Blogging Flashback: Clash of the Titans (2010)

PG-13, 1 hr. 50 min.  Directed by: Louis Leterrier .  Release Date: Apr 01, 2010.  DVD Release Date:  Jul 27, 2010.

****REPOSTED FROM THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH NEW EDITS AND COMMENTS****

Slow progress through a plodding story line is muddled by fast-paced action scenes and random interest-generating characters.  Those were my initial impressions of this movie, a remake of a movie I loved as a kid.  Even the 1980s original has its faults, but none so grievous as the least of what I found here.

The filmmakers managed to make a few basic improvements to the 1980s (semi)classic film of the same name; mostly around the area of effects, and given the thirty-some odd years between the two movies, I'd have been harsh if they hadn't.  Medusa here looks MUCH better and gets more screen time than her 1980s counterpart.  Ditto for the Witches.

I also have to give props to how the fight scenes were set up and choreographed.  They were all pretty good and were spaced frequently enough during the course of the film to keep me from either walking out or throwing Sweettarts at random theater-goers.

If you care about these things, and I only occasionally notice them, I thought the set design and scenery were well-done and visually impressive enough that they took my attention away from the impeding boredom that seemed to lurk behind every plot twist and turn.  This wasn't the first movie with a basis in Greek mythology to bore the crap out of me in the 2010s, and I'm betting even money it won't be the last.  The "damn the gods" concepts twists the actual story line behind the original film, and not for the better.  The semi-war between man and Olympians was a major snooze-fest.  The basis in Bizzaroverse mythology didn't really help matters, although these days, most of the people watching this movie thinks that Persius is the dude from The Lightning Thief, so I'm guessing the teen set is loving this flick.

Casting was pretty rough here, made from a batch of up-and-comers and old favorites who swore they were retiring back in 1999.  Considering this is the first blockbuster of the season, I would have thought they could have gotten better and bigger-name talents.  There was a lot of gore during the passing of the movie, which I tend to think is a common tool to distract and dazzle the audience when they might be dealing with a crap movie, but other than that, there wasn't much that stood out amid the general badness.