Slashing The Seats

There’s only really one question lurking in every geeky fanboy mind – how well does this stack up against an original version as semi-legendary as Sam Worthington’s protagonist. The answer – pretty well actually!
There’s definitely a sense of campy lunacy about things as Worthington’s Perseus is found and raised by an over-acting and bizarrely accented (for ancient Greece) Pete Postlethwaite, who decides to chuck in a nuanced, emotionally charged performance for some reason, despite being in a world where most of the second act is taken up by giant scorpions attacks…

He’s easily the best thing here, but there’s definitely a suspicion that he just doesn’t get the joke, so it’s no great shame when he’s offed in time for things to shift up a gear, Perseus embracing his heritage and going on an almighty rampage that takes in Titans and assorted hangers-on of all shapes and sizes, and it’s here that former Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier really comes into his own, his grasp of creature CGI providing some fantastically exciting battles.

Unfortunately the attention paid to the digital terrors doesn’t quite extend to their backdrops, the renderings of the city of Argos and the barren deserts taking to many cues from 300 to truly involve you, and the 3D is frankly shocking -unsurprising given the sheer number of last-minute reshoots involved.

Once we travel to Olympus however, it’s as if we’re entering an entirely different movie – one not too far removed from 80’s cheeseathon Flash Gordon. Disney columns spring from overloading dry ice machines, while Liam Neeson’s oddly compassionate Zeus looks like he’s about to embark on a Starlight Express tour of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, his gleaming mirrored armour highlighting the pounds of ham dripping from his ridiculously bearded lips, and bringing back more than a few memories of his performance in John Boorman’s lunatic Excaliber.

Meanwhile on the villain roster, Ralph Fiennes makes good use of his Voldemort training to stand out as an oily Hades, swirling and oozing across the screen and clearly relishing the chance to belt out some pantomime malevolence as he decides it’s time to put the fear of the Gods into the uppity mortals by releasing The Kraken unless the city sacrifices it’s princess Andromeda before an upcoming eclipse, while Jason Flemying recalls his part in The League of extraordinary gentlemen, packing on pounds of prosthetics as the monstrous Calibos.

So far, so bloody mental – as are all the best ancient myths. It’s this willingness to run with the sheer insanity of the plot that saves the movie. Despite some dodgy CGI window dressing, it does a good job of portraying legends the way they should be – massive, pumped up heroes swinging bloody great magic swords at mad gods and eventually the fearsome Medusa – a titan we may be over-familiar with but who’s appearance is still enough to provide some good old-fashioned edge-of-seat chills. We may know how it ends, but that doesn’t mean we’re not worried for the various Argonauts as they creep towards imminent enforced retirement as garden statues -until she actually appears on screen. Then we’re left stifling giggles as what appears to be a badly animated sex doll with third degree burns wobbles across the screen.

In the end The Kraken itself is also underwhelming, it’s appearance shot in needless, confusing close-ups that rob the thing of it’s Cthonic magnitude and suck any genuine terror into a mire of gloopy 3D rendering, and it’s a shame that technical shortcuts rob the film of much of it’s would-be grandeur, leaving us with an odd mix that plays like a $100Million 70’s school play, strong performances by bit-parting Danny Huston and Gemma Arterton being needlessly and badly cut, rendering much of the romance null and void and stealing the film’s heart. Worthington fares better, lacking the acting chops to bring any sense of gravitas to the edam-o-riffic dialogue, but looking good and clearly enjoying himself.

Overall then this is no classic, but if you’re after a shiny 90 minute blockbuster with plenty of shouting and the odd scary harpy then you cant go wrong.

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