Oh No They Di'int!! -- episode 2

Why are they remaking Clash of the Titans? They don't need to ... it's just as uncalled-for as all the other remakes that are littering the landscape already. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm becoming older than I feel, but there should be a law out there that says a movie can't be remade if it's less than 50 years old, and a movie adaptation of a TV series can't be made if the TV series ended less than 30 years ago. It's not as if every original idea that could possibly exist has already been done, right? And doesn't the track record of so-called "reboots" of movie and TV series kind-of speak for itself? There have been far more misses of that sort lately than there have been hits ... and don't even get me started on the A-Team movie (Oh, heaven help us, Liam Neeson is going to play Hannibal Smith? What are they thinking?!?) and the Karate Kid rehash that are on their way ... I can already see the dismal box-office receipts for them. People say nostalgia sells nowadays, but I say if you want nostalgia, go out and buy the original series on DVD and watch that; 98 percent of all TV series worth any pop-culture value are out on DVD, and trust me, they were all done far better the first time around.

But, back to the topic at hand: Clash of the Titans. Not everyone will agree with me, but far as I'm concerned it was a classic. Sir Laurence Olivier as Zeus, king of the gods (hey, who else would he play?) ... the always delightful Maggie Smith as the goddess Thetis ... the late, great Burgess Meredith as Ammon ... and, last but certainly not least, Bubo the mechanical owl as himself!! Not to mention the formidable Kraken, the icky Stygian Witches, the creepy Styx ferrymen, and the scare-you-shitless Medusa. The folks over at The Sci-Fi Movie Page complain that the original was "slow and dull", but I never ever get bored watching it; in fact, I'd rather have a movie that's comfortably paced rather than the lightning-fast, flashy and noisy video-game-stylized movies that are all the rage now. They also whine about the special effects being poor, but I consider them an artform -- think of all the man-hours it took to produce those shots ... not the most realistic-looking scenes in the world, but I tend to appreciate effects that actually took a lot of effort. Toiling in front of cameras for endless hours to put together a ten-second scene shows a kind of care and character that sitting in front of a computer and sliding various light/shading/color/contrast tools back and forth never can and never will.

I'm just not impressed with anything I've seen or heard yet about the Clash of the Titans remake. Liam Neeson as Zeus? Sure, I like the guy fine (he was in Krull, after all, and of course he was Qui-Gon Jinn!), so he'll probably do nicely in the role. Sam Worthington? Okay, I can't comment on him one way or another since I don't think I've seen anything he's been in ... but I bet he won't have the charisma that Harry Hamlin had in the role. And what's Hades doing in this thing? He wasn't in the original ... I bet we'll see a flashy, effects-laden battle, ala Anakin versus Obi-Wan, between them ... whatever. I am mildly interested that Nicholas Hoult is going to be in it, 'cause I liked him in the British series Skins. And is Medusa going to be a strictly CG character? Oh ... actually she was entirely animated in the original, now that I think about it. And dollars to doughnuts, they won't even have a Bubo in this one at all. Well, that just tears it right there. Unless the trailers seriously blow me away, I won't be seeing this thing until it hits DVD.