A Titan Versus a Titan!

I don't really have terribly fond memories of the cheesy 1980 mythological monster movie mash-up Clash of the Tians. Except I did like a couple of the monsters. (Medusa with a serpent's body? Turned her from lame to cool.)

And so I don't know why, even with all this remake fever, they'd remake this particular movie.

But I guess there's some reason the movie still plays on TBS every year.

Here's the trailer.

Once again we have classier British actors playing the gods (was: Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith; now: Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes).

What I don't get is this: I liked the Medusa's blood that turned into the giant scorpions. Good monsterage there. But, still and all, giant scorpions are pretty unimaginative monsters, and aren't particularly unique to Greek mythology.

So why does every third cut in this trailer feature them? Yeah, giant scorpions, yay. But I would think they'd want to show us more flashes of more iconic monsters.

Why this movie might actually be good: The director is Frenchman Louis Leterrier, who did a bang-up job with The Incredible Hulk. I watched the commentary, and a lot of the stuff he says makes me think he's got a lot on the ball as regards this kind of movie.

Stuff like, "Oh, here I didn't want to put the CGI right in your face, I wanted to be subtle about it," or "I let this take go on a while because I hate that chop-chop-chop style of editing." *

Those aren't real quotes. They're made-up for-examples.

I remember, though, nodding along with him as he described the various choices he made, thinking, "Yeah, man, I hate that crap too. Thanks for not doing it for once!"

Thanks to DavidR.

* One thing I really appreciated was his use of a practical (not CGI) special effect where anyone else, pretty much, would have just used CGI because it's so cheap and easy.

He wanted to show Tim Roth running at 40+ mph. (He'd been given Captain America's super soldier serum.) They set up a line above Roth, then dangled him from that line by another line, then pulled him by another line, this one powered by a motor, at 40 mph as he pretended to run across an open field.

Then, yeah, they used CGI to erase all the ropes.

It was a subtle thing, and not really this huge eye-catching special effect, in the sense you weren't quite sure you were looking at a special effect. Maybe he went too subtle on that one.

Still, it was cool to actually see a guy booking along at a very high speed, and realize, "Hey, I'm not looking at some dopey-looking CGI gollum here, nor obviously-sped-up film, that is really Tim Roth somehow running that fast."

I like his impulse to go with the right way to pull something off rather than just going with the easy and cheap way.

Dating Advice: Pretty much why everyone comes here.

Oblig. offers some:

If your date's gone well and you got the lady home, and you're about to seal the deal but you need to drop that lobster-dinner deuce first, excuse yourself quietly, and at the sound of the closing bathroom door, yell "UNLEASH THE KRAKEN!"

Always be closing.

Oh Dear Lord: This isn't even the remake of the cheesiest movie from this era coming out soon.

They're remaking... Piranha.

posted by Ace at 12:57 PM

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