In the wake of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, 3-D movies have become all the rage, and a growing trend in the theater.  But when one watches a film like the remake of the 1981 film, Clash of the Titans,  now in 3-D, one begins to wonder whether this is more of a marketing ploy than ‘one giant step for humankind’ in the world of cinema.  I kept going back and forth between 3-D glasses on and off, and except for a few scenes, there was not much of a discernible difference between the two visually. The question then becomes— is it worth the extra 2-4 dollars a ticket.  My answer is…. for a film as bad as Clash of the Titans, the obvious answer is no.  In the case of our second film in this review….the 3-D is good, but the 2-D is fine.

By now the story may well be familiar. The Titans begat the gods, who begat some demi-gods like Perseus. The Titans were overthrown by the Olympians, who in turn were jilted by various humans.  The gods and goddesses in these tales are in some ways more human than the humans— petty, jealous, lusty, immoral in general, egocentric, and feeding off the worship and prayers of humans. So when some humans (think tower of Babel)  think they don’t need the Olympian deities any more and stop praying and worshiping, all Hades breaks loose— quite literally. 

The humans are only a little better— they are mostly prideful, egocentric, defiant, arrogant, and grossly over-estimating their power.  Are there really any fully admirable characters in this story—- Answer, not so much.  The plot is shop worn, the dialogue weary (if your best line is ‘release the Kraken’ you are indeed in big trouble), the acting nothing to write home about (even Liam Neeson as Zeus fails to convince).  What then of the special effects and CG in general?  Its not bad, but certainly not worth paying 8-9 dollars to see.  Pegasus is interesting, the giant scorpions nasty, the Kraken makes the Biblical Leviathan look like a minnow, and perhaps most effective is Medusa, but she only has a cameo appearance. Even the gargantuan Kraken couldn’t quicken the pulse of this movie into life.  Perseus’ story deserved a better treatment.

Perseus was the son of Zeus and a human woman named Danae through divine rape. Despite reports to the contrary, this story is nothing like the story of the virginal conception of Jesus. Danae was an older woman, no virgin,  who had not been able to father a son to King Acrisius, having only a daughter. And Perseus, unlike Jesus, resolves to defy the gods rather than deify them, and tries resolutely to act only as a human, and remain a human. Perseus was to become the legendary founder of the equally legendary civilization at Mycenae in Greece, a real place, with a real ancient Greek heritage. Before that however the story goes he cut off the head of Medusa, and defeated the Kraken which was meant to do away with Argos. In some ways, the most interesting character in the movie is Hades, the god of the underworld, who keeps causing havoc above ground. In Greek mythology Perseus is seen as a blend of divine and human attributes and so a quasi-deity rather than being both human and divine and have two natures.

One of the great problems with films such as the Zeitgeist movie which tries to create its own mythology by committing the etiological fallacy of trying to demonstrate that the Biblical stories come from earlier Greek or Roman or Egyptian mythological ones (‘this story is the basis of this story which is the basis of this story, and so on’— even when there is no historical evidence at all that the stories were ever related, or engendered one another), is that it fails to notice the drastic theological and ethical differences between the Biblical God and his Son, and the character and actions of those in stories like that of Perseus and Zeus.

I am afraid that the remake of Clash of the Titans is not as good as the first one made in 1981, even with all its technological advantages  But lest you despair there is nothing now worth seeing in the theaters, lets consider another offering— involving an equally gargantuan creature, only this one is trapped in a mountain not sunk in a sea. I mean ‘How to Train Your Dragon’.

 
This is yet another film out of the Dream Works workshop, and there is a good reason why it has gotten a 98% approval rating from the critics, whereas Clash of the Titans has received at best about a 30% approval nod.  For one thing, the story line is creative, and in some ways original, even with familiar elements (young boy and young girl get to be heroes in dangerous situation). Of course there is some quirkiness along the way. 

The story is supposed to be about Vikings, but strangely enough they all sound like Scotty from Star Trek…. namely they all sound like refugees from the middle of Scotland. And then there is the name of our boy, the central character— Hiccup!  He is indeed a hiccup in the midst of a uber-testosterone world of dragon slaying Vikings secluded on a barren and uninviting island which is described by our young lad as “a place where the food is bland and tough, like the land and the people’. But not Hiccup…. he is a breed apart. His father of course wanted Hiccup to grow up into the next great dragon slayer, but in fact the son, who is timid by nature, found his calling as a dragon tamer.  He is a breath of fresh air in a culture where most everyone has dragon breath, and even the girls are too macho for Hiccup.

This story moves along nicely, with various surprises along the way, and the characters are beautifully drawn and show up well in 3-D. But here again, things do not really leap out at you off the screen very much, as in some 3-D movies. Maybe they should just say such films are in ‘High-Def’. Despite all the dragons, and some brief scary scenes, this one hour and 38 minute film is perfectly fine to take one’s children to see, and indeed they may even absorb some valuable lessons about not making fear-based judgments about others, including other creatures, just because they are so different than we are and so seem ominous (on that criteria one might well expect to have the same reaction if one encountered God in a close way). As Hiccup says ” almost everything we thought about them (i.e. dragons) is wrong”.  As it turns out, dragons are scared too, and just trying to defend themselves, like the Vikings.

While this movie may not help you to slay your personal dragons, and Clash of the Titans in good Medusa fashion may well turn you to stone if you stare at it too long, at least ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ is a good family film which could even produce an interesting conversation or two between parents and children about feared based rather than faith based ways of evaluating others. And sadly this is about the only really recent film in the theaters at all worth watching.