Well, they clashed - some spoilers
Apr. 15th, 2010 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
binidjSaw Clash of the Titans yesterday and was ... well ... underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, the CGI was pretty enough but as seems to be the fashion these days, they apparently paid very little attention to telling the story.
It is, I believe, a well known maxim among writers that one should "show not tell" this film, contrarywise, decided to tell rather than show; perhaps they thought we'd be so distracted by the pretties (and, my goodness, Liam Cunningham in a short tunic very nearly succeeded ... woof!) that we wouldn't notice. Sadly I did notice that, for all the speechifying about how mortals matter, we never once saw a mortal death that actually meant anything. Characters that I cared about or of whom I thought "oh they look interesting, I wonder what their story is?" were swept from the screen without anyone seeming to care or mark their passing. Indeed, my favourite character died and I had no idea it was him until quite a bit later on! Crucially, the audience wasn't given time to mourn the death of these interesting humans. "No" said the director-god, "don't bother with rubbish humanity, look at this shiny new bit of CGI" the characters were, it seems, not important to the plot. As if this weren't bad enough, Medusa was killed, not by deliberate human cunning but by ... yes, you guessed it ... more CGI.
That said, I prefer this version to the original ... yes, I hated that fucking owl that much. However, I feel that it must be pointed out that the ancient stories have stuck with us for three thousand years now, give or take, I rather doubt that Hollywood's attempts to improve on these will last for even a decade. Perhaps one day they'll have a stab at actually retelling the original tales, with actors as the main focus supported, not supplanted, by special effects.
It is, I believe, a well known maxim among writers that one should "show not tell" this film, contrarywise, decided to tell rather than show; perhaps they thought we'd be so distracted by the pretties (and, my goodness, Liam Cunningham in a short tunic very nearly succeeded ... woof!) that we wouldn't notice. Sadly I did notice that, for all the speechifying about how mortals matter, we never once saw a mortal death that actually meant anything. Characters that I cared about or of whom I thought "oh they look interesting, I wonder what their story is?" were swept from the screen without anyone seeming to care or mark their passing. Indeed, my favourite character died and I had no idea it was him until quite a bit later on! Crucially, the audience wasn't given time to mourn the death of these interesting humans. "No" said the director-god, "don't bother with rubbish humanity, look at this shiny new bit of CGI" the characters were, it seems, not important to the plot. As if this weren't bad enough, Medusa was killed, not by deliberate human cunning but by ... yes, you guessed it ... more CGI.
That said, I prefer this version to the original ... yes, I hated that fucking owl that much. However, I feel that it must be pointed out that the ancient stories have stuck with us for three thousand years now, give or take, I rather doubt that Hollywood's attempts to improve on these will last for even a decade. Perhaps one day they'll have a stab at actually retelling the original tales, with actors as the main focus supported, not supplanted, by special effects.
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Date: 2010-04-15 03:18 pm (UTC)Specifically, you'd be a .....
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Date: 2010-04-15 10:11 pm (UTC)But I'm told there's good reason -- the story was quite different, but got hacked to pieces after principal photography was over due to studios getting cold feet. From what I've heard of the plot, it made much more sense (and was a lot less black-and-white).
Ah well. It'll probably never be seen - it'd need too much CGI work to resurrect...
Go and see How to Train Your Dragon - much better written, beautiful looking (Dreamworks' best yet) and overall much more fun...