Clash of the Tits.

As you are all probably aware (unless if you have refused to open your eyes when you walk down the street to avoid being barraged with advertisement) Clash of the Titans has been re-made in an attempt to excite and inspire awe in audiences worldwide. The film has a lot to live up to given the huge fan base based around the original 1981 Clash of the Titans due to Ray Harryhausen's legendary stop motion animation which is still jaw droppingly impressive to date.

This modern re-telling of the classic tale obviously has far more sophisticated visual effects at its disposal. You would expect this to mean it has every chance of being an intensely exciting, visually engaging and epic experience which should have been on a par with something like LOTR. Before viewing the film I pre-figured that even if the action sequences were bad at least Liam Neeson playing Zeus and Ralph Fiennes playing Hades would be able to redeem anything for its sheer awesome/comic potential.

Boy, oh boy was I disappointed on every single level. Liam Neeson's Zeus is an emotionless one whose armour glistens as if he is a hyperbolic symbol of a sweet wrapper. His lack of emotion delivers nothing of the rage that I am accustomed to equating with the King of the Ancient Greek Gods. Ralph Fiennes' Hades is a frail and boring one, at times I felt like I was watching Abraham Simpson on-screen. It was absolutely ludicrous. Other huge problems performance wise in the film can be attributed to Sam Borington who seems to categorically refuse to pretend to be English like the rest of the cast do. His thick Aussie accent is at extreme odds in every section of dialogue throughout the film (especially at the beginning with his father played by a bedraggled Pete Postlethwait). On some levels I feel a bit unfair attacking the performances in this film as it is clearly not aiming for any kind of revolutionary acting styles, however the fact that such heavy weights in the acting field let themselves down so repeatedly is fairly unforgivable.

This all said and done the action scenes were perhaps more offensive than the actor's re-envisioning/destruction of such classical and recognisable characters. The key issue with the adrenaline soaked, muscle smothered action scenes is in the choreography. They were stylised to the point of almost appearing like an ancient re-telling of The Matrix. This overly choreographed style simply looks bizarre in an Ancient context. The character's were Argives donned head to toe in heavy armour, for one the sword play between them would have been relatively simplistic and limited due to their taught style of fighting as well as their weight restrictions. However in this film they flip and vault around like a band of well-trained Ninja's. It looks stupid. The camera and editing techniques are overly expressive and it becomes very hard to gain bearing on what the hell is actually going on in most given sequence. Somehow this film makes a fight between a group of Argives and several giant scorpions boring and undeniably forgettable, this is an unforgivable cinematic failure. Just thinking about Greek soldiers fighting giant scorpions is exciting let alone watching it. I hope the director Louis Leterrier and the production team are thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

As a child I was always fascinated with mythology and I think one of the key reasons behind this is how engaging it was as a child to read stories about adversity on such an epic scale. Easy to grasp and very entertaining. The character's in each tale are always extremely dynamic and engaging. This film manages to tear apart any sense of sympathy by simplifying and trivialising each and every character's plot function. Perseus at no point really grieves his parent's death but is simply angry for the entirety of the film and at every single God instead of Hades who is the one who murdered his parents. It is very hard to hold any sympathy for Princess Andromeda as we see her for maybe 3 minutes throughout the film. Perseus' bird Io is a personalityless figure whose sole plot function as a romantic interest is tear jerkingly depressing. There are two arabic hunter's in the film whose plot function is mysterious at best, perhaps comic relief? But at no point were they funny. It was weird. The only character I liked was Draco because he hated every other character in the film about as much as I did.

It is very hard to find anything to recommend about Clash of the Titans whatsoever. One of the worst films I have had the displeasure of seeing in the last few years with some very misjudged performances, boring characters and disengaging action sequences this film pretty much falls flat on its face over every hurdle it limply attempts to jump over. If you want to see something entertaining and fun go and see Kick-Ass, which is by no means perfect but it looks like a masterpiece in contrast to Crash of the Shiteans.