Titans Clash, But Who Cares?

I have good memories of the original Clash of the Titans. Sure Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects were a few years past their sell-by date. Sure Harry Hamlin made Mark Hamill look like Lawrence Olivier, but the film had a certain goofy saturday morning charm that fired the imagination of an 7 year old kid who grew up on 30's pulp stories and old Tarzan flicks.

It had a solid enough story, more or less boiled down to its mythic archetype: a hero falls in love with a princess, goes on a dangerous quest to save her life and take his place as king. What could go wrong?

So I found myself asking that question and somewhat looking forward to the big-budget remake, in all its 3D, CGI assisted glory. Naturally there's the law of averages says that it will be (at best) sub-par, but when it's a movie you loved as a kid you tend to be a bit more forgiving.

Unfortunately, hype and anticipation do not a good movie make and so it is with this new, supposedly "improved" Clash of the Titans.

Quite why screenwriters Travis Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi took a perfectly good story and turned it into a turgid, overcomplicated mess is frankly unclear; but it seems to be a yet another case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. The result is an overproduced and overlong movie that for all it's frenetic action and spectacular (more or less) CGI monster effects is boring and completely uninvolving.

The story centers around a rivalry between two Olympian Gods: Zeus and his brother Hades for control of the heavens; and a second separate conflict between man and the entire pantheon of Greek Gods. In the middle of these machinations Perseus, who unbeknownst to him is the son of Zeus, seeks revenge against Hades for the death of his adoptive family during an attack on the city of Argos. With Argos threatened with destruction by the Kraken (a monster under the control of Hades), Perseus agrees to lead a quest to bring back the head of the Medusa, the only monster that can defeat the Kraken and give him a chance to revenge himself on Hades.

It's a confusing setup and one which does little but dilute the original premise; and as a result the entire story loses cohesion. For a start, it is never explained exactly why Man is at war with the Gods, what the Gods have done to cause this resentment, or indeed what threat Man could actually pose to omnipotent beings. It's an idea that should have been ditched early on as it really serves little purpose and almost seems shoehorned in from a different movie entirely. Similarly, we're expected to believe that a God (the King of Gods in fact) is gullible and would fall for a plan that the audience can see coming a mile off.

You can kind of see where they were trying to go with this, its the kind of high-concept idea that attempts to transcend the bounds of the source material, unfortunately the screenwriters involved just aren't talented enough to pull it off and the whole thing becomes contrived.

The worst part is that by making Perseus' quest all about revenge and by sidelining by any romantic interested with the princess it becomes very difficult to care about any of the characters. Even so, the action frequently cuts back to the doomed city as it gets closer and closer to zero-hour to remind the audience what the heroes are fighting for. Unfortunately, the people of Argos are shown to be the most intolerant bunch of degenerates and religious extremists this side of Sodom and Gomorroah; you almost wish that the Kraken would kill them to put everyone out of their misery!

For an action film, Clash of the Titans is surprisingly dull, moving from obligatory action scene to obligatory action scene. As with a lot of recent movies, like 300 or The Matrix sequels, action fatigue sets in. In trying to give the audience more bang for their buck the film loses pace. The fight scenes go on for too long and what little tension they create is squandered by an overabundance of slow-motion. Criminally, very little of this stuff serves to advance the plot and ultimately the script relies less on character action as it does on deux ex machina.

If there's one thing the film has in its favor it is the effects work, which works for the most part, though it isn't anything you haven't already many times before; but let's face it, it's pretty much expected these days. The visualization of the Greek Gods is one particular highlight, you do get a sense from both Zeus and Hades that these are beings of unlimited power. In contrast the monsters are a bit hit and miss. The Medusa sequence, that was quite terrifying in the original film is hampered by a creature design that is inferior to Harryhausen's original. The Kraken is perhaps the best of the bunch, if only because it provides the sense of scale and destructive power that was impossible to convey with stop-motion.

It isn't a well-acted movie either, Sam Worthington's Perseus is almost identical to the character he has played in both Avatar and Terminator Salvation. Imagine a smaller and less angry version of Gerard Butler's character from 300 and you're about there. He's better than Harry Hamlin, but to be honest that's no achievement. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes are in big-budget scenery chewing mode as Zeus and Hades, though thankfully nowhere near the level of hamminess you usually see from Anthony Hopkins in these sorts of roles. Mads Mikkelson is perhaps the only one who gets out of the movie with any dignity, playing his veteran soldier with the same quiet gravitas you usually expect from Neeson.

Gemma Arterton has to be the worst of the bunch and must surely rank as the blandest, most uninteresting actress since Saffron Burrows got eaten by that shark in Deep Blue Sea. Sure, she's easy on the eyes but she delivers every line with all the charisma and personality of a dead fish. Not only is she a horrible actress, but her role in this film is solely to provide exposition and the love interest that is no longer fulfilled by the Princess Andromeda. I can only hope after seeing this, and her brief, cringeworthy appearance in Quantum of Solace that her fame is a flash in the pan.

Above: Gemma Arterton "acts"

I've had enough of Hollywood trampling on my childhood memories and Titans is a textbook example of how not to remake a classic movie (if you can call the original a classic, of course). It's worth a rent, I suppose, but it really isn't worth paying the best part of 10 quid to see it in the cinema. If you're a fan of the original, skip this entirely and break out the Blu Ray or the old DVD. You'll thank yourself for not having seen this.

Howard's Puritan Swordsman Makes His Big Screen Debut

The big problem I had with Solomon Kane is, ironically enough, nothing to do with the film itself. Like the two Schwarzenegger Conan efforts and Kevin Sorbo's Kull the Conqueror what we have here is as much a pastiche of Robert E. Howard's work as it is a faithful adaptation.

As with many of the golden age writers, in the 70-odd years since his work first hit the news stands, Howard's stories have been ruthlessly gutted and pillaged by every two-bit, third rate hack wanting to write a fantasy novel or pen a paint by numbers fantasy film. Indeed, by the time a movie studio gets around to give Howard's work the cinematic treatment it deserves, you're left with the feeling that you've seen it all before.

In that regard, Solomon Kane is more a victim of this pilfering of the source material than it is with any faults in the film-making. Everything about it is derivative. The plot while solid, is entirely predictable and offers little in the way of surprises.

That said, as film adaptations go Solomon Kane is better than most. I will even go a step further and say that this is, to date, the single best film adaptation of Robert E. Howard's work.

For the uninitiated, Solomon Kane is a 16th century puritan swordsman who wanders the earth fighting evil with an almost religious zeal and (in typical Howard fashion) a sharp sword or two. If you're thinking that this sounds rather similar to that Van Helsing movie from a few years ago, you would be right.

However, where that film was a steaming dog pile of CGI heavy action set pieces strung together with gratuitous shots of Kate Beckinsale's cleavage and leather clad posterior, Solomon Kane has rather more meat on its bones.

Where the film really stands out is in the quality of the production - made on a relatively low budget of $40 million, Solomon Kane easily stands up alongside big budget Hollywood efforts made for two to three times the price. British director Michael J. Bassett has clearly set out to do justice to Howard's work, and on most counts he has succeeded. The tone is suitably grim and oppressive; Kane's England is a land of mist, rain and mud, where a man can hardly walk 50 yards down a country road without being set upon by bandits who would happily knife him for his boot laces as for his money.

The action is suitably visceral and brutal, very much on a level with the scenes described in Howard's stories as Kane hacks, stabs and shoots his way through innumerable bald-headed baddies who all manage to look like stunt doubles for Jason Statham. If you've ever wanted to see a movie sword fight where a man's head is hacked off in three blows, or where someone's skull is cleft to the teeth, then this is definitely the one for you.

Unfortunately all of this comes at a price, and it's that the film takes itself a little too seriously for its own good. It's a dark movie, both in tone and cinematography with no humour in the script to break up the tension; and the dialogue, while authentically Howardian ("Silence... you dogs!") is somewhat one-dimensional. This isn't helped by a predictable script, which introduces secondary characters merely to be sword fodder for Kane or his foes. The end result is a film that is exhausting to watch, despite it's sub 2-hour run time.

The biggest flaw though is the distinct lack of a strong villain for Kane to pit himself against; what we get is the archetypal mask-wearing Black Knight (who is no different to any other mask-wearing fantasy villain) who turns up periodically to remind the audience that there's evil at work. In fact, the chief villain doesn't even appear on-screen until the last 10 minutes. It's a lost opportunity, one which could have elavated this film from mere competence to something quite special.

I wouldn't want anyone to think that Solomon Kane is a bad film, it isn't. As I said, as adaptations of Robert E Howard go, this is easily the best attempt to date to adapt one of Howard's characters for a modern audience.

The always watchable James Purefoy is excellent as Solomon Kane, though admittedly his performance isn't anywhere near as compelling as his portrayal of Mark Antony in HBO's Rome, but this has more to do with the limitations of the screenplay than anything else. Howard fans will no doubt appreciate Purefoy's extra touch of authenticity, playing Kane with a West Country accent.

The supporting cast are a bit of a mixed bag - veteran actors Pete Postlethwaite, Alice Krige and Max Von Sydow are perfectly good casting choices, but the script gives them so little to do that you might wonder why they bothered to show up as almost anyone could have filled their roles.

I certainly didn't dislike Solomon Kane, it is far from perfect but at the same time it stands head and shoulders above big budget Hollywood efforts like 300, or even the remake of Clash of the Titans. It's definitely a good start, and Howard fans can only be glad that a film-maker has finally taken his work seriously and treated it with as much respect as Peter Jackson lavished on Lord of the Rings. Supposedly, a different production company is handling the new Conan movie, scheduled for theatrical release some time in 2011, but if Kane is anything to go by - there's certainly reason to be optimistic.

At the time of writing, Solomon Kane has only seen general release in the UK and parts of Europe, it has yet to find distribution in the United States.