Clash Of The Titans (2010)
Only because it was on the telly yesterday afternoon and my son wanted to watch it. I'm a huge fan of the Harryhausen version, which I saw in the cinema when it first came out when I was about 8 or 9, so this had a lot to live up to, but I remember the universally bad reviews when it came out so expectations were not high.
And indeed it was mostly awful. I could probably be here all day writing about what was wrong with it, but I'll stick to a few of the most serious problems...
First off, Andromeda was sidelined as a fairly inconsequential character, so you didn't really care whether she was sacrificed or not, and they randomly introduced Io as the love interest instead.
Second, they changed the role of Calibos in the story so he became little more than Angry Dude Who Goes Around Hitting People At The Behest Of Hades. Which he didn't do very well.
Third, Pegasus wasn't even given a story, he just flew down out of nowhere at the appropriate moment and Perseus got on him and flew off.
Fourth, they just made all the monsters stupidly big - the scorpions were ridiculously out of proportion, and then they solved the problem of the impossibility of killing such massive monsters by having the Djinn turn up (in an ancient Greek myth!) and magically taming them. As for the Kraken... completely stupid. Bigger is not always better, you know.
Fifth, Sam Worthington.
Sixth, Bubo from the 1981 film was used as a silly throwaway joke, as if to say, "Look, this is the quality of special effects they had in those days! Lolz!" The irony being that the special effects from the earlier film are in many ways far superior to the newer film.
Really, the whole thing was just a tedious, garbled mess.
d.
