There was a big (well, big in the circles I hang out in anyway) furor over Avatar when it came out, the crux of the issue in many peoples minds being the story itself, that even couched in something as spectacular as a completely computer generated world, the story line was tired and old.

In contrast to that “failure” I’d like to bring to mind another equally CGI heavy film, one I was looking forward to easily as much as Avatar, but one that, in sharp contrast, didn’t take the time and effort to make the storyline solid enough to support the weight of a
thousand effects shots.

Clash of the Titans is a do-over of the classic Harryhousen-type effects film from the 80’s. Granted, while the original had a classic style rogue-hero story, it did hold together, the roles of the characters clearly defined, the progression of the story straight and true. Not innovative, not new and nifty, but still solid.

This is where I feel the key difference between these two Effects Spectaculars lies. Both films reflect the bleeding edge of CGI technology, even though Clash of the Titans composites in live actors, pretty much everything else has been kissed with a digital brush. Both films tell a story set in a fantastic world, both films feature fight and flight scenes with amazing, otherworldly creatures, both films feature stories that have been told before.

So why so different?

The storyline. Avatars story was not, perhaps, unique, but it was tried and true, a solid and well-known story that everyone, from the Twilight- loving tween to the grandparent who still remembers the Boer War like it was yesterday, was familiar with. It served as a grounding-point, the place you could refer back to when the whirling blue-skinned montages befuddled your brain.

In contrast, the storyline for Clash of the Titans *should* have stayed simple and clean, they should have kept the High Concept, that Man can overcome anything, even a God and chucked the whole Zeus vs Hades as a plot element. Instead what we have here feel like someone read Percy Jackson halfway through production and decided they didn’t want to confuse the 10yo audience. The story we’re left with feels cobbled together, it gets
muddy, particularly where Perseus hatred of the Gods is concered, which, as it turns out is really just hatred of Hades, but really he just wants to prove that Man doesn’t need Gods, but then he just wants to find his place in the world..

The mauling of the story puts me in mind of other, similar retellings, the Island of Dr Moreau being the one that stands out the clearest, where, in an attempt to reboot and modernize the story, they have not only lost their way, but have layered reshoots and fixes until we are left with something that simply loses the narrative flow and comes across as chaotic and confusing.