Visual razzle-dazzle

The awesome 3-D effects of Louis Leterrier’s Clash of the Titans fail to sustain
the viewer for long, and the story drags on unendingly

SO we are back to mythologicals even though this one Clash of the Titans is even futuristic. The Gods are displeased with the humans and want to destroy them. It is only Perseus (Sam Worthington), who can prevent this by fighting the demons cast in his path. Perseus is the son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), half-God and half-man and in the midst of the arduous battles, Zeus offers him a chance of escaping all this behind and become the ruler of Olympus. But like most mythological characters, he prefers to remain a man and serve mankind. Among his adversaries is Hades (Ralf Fiennes), king of the underworld.

The film is a remake of the 1981 film in which Laurence Olivier plays the lead. With a plethora of special effects, it doesn’t seem dated. You have all kinds of smooth, slippery monsters but unlike Avatar, they are not ‘in your face’. 

In fact, the 3-D seems friendly. But the story drags on unendingly. There are three battles our hero Perseus has to fight, the first with a giant scorpion, the second with the slithery Medusa, who has snakes for her hair, and the third with a Kracken. These giant monsters are within touching distance but really only of nuisance value.

Director Louis Leterrier seems to be obsessed with the gigantic sets and the special effects and tends to ignore the narrative. The visual razzle-dazzlery is good, even awesome at times, but cannot sustain the viewer for long.

At most, one can bear 15 minutes of it. But to keep the attention span for nearly 105 minutes is aiming for the impossible. Then one questions the feasibility of this new 3-D. Apparently it is aimed to bring audiences back to the cinema. Earlier we’ve had Cinemascope, Tod-Ao and other developments to enhance cinematic beauty. But with home cinema and TV channels going great guns, it is a sort of contradiction. But this attempt to revive mythology seems destined for disaster. There is no acting to speak of and, at best, Sam Worthington is enthusiastic with veterans like Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson merely going through the motions. If you think the age of Cecil B. DeMille’s Biblicals is back, think again. This is not even a pale, pale shadow.

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