by Omar Mazariego
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a believer that you can never truly remake a classic and have it turn out better than the original. Fist of The North Star, Psycho, The Amityville Horror, Day of The Dead — all these movies (and many more) were done right the first time, so why ruin them? But sometimes we get lucky and every now and then we’re blessed with a The Ring or a King Kong.
That said, I actually thought, felt and figured that a remake of Clash of The Titans would be nothing less than a grand slam. While the original had a fantastic story and mediocre yet cool acting, the special effects were as cheesy as Drake’s punch lines. (The kid is overrated. There I said it). But now it’s 2010, and movie monsters don’t look like they were made out of Gumby remains.
Unfortunately, even today’s special effects couldn’t help this abomination of a movie, which was far from a grand slam. It was barely a double. More like an intentional walk to first.
Catering to today’s generation of viewers who are ADD (Action-Driven Deviants), Hollywood ripped out the heart and soul that the original COTT had and replaced it with mindless action sequences, 3-D effects as weak as Shyne’s post-jail freestyles and a storyline so half-assed that you’d think it was written by Prince’s leather pants.
The new Clash of The Titans has Zeus (Liam Neeson) Amy Winehousing it for prayers to keep him and his crew of gods (WU! Tang!) alive, while Hades (Ralph Fiennes) is living through the kind of hate and fear that would probably give more life to Nicki Minaj’s career. (She’s the worst and I’m scared that my daughter will look up to her). Upset with mankind’s disrespect and defiance to the gods, Zeus lets himself be convinced by his dark brother and lord of the underworld, Hades (the Olympian version of Scott “Avenging Agent” Boras), to allow him to wreck havoc on mankind so they will be forced to praise their gods and beg for divine intervention.
His grand plan is to have the city sacrifice the young and beautiful (more like aiiiight) Andromeda (Alexa Devalos) to the Kraken in order to save the city from complete destruction. But like Khloe Kardashian’s marriage to Lamar Odom, there’s an deeper and evil ulterior motive. No, not TV ratings or vast sums of money to look more like Kim and less like Chyna. We’re talking absolute control of Olympus. How Zeus trusts the lord of the underworld to do right by the gods, I have no idea. Maybe he should have made him sign a pre-nup that would still give him the world anyway.
Little does Zeus know that he has a bastard son on Earth, Perseus. The demigod Perseus struggled for most of his life with feelings of not knowing who he was and the feeling of not belonging to a family. But it was all good because the old fisherman who adopted him as a baby took him from a boy to a man, so he always had a father when his biological didn’t bother. In a fit of rage, Hades bodied his family like Francis Dolarhyde and left the bastard an orphan. This happened in an age way before Madonna and Angelina Jolie were out adopting future love slaves, so Perseus is basically on his own with a chip on his shoulder. With a few soldiers to hold him down along with the lovely Lo (Gemma Arterton), he’s off to face giant scorpions, blind and hungry witches, and Medusa herself. (We had a “Medusa” in my hood. Men saw her from behind and approached her with every intention of going in for the kill, but as soon as she turned around and flashed her grill, they froze dead in their tracks!)
In the end, I didn’t care if Perseus got his revenge or if Andromeda’s blood was spilled, because there was no real character development, chemistry or story to get the viewer involved. A far cry from the original where you didn’t want one hair on Perseus’ 2004 Ryan Jones/Farah Fawcett wig piece to be harmed. (You could’ve done Pantene commercials, Ry.) And you sure as hell didn’t want the world to be without the gorgeous Judi Bowker. That was when Perseus was trying to save a beautiful woman from a sociopath named Calibos and his vain mother, Aphrodite. Today he’s out for simple revenge with a buzz cut in an age where there weren’t even any hair clippers. Meanwhile, Zeus is basically a rapist and the Kraken looks like Cloverfield’s daddy. If I was Perseus, I would’ve spent half that movie trying to get Lo to go low, ya know? She was fine!
While the special effects were cool, the action scenes themselves were nothing to marvel at (which is horrible for a movie driven solely on action). And there really wasn’t any reason other than monetary to make this a 3-D movie. It’s not a good look when the best 3-D sequence comes from the handclaps in the Step Up 3D trailer! (Who the f*ck wants to see another “I’m poor, you’re rich, but let’s dance anyway!” movie?? We’re in a recession, people!)
Ultimately, Hollywood strikes again and the next time I need my Greek mythology fix, I’ma turn on my PS3 and let Kratos educate me on what true revenge against the gods of Olympus should look and feel like.
FINAL RATING: 2.5 Gangstas
