Two Geeks Three Cats

And no the title does not refer to Sam Worthington (though I suppose it could.)  I admit that I do not like Sam Worthington.  I think he is pretty talentless and not even good looking enough to be eye candy.  I cannot believe he was rumored to be a finalist to play James Bond before Daniel Craig won the role. 

Shawn has already written a rather scathing review of the film, so why am I adding my proverbial $.02?  I loved the original film - lame Perseus, the addition of the Kraken(um that's not Greek) and all.  It made me interested in Greek mythology from a young age.  And Harryhausen's stop-motion effects were glorious.  Sure they may look cheesy to the modern eye, but they were magnificent and scary back in 1981.  But like so many current mainstream films, this was a soulless mess - millions of dollars poured into a film full of lame dialogue, empty machismo, and wooden characters.  Oh and they decided to put it into 3D after it was done.  I saw it in 2D since I had heard that the 3D makes it even worse and I wanted to try to give the film a fair shot . . .

To think that Louis Leterrier and the laundry list of screenwriters stuck with the general story, but then mucked around with the theme is ridiculous.  The new version basically fuses the original story of Perseus with Wagner's Gotterdammerung.  Sure that may sound good in theory, but it really is a mess. There was a lot of criticism over the decision to leave the gods out of the 2004 film Troy.  Anyone who has read the Iliad knows that the gods play a pivotal role in the story.  Clash of the Titans (2010) leaves the gods in, but makes them the antagonists which is a significant change from the original.  Perseus' main purpose is not to rescue Andromeda, but to prove that man > gods.

 One of my favorite things about the original was the petty interactions amongst the gods.  Sure, they all looked a bit long in the tooth - Lawrence Olivier looked more like a renaissance rendering of God than Zeus.  And Ursula Andress' Aphrodite was no longer the hot Honey Ryder from Doctor No, but somehow it worked.  I believed their bickering and favoritism. The new version basically focuses on two gods - Zeus (Liam Neeson) and Hades (Ralph Fiennes).  For some reason, Hades is always hanging out on Olympus and NOT in his OWN realm.  WTF?  They basically made him a Satan/Old Testament God figure with his tricksy nature and punishment of the mortals who do not respect and worship the gods.  I love both of these actors, but I felt like they were just in it for the paycheck - each of them hamming it up in ornate costumes.

Back to the effects.  Sure the new film's effects were good.  They had better be in this day and age.  But let's compare the new version's CGI Medusa with that of Harryhausen.  The Medusa from the original movie may have had some jerky movements which I find it not unlike the freaky movement you often see in Japanese films like Ringu.  While the movement may have looked unnatural, that is part of what made her so scary.  I remember closing my eyes as a child so as not to have to look at her horrifying face.  Compare that to the remake (reimagined?) version's Medusa, who looks flawless, but giggles like a petulant school girl and slithers seamlessly around the set like a young grass snake.  Sure, I don't like snakes much so the very lifelike snakes in her hair kinda bother me, but she was NOT scary at all.  Some may say, "Well duh.  You're also not six years old anymore."  I doubt even a six year old would be scared of the Russian Supermodel version of Medusa.  And in case you were wondering, the motion capture used for Medusa was based on a Russian Supermodel.

There is so much more I could say about this film, but I won't.  I will say that 20 minutes in I thought to myself that this film "needs its nuts cut off" for being so hyper masculine and boneheaded.  And while Avatar was in my opinion one of the worst and overrated films of last year, it was better than this.