Clash of the Titans

Last night I was bored.

Not one of those: “Aw, jeez, there’s nothing to do” boredoms, either.  This was a soul-deep, bone-crushing “the longer I sit here the more I wonder what my life is worth” boredoms.  Thankfully, for those kinds of boredoms, movies were invented.  Clash of the Titans was one such movie invented long ago to appeal to people who were both bored and loved the hell out of owls.  That was years ago.

Naturally, Hollywood being what it is, eventually someone had to go and exhume this movie’s rotting corpse and prop it up, putting some makeup and a pretty dress on it in order to convince us that it was a pretty woman and never mind the rotting, fetid stench…or the worms crawling out between her painted lips…or her hand which just fell off.

As you can guess, I went into this movie expecting crap.

What I got was…weird.

Let me say up-front, this is a pretty okay movie.  It doesn’t claim to be anything more than it is: an action-packed romp full o’ dudes in skirts and with some freaky shit happening.  The plot, as you may or may not remember: in ancient Greece, mankind begins to hate the Gods for their cruelty and mistreatment (which we never see for ourselves) and so REBEL against them by setting fire to temples and shit.  Liam Neesen, ruler of the ancient Greek pantheon and God of Neck-chops and Manly Jawlines, asks his brother Hades to intervene.  Hades does so, demanding that the city of Argos sacrifice its princess, Andromeda, or face the wrath of the KRAKEN (pronounced Kraa-ken, rather than Kray-ken.  This pronunciation really caught on after Pirates of the Caribbean, I note).

So it falls to Perseus, demigod and brood of Zeus, to find a way to defeat the Kraken.  Whirlwind adventure follows in what can be best described as…alright.

The monsters are cool, but not awe-inspiring.  The fights are good, but not tense.  The settings are okay.  The mythology is…uh…well, does anyone recall Djinn being made of charwood and being able to explode themselves in blue fire?  The Gods appear mostly as they did in the original movie: shiny and brimming with Liam Neesen.  It’s all kind of…eh.  Even as action movies go, it’s eh.  The gore is restrained, there’s not a hint of overt sexuality, which are two hallmarks we usually rely on to make a mindless action movie fun.

This is kind of the problem: the movie lacks flair.  There is nothing that sets it apart.

Hades appears in a cloud of fire and brimstone…and why wouldn’t he?  The Kraken emerges with fury out of the deeps…because that’s what Krakens do.  The hero is possessed of a prophecy…because heroes need prophecies to do anything.

Maybe I’m too picky here.  Maybe I ask too much of my action movies.  But I give a lot, too.  I’ll accept nearly any stupid cliche or grab at the audience’s attention, so long as it’s done in an interesting way.  I’ll even swallow a prophecy if something cool happens with it.  This particular prophecy is mentioned once and never again.  And the rest of the movie pretty much follows suit.  Everything has been done before by…basically everyone, I guess.  It relies a lot on mythology but does nothing fun with it.  The audience is handed the story, the motive, the plot and asked to swallow it whole.

Still, the visuals are fine and the acting is only slightly worse than the average action movie (though a lot of that is because the script is kind of silly).  It’s a solid movie, but it’s like watching a Jehova’s Witness come up to your door, ask you if you have a moment to talk about the Lord, then quietly thanking you for your time and turning away if you say “no.”

Something you don’t see every day, but not something you go out of your way to remember.

See it if you’re bored.