widescreen movies: a film should be seen in the format
it was shot in.
So, anybody wondering how
the actors were? Actually, they were pretty good. Worthington
does a great job of seeming like a man of an ancient time, and pulls off
the simultaneous bitterness and idealism of his character. Davalos
makes a great Princess and Mads Mikkelsen is solid as the warrior who teaches
Perseus the way of the sword. And, of course, you get a splendid
Schindler's List rematch between Neeson, who makes Zeus a perfect
mixture of arrogance toward and affection for his creations, and Finnes,
who does a wonderful job working with the special effects he embodies to
create a truly alien character.
Clash of the Titans
bucks the trend of recent remakes, being truly loyal to the structure and
intent of the original while taking advantage of the things we've learned
in the years since to make it a richer, better story (watch for a hilarious
moment while Perseus armors up that winks at the original's campy excesses).
It's far from perfect, but is a fair bit farther down the Perfect Road
than its predecessor, although the original Clash can at least say
it knew better than to be retrofit for Comin' At Ya!-era 3D. |
