Clash Of The Titans is a re-telling of the story of the demi-God Perseus, his slaying of the gorgon Medusa and his vanquishing of the sea monster, here called the Kraken. Therein lies the first thing I took issue with. This may be considered a minor and slightly frivolous gripe, but when I go to see a film called "Clash Of The Titans" is it ignorant of me to expect to see a titan in it? I never find it a good start when the film's title misleads you, but I will try to judge this film by it's contents not my foolish preconceptions that the title will be somehow connected to the events of the film. Unless it is of course not making reference to the Greek forerunner deities and is simply making reference to the titanic achievements of Perseus against overwhelming odds, but somehow I doubt it.
That is pretty much all you get with this film as well. A small bit of exposition at the start setting up Perseus' motivation, and then it's pretty much an hour of Sam Worthington screwing around with and kicking the crap out of large imaginary CG animals...
I say positives, that should be singular, as there is really only one. The action scenes. On the whole they are exciting, involve some fairly well done monsters, are fast paced, adequately directed and mildly entertaining on a superficial level. If that is enough to justify you seeing a film, as I am well aware it is for some cinema goers, then you will enjoy this film. However at the risk of mentioning a popular film twice and being labelled a fanboy, which I definitely am not, Avatar did the same kinds of spectacular CG fight scenes and did them far better. Me however, I prefer a little more substance. Unfortunately the action takes up a majority of the film, and when the actors start having to open their mouths that's when this film goes downhill.
This has got to be one of the worst scripting jobs I've seen in a long while. Every scene is packed with tired cliches you've seen hundreds of times before, and you've seen executed better. I almost physically cringed at some of the pungent cheesiness spewing forth from the screen in front of me. All the dialogue reeks of minimal effort with the exception of 1 or 2 funny lines that actually got a laugh out of the audience at my screening, which I don't see too much at my cinema.
They didn't even bother trying to alter any stereotypical character tropes, for example the most laborious and tiresome character in this film was "cynical experienced soldier who is closed off and distant because of death of daughter". There I summed up a major supporting character in this film accurately in 14 words. I don't even remember what his name was because I was given no real reason to give a toss about him, despite him having massive amounts of screentime. You don't even get the bit about his daughter dying until literally about 5-10 minutes before he kicks the bucket anyway which begs the question why the hell bother telling us? I'm not suddenly going to develop sympathy for him because you revealed in a not very touching scene, that his daughter just happens to be dead, when you've given me nothing interesting about him to go on before now.
On the subject of characterisation as well, for some reason they decided to make Perseus out to be some kind of asshole. There is a point in the movie where he is confronted by the above mentioned boring tosspot character, as to why he did not use a sword gifted to him by the Gods to fight when it could have saved the lives of some of the men (as for what benefits a slightly shinier sword would have over his regular one aside from possibly blinding your adversaries briefly is not explained). Perseus argues that he does not want to use this somehow infinitely superior shiny sword because it was given to him by his dad who he hates (as for why he hates his dad (Zeus) when his uncle (Hades) was responsible for the death of his family I just assumed it's because Perseus is a bit thick and immature and the film needed drama). This is when people's lives are on the line here and our supposed hero is willing to let his comrades die because of his daddy issues? What the hell?
He claims he would rather accomplish this quest "as a man" and "without their help" which instead of sounding moral and resolute just strikes me as snooker-fucking-loopy for a hero supposedly in the business of saving lives. From this I can only conclude that Perseus is quite the selfish bastard and would rather see people who trust him die than swallow some of his pompous pride and use all tools and means at his disposal to get the job done with as few casualties as possible. Good job making the original Greek hero into a dick guys.
Perseus' love interests with Andromeda and Io were given little to no attention aside from a clumsy and chemistry-less scene in the bowels of the ferry to the underworld between Perseus and Io. I'm not usually too big on romance but this film would have benefited immensely from a bit more development in that area, just to show Perseus as slightly relatable if nothing else.
Throughout the film, without really looking, I picked out a number of little things that just didn't make sense either with how the characters behaved or what happened. The screenplay was just full of little plot holes that had a potentiating effect as the film continued, serving to just bemuse and annoy me slightly.
Off the top of my head one right near the end after the Kraken is defeated in spectacular, yet still slightly underwhelming fashion, the freshly rescued Andromeda is on a beach with Perseus and she states to him that "Argos will need a new ruler". How the hell is she supposed to know that? Yes her father, the king of Argos was killed but she was at no point aware of the fact. During his demise she was dangling from a wooden structure and falling into the sea. She at no point saw or became aware of the fact her father was dead, yet clairvoyance allowed her to realise this upon being washed up on a beach. She then reacts totally emotionlessly to her father being dead and the realisation of her new psychic superpowers.
To sum this film up, I would only recommend this to anybody who's attention can be held entirely by pretty CG rendering and the vast array of beards on display from the Olympus costume department. If you like any kind of depth from your films I'd give this one a miss.
Oh as a side note as well, this film is made immeasurabley better if every time they mention Argos, instead of thinking about the coastal city you picture the high-street shop [http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Home.htm] nestled away against the cliffs, with the "King Of Argos" sitting atop his mighty throne of catalogues and stock checking machines.