Clash of the Titans (2010)

- Trash of the Titans

After seeing Clash of the Titans on free TV about a week ago I prayed to god to forgive me.
I prayed for forgiveness because in fact I had seen this picture before and watched it again ... just to be sure about it. And now that I am reminded of what was one of the worst movies of 2010 I find myself guilty because I actually paid the money when it was out in theaters and thus I am part of the reason why we got a sequel called "Wrath of the Titans" today, that was just released and similarly condemned by the critics.

I'll take all the blame. There is no excuse and I dont know what made me do it. At least I saw it in 2D and avoided the extra money for supposedly terrible and in any case needless 3D that was added in post production.

Maybe it was the trailer. I have to admit that the trailer was pretty enjoyable. It was something like two and a half minutes long, had a cool soundtrack (that is I think not in the actual movie?) and ... most importantly, it had every single "highlight" from the full length version in it.

They even showed the huge, infamous kraken that is in the end a rather dumpy, ineffective creature than it is a tough enemy. You usually don't give away the grand finale unless of course you have nothing else to show.

Clash of the Titans is like a cheap B-movie clash of Troy, Lord of the rings and maybe 300.

It is a three-minute music video pumped up to an unbearable bore of over a hundred minutes long feature film, that adds absolutely nothing that we have not seen in the trailer and absolutely nothing that has any artistic merit. It is all surface, no substance.

The special effects are not special at all like we hadn't seen stuff like this before and because of the lack of any relevance or characters to root for they eventually make you fall asleep. Even though or maybe because the film doesn't hesitate to rush from one sleep inducing action scene to another without one proper transition in between there is a lack of energy and no involvement at all.

The writing is excruciatingly bad. It seems like they did not even have a script and only knew that they wanted to show some giant monsters and then tried to build some lame story around it.

It is basically about Perseus, the son of Zeus who has to save the day after the titans plan to destroy the city of Argos by the kraken because the citizens have destroyed a statue of Zeus and abandoned their former belief. After a clumsy and extremely short exposition when Perseus is told about his background he has to go on a long journey to find some mystic witches that apparently are the only ones who know how the kraken can be killed. This most contrived and tedious premise is of course just a device to produce the neccessary running time for the movie.

This leads to an inexplicable trip with one monster after another, each one more dangerous than the one before. Well, actually not. The final battle with the kraken is in fact pretty short and the most unspectacular one.

If there was a script for this it could have been written by a twelve year old in a couple of minutes.
The dialogue is so flat and filled with cliché phrases that you want to shout at the screen "Just shut the **** up!".

The acting is completely wooden even though, aside of Sam "Worthless" Worthington, who has no charisma at all, there are in fact some fine actors in this picture. It is a shame that performers like Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes took on the roles of the titans probably for the paycheck. It was certainly not a stretch for them to play these gods who basically do nothing in the entire film but standing around looking ridiculous in their aweful costumes.

Even though Hades appears on earth a couple of times, this is primarily a monster movie rather than a clash of the titans who don't participate in any battles anyway other than eventually releasing some kraken.

Disregarding the card board figures and the absence of their character development and depth in the story, the movie is also techniqually shallow. The film is poorly edited and there are quite a few shots that feel out of place. It's like they were still in the assembly process but then ran out of time. The sad news is that it is not intentionally dull in the way that it may be suitable for trash-fans but it is simply bad and lacks the irony to be funny. I had not and still have not seen the original but it can only be better than this.

This Clash of the Titans is a painfully boring, horribly paced, poorly acted and staged mess, so skip it, for god's sake!

TRAILER:
Watch the Trailer for 'Clash of the Titans' on Youtube