Viewed on March 25, 2010
I walked into this film expecting much. The previews I had seen and the excitement of people talking about it had me jumpy to see a good popcorn superhero mythology flick. I even was willing to see it in 3-D, which is weird for me with a live-action film.
What I saw was extremely disappointing, not to mention boring. The more I think about it, the more upset I am that this film had such drive and such potential and yet still managed to flop worse than a beached elephant seal. I guess I shouldn't have had much hope for a movie that had "Piranhas 3-D!" as a preview...
The first scene was confusing and went way too quickly. I instantly could tell that the 3-D was done in post-production. (Film geek moment coming) 3-D is a very touchy thing when applied to visual arts. It can either look awesome or look terrible. To make it look really cool, one must make the art piece with 3-D in mind, which means that you use different techniques, different lighting, different cameras and angles, etc. To easily make a 3-D piece suck, just film it in normal ways and then make a last-minute money-hungry decision to stuff it through 3-D technology and force it to be a 3-D film. The end result of the post-production process is that your film looks like a horrrible pop-up book--the picture is ever so slightly distorted (which makes your audience dizzy) and it looks like flat layers of pictures all stacked up on top of one another. It's rough and annoying as heck. (It was so bad that I had to take off the 3-D glasses to give my head a break--and I discovered that the film viewed without the glasses was only slightly different from the film viewed with the glasses!)
The storyline was booooorrrrring. Greek mythology does not do well in an aesthetic sense anyway, but when meshed with random Roman and even early Medieval legends, and you shuffle the timelines around...it makes for a boring and confusing story. The main character (Perseus) begins as a likable character, but he quickly becomes way too smart (how the heck did he learn to sword fight like that?!? It wasn't the five minute training he had) and becomes an expert problem-solver. The only excuses given for his erratic behavior is that he's a "demi-god"--half man, half god. This lame crutch is used again and again.
Another irritating tactic of the script is that it employs ancient Greek storytelling methods of telling the audience what's going to happen 20 minutes before it actually happens. For example, Perseus is told the entire time what he's going to accomplish; by golly, he does. It just means that we know what's going to happen, so we don't feel true suspense.
It's also extremely difficult to get attached to the characters. There is very, very little character development on any of the minor characters. During battle, people will be dying and Persus stops and is all like, "Oh no, so-and-so died!", and I was going, "So? Who was that, anyway? Never seen him before."
The dialogue is stiff, stilted, and uneven. It's also cheesy, goofy, and tries way too hard to be philosophical. It's obvious that somebody doesn't know how real superheros talk.
NEGATIVES:
>>I don't remember more than one or two profanities.
>>Physical attraction, in its visual sense, is pretty much nonexistent in this film, except for one scene where Zeus seduces a woman by disguising himself as her husband. There's not really any conversation about it, nor is there really a true chemistry between Perseus and the annoying "I-know-everything" demi-goddess who seems to know what's going to happen all the time and has no problems with saying so...um, anyway, there's just not really a connection between the two.
>>I don't remember if there's much alcohol or smoking involved. I think I was already bored.
>>Violence is the name of the game. Gore and grossness is everywhere--from green slimy bug guts, to a minion's black and oozing blood, to saliva from a huge monster. People are thrown off of cliffs, shot, used, punched, kicked, slashed, burned, deformed, snapped in half, eaten, shoved, and one is very nearly sacrificed. However, it's dumb choreography and the gross is obviously fake--so much so that it's distracting.
>>Religion is HUGE in this film. (Duh. It's a movie about Greek mythology.) Gods are spurned, angered, violent, sex-driven, fickle, hated by people, defied, and even killed. They are ignored and invoked, revered and rebuked, ever-changing and never-loving. They end the film in the same state they began.
Positives? Ummm...Perseus is played by Sam Worthington, the same guy who headlined Avatar. And Worthington kept his Australian accent for this film, which doesn't bother me in the least. However, other than that, I think this movie is a waste of anyone's time. Had I paid for it, I would not have been happy at all.
I give this movie 1 out of 6 stars.
So that everyone (including myself) may benefit from it, please feel free to leave your own personal opinion of this film.
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