Clash of the Titans (2010) – Film Review
Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen
Certificate 12
By Roger Crow
When you’re a hardcore fan of Ray Harryhausen’s last movie, 1981’s Clash of the Titans, it’s impossible to watch the reboot without comparing the two.
My lasting memory of the remake was the truly awful 3D; it got in the way of the movie, which feels like Clash Of The Titans made in the style of Lord of the Rings.
The plot: baby Perseus is washed up with his dead mother, taken in by a kindly fisherman (the much-missed Pete Postlethwaite), and raised to be a beefcake with a mysterious past.
“Ginormous sea creature”
He’s soon on a mission to save Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) from the wrath of the ginormous sea creature the Kraken, and the only way he can do that is by retrieving the head of the Medusa, a half-snake, half-woman monstrosity capable of turning people to stone with one look.
Though Sam Worthington is a generic Perseus, son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), like Harry Hamlin before him, the supporting cast is magnificent. Gemma Arterton is superb as the goddess Io, a sort of ethereal sidekick/exposition dispenser. Mads Mikkelsen, as always, is utterly magnetic as a miffed warrior, and there are some nightmarish touches. The scorpions from the original are bigger, more menacing, and the blind Stygian Witches are the stuff of nightmares.
Kudos too to Liam Cunningham, who was excellent in Game of Thrones, and more recently the amazing 3 Body Problem.
(As a side note, composer Ramin Djawadi, who provides the okay score, also went on to work on GoT and 3BP).
The landscapes, many of which are CG-rendered, look great in HD; the Blu-ray version really pays off in terms of texture as that gobsmacking opening starfield proves.
“Slithering malevolence”
Admittedly the repeated mentions of Argos generate unintentional laughs, but on the whole this is entertaining stuff. The original was fun and a little stilted in places, and this may play like a video game at times, but 14 years after its release, it’s still eminently watchable thankfully in standard version rather than 3D.
Not sure we needed the blue-eyed creatures with faces like Zardoz masks, but they add a certain mystique. And if you fancy enhancing the movie, pop Chris De Burgh’s ‘Don’t Pay the Ferryman’ on your smart speaker when Charon the boatman turns up.
Medusa has long been one of fantasy cinema’s greatest antagonists, and though this one is pure video game demon, all manic laughs and slithering malevolence, it’s still a great showdown, even if the original Harryhausen creation was one of his finest achievements.
Though the script could have done with a lot more polish, this is a more enjoyable watch second time around, and the 146-minute runtime is ideal. Little wonder it left many hungry for more.
