"Clashing Titans" or "How I returned to being bored enough to blog about stuff"

Well I really have let this blog go havn't I? Well good news everyone, this is the first installment of what I'm hoping will be a weekly onslaught of my reviewing of what popular culture I have recently partaken of. Cinema, Musics and Comic books. So welcome aboard and get ready to spin the wheel of culture and listen to me ramble on about the last films I've seen.

If you havnt been living in a cave or a small African villiage you might know that the 1981 film "Clash of the Titans" has been remade to star Sam Worthington and that guy who bruised James Bond's balls. Thats Mads Mikkelsen by the way. Oh also this will be a fairly in depth review so I'm gonna have to write spoilers in big capital letters and some alerting colour. SPOILERS.

So the film follows a baby in a crate (Perseus) who gets found by an old fisherman who takes him in as his own son as another Bond star (Gemma Arterton) narrates the special specialness of the baby in the crate. Flash forward past some random bonding scenes and murmers of unrest between man and the gods untill Perseus and his family arrive at the statue of Zeus...which just happens to be in the process of being destroyed by some soldier guys. Hades (Ralph Fiennes) shows up in the form of some flying demon monkeys and slaughters the soldiers before reforming into his human-ish form and killing Perseus family with his powers. See where this is going yet? Hades goes to Mount Olympus and gets permission from Zeus to do damage to man in order to get them to love the gods once again...riiiggghhhtt.

Perseus is found by the surviving soldiers and taken to some Argos city or something where the revolution against the gods has begun. Hades shows up again and kills a bunch of soldiers and reveals that Perseus is a demi-god. Some stuff goes on about a sacrifice of a princess to the Kraken. So Perseus (now seeking revenge against Hades), Mads and some other two bit actors go out on a quest to ask some witches about how to kill the Kraken in order to spare the princess' life. While out on this quest, Hades approaches Acrisius who wants vengance on Zeus for banging his wife. After Zeus had basically raped Acrisius' wife she gave birth to Perseus. Anyway Hades blows black smoke into Acrisius and gives him magical powers to go and hunt down Perseus. So Acrisius attacks Perseus and his troop of men before truning to a chase in a desert where by Acrisius' blood turns the sand in to giant scorpions. So obviously the smoke gave him the "turn sand into giant scorpions power" instead of say...cancer. A fight ensues and some people die and basically Acrisius gets away and a bunch of wood skinned sand people come to save the day. The wood people have some magic powers aswell and tame the surviving giant scorpions so that they can ride them to their destination.

Finally they get to these 3 witches who try and eat some people but eventually get forced into telling Perseus how to beat the Kraken which is basically using the gaze of Medusa. So 1 + 1 = 2, Perseus and the gang travel to Medusa's lair where they are all killed bar Perseus who wins Medusa's head. Perseus then fights Acrisius and finally bests him. With time running out he rushes back to Argos and after a long drawn out chase scene involving a pegasus and Hades flying demon monkey form Perseus turns the Kraken to stone and leaves Argos forever.

Thats basically the plot in a nutshell...Oh theres some underplayed and badly handled love story between Perseus and IO our former narrarator...And some subplot involving Hadews betraying Zeus and wanting to rule over man himself (like you couldnt see that one coming).

Two major issues I have with this movie.

1. Killing off everyone in one fight that IS NOT the end battle. Seriously, everyone dies in the Medusa battle. Each character is dispatched fairly easily and oddly IE our wood skinned character exploding for some reason while Medusa is crushing him. Mads' Character dies to give Perseus the edge which would be fine if every other supporting character did not die as well. It's like seeing the entire cast of "Friday the 13th" film being killed off 5 minutes into the movie. Someone should have survived.

2. The Climax. The fight after this against the Kraken is rediculously easy. So easy that Hades has to show up and steal the Medusa head before Perseus can use it, allowing for a boring chase scene. It's so predictable and annoying that the whole climax falls apart (much like the Kraken). WHY? We didnt even have some soldiers trying to fight the Kraken in vain, just people running and being squashed. The drama of an action scene is about the possibility of the supporting cast being killed but when they are already dead who gives a damn! Hell, if they had left...say Mads' character alive he could have been doing some fighting with the Kraken while Perseus is playing chasey with Hades. This is a terrible way to end an epic film and really just annoyed me to no end.

This movie falls from being a solid popcorn film to just being passable as a film.
3 stars out of 5

Anyway thats it from me for now, guess ill take another movie and rip the hell out of it next week. untill then...


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