Clash of the Titans (2010)

[j d worthington]

I think that it will be interesting. Certainly the effects will be better however, if it is a success I wonder if Sinbad can not be far along after it.

They so much as touch 7th Voyage, and I will personally burn the studio down....

 

[GOLLUM]

Man I used to love those Harry Hausen movies as a kid! I fondly recall Clash of the Titans. Not a great film but magical to the eyes of a young boy growing up all the same.

I thought 7th Voyage was probably the best of the Hausen/Sinbad movies.

 

[dustinzgirl]

They so much as touch 7th Voyage, and I will personally burn the studio down....

I'll bring the lighter.


Sorry, I love claymation and puppeteering. Most of my absolute favorite movies had one or both. I miss the old days, now its all done by computer and it doesn't look anymore real, just different.

This scared the crap out of me as a kid:

The new one...not so much.

 

[GOLLUM]

Yeh! I recall Medusa scaring me too!

Good old days indeed...

 

[GOLLUM]

Thanks for the memories....

YouTube - Clash of the Titans - Medusa

 

[dustinzgirl]

You know what annoys me the most?

Clash of the Titans isn't even THAT old of a movie. Why remake it? There are lots of other, older stories that would make great remakes.

Our minds have collectively gone lazy.

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, I quite liked the Medusa, overall... and, generally speaking, Calibos (the transformation scene, done simply with animated shadows, I always found peculiarly effective. Odd, that, but it works still; it evokes both a sense of horror and of pity....

 

[dustinzgirl]

OH! And the marvelous little owl that was all shiny gold and silver! I loved that little guy!

 

[GOLLUM]

OH! And the marvelous little owl that was all shiny gold and silver! I loved that little guy!

So did I but I don't think J.D. much cared for it LOL!

 

[Culhwch]

They so much as touch 7th Voyage, and I will personally send the director a thank you card and a gift basket....

Just remind me, JD, when that day comes, to return to this thread and edit your comment to something a little more innocent and less, erm, indictable, such as the above...

 

[j d worthington]

You know what annoys me the most?

Clash of the Titans isn't even THAT old of a movie. Why remake it? There are lots of other, older stories that would make great remakes.

Our minds have collectively gone lazy.

Um, Dustie... Hellraiser (1987); Day of the Dead (1985); Red Dawn (1984); Robocop (1987)....

 

[j d worthington]

Just remind me, JD, when that day comes, to return to this thread and edit your comment to something a little more innocent and less, erm, indictable, such as the above...

LOL.... You know, given the place of that film in my life, I might just let it (the post) stand....

I'll tell you, though... with things like this, it begins to look as if Ellison's comment to the head of the studio that he had "the intellectual capacity of an artichoke" may have been an extreme compliment....

 

[dustinzgirl]

Um, Dustie... Hellraiser (1987); Day of the Dead (1985); Red Dawn (1984); Robocop (1987)....

All of which, my good Mr. Worthington, I have vehemently refused to spend my money and time on.

 

[j d worthington]

All of which, my good Mr. Worthington, I have vehemently refused to spend my money and time on.

Now, if only about 90% of the moviegoing populace would follow your lead....

 

[dustinzgirl]

Now, if only about 90% of the moviegoing populace would follow your lead....

Amen to that my e-bro.

Then, hopefully we can get some new plots.

Although, the zombie movies I don't really stress about, those have been redone since Night of the Living Dead. And, there's only so many ways to do a zombie movie.

But as for Hellraiser and Robocop, me and mine will watch the OG versions.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Sorry, I love claymation and puppeteering. Most of my absolute favorite movies had one or both. I miss the old days, now its all done by computer and it doesn't look anymore real, just different.

Amen to that...I adore stop motion animation, I can't get enough of it. No matter how good CGI gets, it just never looks real to me. In fact, the better it gets, the more it's going to dip into the uncanny valley...

And I love this film, this and Jason and the Argonauts, just brilliant films that I've watched forever (always when they come on tv though, and usually around Christmas time) and I'm so miffed that they're remaking it.

Wait, ROBOCOP'S BEING REMADE?

Oh, for the love of Azathoth, WHY!

 

[j d worthington]

As I've noted before, I really think this has a lot to do with economics (or perceived economics). Hollywood has this terrible tendency to periodically go into long spates of remakes, sequels, and the like, rather than producing much in the way of original films (or even film adaptations of previously untouched literary material), as it saves money in the initial stages -- proposals, treatments, purchase of rights, etc. They then have either some studio writers or plain hacks take a (slightly) different spin on it, but without any true imagination... and bank on a known title that people can identify with, rather than expending any effort either creatively or financially that they can avoid. (And sometimes they don't even go that far. Cf. Gus van Sant's remake of Psycho.)

In former times, people would get bored and tired of the rehashes, and begin attending more "art" or foreign films, which remained more focused on creativity and originality (or pretentiousness, at times), and Hollywood would slowly wake up to the fact it was losing its audience to these alternatives. And, of course, when that happened, they'd blame the genres themselves ("nobody's interested in sci-fi anymore"; "horror films are passé" -- or "so yesterday", or whatever the current catchword for such a concept may be -- etc.; or even denigrating previously highly lauded filmmakers). (Oh, and I use "skiffy" in this sentence deliberately, to underscore the contempt expressed. As most of those around here know, I utterly despise that term, as it originally -- and, with many even today -- denoted a low-brow, sub-literary form of science fiction-cum-adventure which helped give the genre its negative image in the first place. "Flowers for Algernon", Dune, or The Left Hand of Darkness are not "sci-fi"; Buck Rogers is.)

Eventually, though, they'd get it through their heads that it was their lack of creativity and originality which was costing them the money, and they'd begin financing some of the mavericks who were, until then, having a tough time getting their projects made... or had to settle for extremely watered-down versions of same. Then things would pick up again for a decade or two, until the New Guard became the Old Guard, and the cycle began all over again....

Now, however, Hollywood is so stuck in its "post-modern" idea of what the medium (or art) is, that rehashes and remakes are considered as viable an artistic production as the alternative (original work), and the New Guard is, if anything, even more entrenched in this inspissated manner of thinking; so I'm no longer so sure there's going to be a renaissance... at least, for a good long time. And so, as long as even with the audience, the emphasis remains better technical achievement (visuals, sound, etc.) rather than better storytelling, more originality, more intelligent scripts, etc., then all we can expect are remakes and sequels and rip-offs of rip-offs of rip-offs.

An occasional remake or sequel is fine -- sometimes they even manage to come up with something really good (vide The Fly, Bride of Frankenstein, Aliens) -- but when it becomes the norm... we're in trouble, folks; both as an audience and as creative individuals ourselves, for we reinforce the idea that only "the tried and true" is worth giving a shot, and that is never good for any form of artistic endeavor; literary, cinematic, or otherwise.

 

[Alysheba]

LOLOL I have to chuckle at the amount of people who were as scared as I was when they saw the Medusa scene. I didn't watch hardly any of it as a kid in the theaters. I covered my eyes most of the time. LOLOL It is still one of my favorite movies. I owe that to my uncle who was a fan of the Sinbad films and had me watch those as a young kid. All I needed was a flying horse and I was hooked forever. I think for me anyway the owl was a type of comic relief as well as something to intrigue young viewers who went to the film. We see the reverse today in a lot of kid's films where the movie tries to put in adult humor among all the storyline.

 

[chrispenycate]

One vote in favour of CGI. Not that stop motion can't give excellent results, but with "Jason and the Argonauts" for example the movement is very jerky and irregular, adequate for some monsters but nowhere near all; I suspect they were using the same shot two or even three frames. Which means they are a far cry from, say, Wallace and Grommit.

I've been working with animators for over thirty years now, and, being the sound effects guy, I analyse them very much the same way as I do critiques; in detail. I've worked with real product animation, stop frame, cells, and multiple generations of electronic (plus no few hybrids) and the artist's character comes through the different media; but modern algorithms allow him to see the results faster, to edit them, to get closer to the pictures playing in his head, and not require a team of forty colouring in, and between shots fill sequences that very nearly work, and analysing a voice optical track frame by frame for mouth shapes…

Certainly it can be used merely to reduce costs, but even then, it delivers control.

What is critical, when you mix real with imaginary, is the performance of the purely human actors; and tat is rarely improved in the remakes.

 

[j d worthington]

To me, even the best CGI (and some of it is indeed very good, though unfortunately not enough) lacks what I would call "dimensionality"... a subtle depth that I, at least, find present with stop-motion animation... and that pulls me right out of the thing far too often. I don't know... perhaps it has something to do with shadow, or texture, or some subtle suggestion of rondure; but whatever it is, despite the flaws you quite accurately point out, Chris, it simply lacks that quality.

As for the acting... yes, improvements in that direction are extremely scarce....