CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010 version): The Remake As A Content Delivery System

There’s usu­ally an uproar amongst genre fans when a remake is announced for one of their cult favorites.  However, this phe­nom­e­non was sur­pris­ingly sub­dued when the Clash Of The Titans redux was announced.  Even the most diehard of the Harryhausen fanat­ics had to admit it was one of the stop-motion king’s lesser entries.  Thus, the door was left open for fans to har­bor some hope that a new ver­sion of this film might be the rare remake that actu­ally improves upon its predecessor.

However, hop­ing for some­thing alone can’t make it so — and the 2010 ver­sion of Clash Of The Titans pro­vides a bit­ter object les­son in this fact of life.  The first few moments have a faint glim­mer of promise, with a new back­story that starts with Perseus (Sam Worthington) as the son of a kind fish­er­man (Pete Postlewaite).  Unfortunately, the fish­er­man and the rest of Perseus’ adop­tive fam­ily per­ish at sea when intrigue between the Gods and dis­be­liev­ing mor­tals results in the unleash­ing of the Kraken.

No sooner does Perseus make it to land then he finds him­self embroiled in a con­flict between Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and the king’s fam­ily.  Hades demands that the king’s daugh­ter Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) be sac­ri­ficed as a sign of respect or he will allow the Kraken to destroy their home.  It is also revealed that Perseus is the mor­tal son of Zeus.  The loss of his mor­tal fam­ily and the anger inspired by this rev­e­la­tion inspire him to seek vengeance on the gods by destroy­ing the Kraken.  He enlists a band of heroes includ­ing mil­i­tary leader Draco (Mads Mikkelsen) to help him find a way to stop the Kraken, getting added assis­tance from a mys­te­ri­ous young woman named Io (Gemma Arterton).

As stated before, the film­mak­ers had mul­ti­ple chances to improve upon their model with this remake of Clash Of The Titans — and they botch them in every con­ceiv­able way. The prob­lems start with the lead char­ac­ter.  Perseus has been recon­ceived as a proud, stub­born lunkhead who tends to get the peo­ple help­ing him killed.  He also spends a dis­turb­ing amount of the film’s run­ning time get­ting knocked down or writhing in pain (at the risk of sound­ing like a meat­head, Your Humble Reviewer likes his cin­e­matic heroes to be a bit more manly).

The script is also a mess in other areas: it starts with the idea of mankind rebelling against the arro­gance of the Gods, only to turn its back on this theme by the end (Zeus ain’t a bad guy, he was just mis­led by bad ol’ Hades).  The script also has an overly seri­ous and somber tone that works against the sense of won­der it tries to evoke with its fan­tasy ele­ments and spec­ta­cle.  To make things worse, the film is chop­pily edited, with count­less plot hooks get­ting fum­bled (the rev­e­la­tion that Perseus is Zeus’ son is tossed out like an after­thought) and a pre­pon­der­ance of char­ac­ters who are indis­tin­guish­able because they don’t get intro­duced by name.  As a result, a late scene in the film where the char­ac­ters call out to each other in Medusa’s lair becomes a moment of unin­ten­tional com­edy because the audi­ence doesn’t know who is who.

Louis Leterrier’s direc­tion is indif­fer­ent at best, leav­ing the actors to their own devices and pil­ing on one visually-muddled action scene after another.  Worthington is just kind of there, with his his­torically inap­pro­pri­ate buz­z­cut hair­style com­mand­ing more atten­tion than his act­ing.  The ham­mi­est per­for­mance­come from Fiennes and Jason Flemyng as a recon­ceived ver­sion of Calibos.  The best per­for­mance comes from Mikkelson, who car­ries him­self with the kind of grav­i­tas needed for the kind of hero the film wants to have — it’s a shame he’s rel­e­gated to second-banana status.

Even the effects aren’t that impres­sive.  Case in point: The Kraken.  It may have been poorly animated in the orig­i­nal film but it had a great design.  In the remake, it looks like a shot­gun mar­riage between a snake and a snap­ping tur­tle.  Medusa doesn’t fare much bet­ter, espe­cially since the film­mak­ers have her lunge at the audi­ence and hiss like a snake.  Decent effects like the giant scor­pi­ons suf­fer because the sequences they appear are cursed with hap­haz­ard stag­ing and blender-style editing.

The end result feels like lit­tle more than a bunch of visual-effects sequences held together by the flim­si­est of nar­ra­tives… and that’s because it is.  As Devin Faraci revealed in an excel­lent inves­tiga­tive arti­cle at the CHUD web­site, this film was dras­ti­cally reworked in post-production and the fin­ished film is a patch­work of eleventh-hour reshoots and heav­ily edited-down orig­i­nal footage.  This wrong­headed approach to sto­ry­telling makes the Clash Of The Titans remake a dis­mal slog to get through.  There’s pre­cious lit­tle to get involved in and if you do, it’s likely to get changed around a few min­utes later.

In fact, this really isn’t a fea­ture film.  It’s a Content Delivery System that offers an effects set­piece every reel — and that just isn’t enough to make it watch­able, espe­cially when that fails at deliv­er­ing the most basic ele­ments of sto­ry­telling sat­is­fac­tion.  This wretched, corporate-driven approach makes the 2010 redux of Clash Of The Titans is one of the worst remakes Your Humble Reviewer has ever seen.

Here’s An Amusing Redub Of The Trailer By LordPhillock8: