Clash of the Titans Movie Review 5.5/10!

It seems to be that lately we have been inundated with a rash of movies that are perfectly content with being decent, but not great. Particularly this year I was left the movie theatre feeling that I was entertained, but that what I saw was just missing something. Maybe movie makers don't really want to take chances anymore, and they like to retread the same old formulas out there because they are safe. They would rather a movie be safely average and make money than take chances on greatness and have a bomb. I don't know that I really fault them for this logic. Great movies don't always equal more money, or even any money at all. Greatness in film is often not appreciated by the masses and the benign blockbuster film with good advertising generally is. In fact a couple of movie insiders from the Scene Unseen Movie review podcast often have said that the key to making money with a movie actually has nothing to do with its quality, only the quality of its advertising. This movie has that sort of thing going for it to a certain degree. They advertised the fooey out of this thing. Lots of epic shots of monsters and of Liam Neeson saying "Release the Kraken." This movie was going to make a decent amount of bank just because of the advertising campaign, and recoup a lot of its making costs. Once again I can't really fault the movie companies for this, it does make them money. However, I really don't like it when the advertising is the best part of the film, and when the trailers give a false impression as to the plot of the movie. (in this film its who the primary antagonist is) On the whole I didn't leave the theatre feeling that I hadn't enjoyed my time, I found the film enjoyable enough, and I didn't feel like it was wasted. Its not a bad movie and I wouldn't tell people that they shouldn't see it if they like this type of film. But it was a decidedly average film, not great and the question I keep asking myself is with this wealth of source material how can you not make a great film? I mean seriously this is a remake of an already pretty darn good film, so they can only go up from there right? This film does a few things right. The period people (although no more accurate than any other movie) felt right. I bought into the fact that these were an ancient people. The costumes looked really good, with the exception of Zeus' light can't quite focus on you armor, which just looked silly and cheesy. Sam Worthington, although not exceptional, gave a far better turn than he did in Avatar, and his performance was solid. Ralph Fiennes was as freaky and scary as he always is in these roles, and frankly I think the movie could have benefitted from more of his. Liam Neeson was fine, but he wasn't really given all that much to do. Zeus was actually far less epic and frequent in the film that the trailers would have you believe. Once again, not Neeson's fault, and he wasn't bad, aside from his terrible armor, he just wasn't given much to do. The movie did a few things badly that really detracted from the film. Firstly, I immediately got popped out with believability with Sam Worthington in this role. I know he was a demi-God, and physically stronger and all of that, but young Perseus has a conversation with his adopted father when he was, at the oldest ten. Then it pops up 12 years later, and it shows Worthington. I leaned over to my friend that was watching the movie with me and said "Huh, 22 years old and he already has crows feet." He responded, "hard life man." Its just really hard to buy him as a 20 year old kid. Even a 20 year old demi-god kid. My question is, why pop up the 12 years later subtext at all? It had no bearing to the plot, its not like it wasn't obvious this was sometime in the future, why do it? All it did was make people go huh, that 20 year old looks 35. But that’s just a personal peeve of mine, and I am sure that wouldn't annoy most people. Other than that this movie had real problems in production, not so much in the acting and story. It looked like the shot the film with actually 8mm retro color film. Sometimes that’s not a bad look, but in this film it kind of made things look washed out, with a lack of vibrancy. Everything kind of looked gray scale and it was not pleasing at all. The monsters looked a little to cartoony for the gravity of the situation, and for you old school gamers the Kraken totally looked like one of the Weapon's bosses from Final Fantasy 7, or even Bahamut from Advent Children. If you haven't seen the original go and see that one instead of this one, it’s a better movie, but this one is still entertaining enough despite its flaws, so if this type of movie interests you, then by all means go out and see it. If you love the original, you will probably be disappointed, but if not, you will just have a couple hours of mindless action entertainment.