Let them know men did this

I like to get to the cinema when a film comes out first, it stops me having too many preconceived notions (apart from what I've gleaned from the trailers, but that's sort of different). I don't want to go in and have heard that a film is crap when the reviewer just missed the point or has no appreciation of pointless action. With mindset, I went to see Clash of the Titans. If like me you prefer to go in clearheaded don't read on.

Clash of the Titans is pretty shit. I wasn't expecting much by way of plot or anything. It's a remake of what at the time was a special effects masterpiece. So I just wanted cool 3D explosions and a believable Medusa. I was upset.

The special effects were poor in comparison to other movies pushing that envelope. Whenever the Pegasus wasn't flying it looked like they had made some wings from black bin bags and stuck them on a bewildered horse. The Cracken looked like they had made it in a rush out of black plasticine, which seems like the whole point of this endeavour was to avoid that comparison.

Sam Worthington irritates me.

Liam Neeson seems to have taken the death of his wife pretty hard and is just making any film that you hand him a script for. I'd like to stand by him in this hard time but Zeus looked like he was supporting Gary Glitter back in the glory days of shiny suited rock. He couldn't even walk in his suit of armour, an entirely unnecessary suit of armour given that he was sitting in Olympus and a suit of armour he left at home every time he visited Earth. The character Zeus is an asshole too. One of his previous enemies, Zeus pretty much just date raped his wife. Harsh even by today's standards. I understand that Greek gods were flawed and from a theological perspective this avoided the question "if god is so powerful, why does he let so much suffering happen?". If a Greek asked this question the short answer is - 'cos he's a petty, vindictive, tool lording it over us. Not comforting but easier to accept as a doctrine. Choose your poison I suppose.

Ralph Fiennes plays Hades. He looks like a paedophile. That's why the people hate and fear him. They think he'll touch their children.

Gemma Arterton plays Io. I missed this for most of the movie but she's the love interest. It's just sort of tacked on at the end. She sort of dies, but Zeus being the fickle bastard that he is magics her back to life. So happy ending. In the absence of well executed special effects the director opts to change her hair around a little in each shot and get her to wear a pointless fluffy cape.

Mads Mikkelson. I'm sure someone will say he's a great actor not concerned with the star game and that following on from Casino Royale he threw himself back into his great passion - musical theatre or some shit like that. I don't care. He's tall thin and not believable as a warrior type. Aside from that he did point out that since Perseus wasn't using his magical gifts from the clearly bi-polar Zeus all his men were dying. Perseus ignored this, citing the honour of mankind, until he nearly died and then forgot his honour. Yay, magic sword. So for this one observation and Mads' cheeky smile he's my favourite thing about this movie.

IMDB tells me there were a lot of other named characters but this was a bad movie that jumped between a couple of stories and managed to alienate all of the stories from me so I can't remember.

I assume that if a girl will
1. agree to go see this with you and
2. agree to go out with you again.... that's a good sign.