Review: Clash of the Titans
The Pitch: Gods and monsters, and a man trying to make sense of it all whilst maintaining the same facial expression.
The Review: Titans. Will. Clash. Will they? Will they really? Not only one of the least imaginative taglines of all time, but also a false promise, as if suggesting that your Christmas stocking will contain a giant, fire-breathing, axe-wielding robot, but actually there’s just a small tangerine, that’s gone a bit off, and you’re allergic to tangerines.
Everything about this movie screams apathy, from the storyline, which barely manages to scrape together three acts, to the effects, which fail to generate anything other than a mild sense of surprise, rather than the awe which they should inspire. Only the Medusa sequence feels even vaguely suspenseful or dramatic, and even then plays out in an entirely predictable manner.
There are a few plus points in the acting – Ralph Fiennes and Gemma Arterton both feel like they should be in something better, and hopefully will do better in Potter and Persia respectively later this year. Hardly anyone else has anything to get their teeth into, and Sam Worthington continues to prove his abilities to suck the charisma out of almost any scene. The mythology is a little corrupted, but a new spin on some elements would have actually brought some freshness.
I’ll try my best not to mention the horribly derivative Hans Zimmer lite score or the the orangey cinematography. I’m trying to forget the horrible, horrible Bubo cameo which stops the film almost stone dead, making no sense in context. But I cannot avoid mentioning the worst crime, which was to slap a half-hearted 3D conversion on, which rarely has any depth of field and renders many of the action scenes unwatchable. For absolute die-hards only.
Why see it at the cinema: See it in 2D if you must see it, but Fiennes and Arterton really are the only worthwhile elements. If you see it in 3D all you’ll be doing is proving to yourself why conversions are a bad idea.
The Score: 3/10
The Movie Evangelist 