Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Clash
of the Clunkers
(Clash of the Titans, 4/12/10)
By Nicholas Nicastro
So
what's the point of remaking a movie like Clash of the Titans,
the 1981 Ray Harryhausen sword & sandal epic that, truth be told,
was not very good to begin with? Simple: in Hollywood's view, the advent
of CGI has wrought a revolution in filmmaking as momentous as color
or sound. Remaking an effects epic from antiquity (that is, before the
year 2000) amounts not just to making it again, but making it
right. So for those who thought that all the original Titans
needed was photorealistic special effects, your ship has arrived. Release
the kraken!
So much for the theory. In practice,
2010's Clash is the predictable result when a film runs the gauntlet
between the Scylla of indifferent writing and the Charybdis of mind-numbing
spectacle. We get a lot of gee-whiz effects, to be sure, but not much
reason to care about what's on the screen. Not that the movie is unwatchable—
as these things go, it actually has its moments, every one of which
seems as precious as a small miracle. Olympus just deserves better.
Like the original, this Clash
is about the struggles of mere mortals to overcome the tyranny of the
gods. The hero, Perseus (Avatar's Sam Worthington), is the son
of a human woman and the ultimate skirt-chaser, Zeus (Liam Neeson).
By circumstances too tedious to recount, he becomes the only hope of
the city of Argos to avoid devastation by the kraken, the pet monster
of Hades (Ralph Fiennes). To do so, he leads a mismatched band of hearty
adventurers to slay the Medusa, whose stony gaze is the only weapon
powerful enough to stop the giant. Along for the ride are the deliciously
sardonic Mads Mikkelson (the blood-weeping baddie from Casino Royale)
and Gemma Arterton (also seen in a Bond film, Quantum of Solace)
as Io, a mortal huntress cursed—that's how she puts it, "cursed"—with
ageless beauty.
Back in '81, Olympus seemed like
a hazily envisaged assisted living center, populated by aging heavyweights
from the British acting pantheon like Sir Laurence Olivier and Maggie
Smith. Here the gods, led by Neeson's Zeus, seem a bit more hale and
hearty, but are still cursed to life in eternal soft focus.
Scorned by their mortal spawn, Zeus
and Hades smite the humans with lavish special effects, and Perseus
and the other mortals strike back with feckless defiance. The mismatch
is unconvincing. Still, it becomes mildly entertaining to watch Worthington
and Mikkelson throw themselves with foolish abandon at giant scorpions,
winged demons, or whatever else the gods put in their way. The fight
with Medusa (Natalia Vodianova) is also well done, with the monster
slithering fast amidst the ruins and our heroes attempting to fight
what they can't look upon. (The filmmakers show awareness of some of
the ancient sources by showing Medusa as a lovely—albeit snakily
coiffed—young woman, not just the usual Hollywood harpy.)
Given that he is barely recognizable,
it's tempting to say that Ralph Fiennes is slumming here. But like Oedipus,
Fiennes just can't escape his fate—his Hades has a kind of weary
gravitas that is actually quite compelling. The same can't be said about
Neeson, whose Zeus is basically The Phantom Menace's Qui-Gon
with a Taliban beard and an incongruous suit of medieval armor.
In short, Clash is a cheese
sandwich that's hard to swallow. But at least there's plenty of cheese—
with a dash of spicy mustard on the side .
©2010 Nicholas Nicastro
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