Why So Blu?

Get Ready to Clash With the Titans!

After recently suffering through the 1981 adaptation of Clash of the Titans on Blu-ray (see review here), my apprehension towards this 2010 remake was quickly relinquished after only the first ten minutes of runtime.  I was pleasantly surprised, instantly enchanted and obsessively engrossed within the mythical fantasy world brought to life using the latest and greatest in CGI technology as opposed to that 1981 film I could have produced in my garage.  All right.  Let’s be fair.  The 1981 rendition was good in 1981.  But c’mon ladies and gentlemen.  It’s 2010!  Let’s get with the times.  A remake of this classic fantasy adventure film was definitely ripe for the picking.  I have been looking forward to this remake for a couple of years now, and thankfully, the wait was well worth it.

So let’s start with the good.  Since this is a remake I think everyone reading this is probably familiar with the plot so we can dispense with the formalities and get on to the good parts.  As mentioned before, any qualms with the primitive special effects invoked in the 1981 film are completely addressed and crushed here.  I did have one minor problem, but I will bring that up in a few paragraphs.  Instead, let’s focus on all the positives first.  The special effects were simply stellar.  Medusa and the Kraken were both kick-a$$!  They even managed to make the Pegassus flying horse look natural and believable.  And best of all…they made it a black horse!  The storyline was tweaked ever so slightly, but in very good ways.  There were some subtle references and inside jokes that fans of the original film will definitely get a kick out of.  One that instantly comes to mind involves a so-called robotic owl.  Remember him? 

The Louis Leterrier directed film stars boy wonder Sam Worthington (he came out of nowhere to star in not one, but three big movies in the past year), Liam Neeson (Zeus), Ralph Fiennes (Hades), Alexa Davalos (Andromeda), Izabella Miko (Athena), Danny Huston (Poseidon) and many more.  But what I would like to do is talk real briefly about a woman who caught my eye and never let go throughout the entire runtime of the feature film.  I am talking about the very beautiful Gemma Arteron who plays the role of Io.  Wow!  My wife will probably kill me for saying this if she is reading this, but again wow!  She was breathtaking (I graciously provided a picture of her below).  I remember this like it was yesterday (actually it was since I am writing this on Weds.).  When the film ended both my friend Scott and I looked at each other.  It was like our minds were tied together and we both wanted to instantly comment on her beauty.  I instantly turned my Droid on to figure out whom she was.  I knew I had seen her before.  Sure enough.  I was right!  The UK actress was a redhead in the most recent James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace.  Remember the woman who was killed on the bed and covered in oil?  Yep, that’s her.

Now that I spent the last paragraph drooling over Gemma it’s time to nitpick the things I did not like about the film.  Let’s see.  The list is actually really short.  I only have two things to complain about.  Let’s first begin with the one thing that bothered me the most.  That would be the Saturday Night Live hairline wig worn by Ralph Fiennes’s character Hades.  How is it possible?  They spent all this money on these CGI effects making this film look ultra fantastic and uber cool in every which way, but they overlook a little detail like this.  I used the SNL lingo before to illustrate how bad the hairline of the wig looked.  Do you ever watch NBC’s SNL now in HD and see how bad the sloppy fast makeup jobs are?  The same thing apparently happened here with Hades.  Luckily for me, the movie was killer.  As much as it bothered me, I still left the theater victorious knowing that I had seen a movie that I will be overjoyed to own on Day 1 of its eventual Blu-ray release.

All right.  Now let’s tackle my second and final minor gripe.  The 2-D to 3-D conversion!  The film was originally scheduled for a nationwide release date of March 26, 2010, but it was later announced that the 2-D captured film would be converted to 3-D and released on April 2^nd.  Why?  I’ll give you one guess.  Most likely it was because of a very small relatively unknown film called Avatar.  I’m being facetious of course.  Avatar eventually went on to make some money.  All right.  I’ll stop kidding around.  According to a 3-D conversion test held last year, Warner Brothers decided to convert the 2-D film stock, thus delaying its release date as previously stated.  I would love to know who was watching this and made that decision.  If there were 3-D moments to be had and found, then they were very far and in-between.  I can only think of three times during the film’s runtime that I recall seeing something really cool in 3-D.  Sure there may have been a little extra depth of field throughout, but nothing that will make me tell all of you to run out and throw down your hard earned money on a 3-D presentation of this film when ordinary 2-D will work just fine, if not better.  The 3-D effect here is a gimmick.  Gasp!  Shocker!

So there you have it folks.  You read what I had to say about the things I liked and the very few nitpicks I had.  Over all, in much the same vein as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Clash of the Titans (redux) was a triumphant return to the silver screen and an epic feast that every child and parent from the 80’s needs to re-experience again.  Why don’t you do yourself a favor?  Give the original film a real quick viewing and when you can’t stand it any longer, shut it off and run out to the theater this weekend to check out the remake and see firsthand just how much better everything not only looks, but also feels.  There’s actually a moving story to be found here.  You won’t be bored.  I promise!  Have a great weekend at the movies!