by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright April 2010
Dragon was so contemporary! It felt as Viking as an Orange County middle school with Vikings as its mascot.
Clash, on the other hand, was refreshing. I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't the Disney-story version of some classic.
These movies had in common that they were catching the 3D wave, but beyond that they came out quite differently, which was good to see.
"How to Train Your Dragon" disappointed me because it felt so contemporary. The language and the relations of all the characters were modern: start with a bright, nerdy protagonist, add overachieving girl and mocking classmates, a busy misunderstanding dad, and a comic relief gym teacher... all from the 2010's. Why the movie makers bothered with the Viking/Dragon motif became the movie's main mystery.
I was modestly impressed with how much violence the movie makers could dish out without actually hurting anyone. Until the end of the movie, all the deadly attacks are near-misses -- no dragons or kids are harmed in the watching of this movie until the last battle. (Fish don't fare so well. <grin>)
Adding to the contemporary feel was watching the vikings drive their ships as if they were SUV's -- no one rowed ...how can you show a viking ship without people rowing? -- and the sails never looked like they were pulling anything. They looked as functional as tail-fins on 60's American cars.
The final attack on the island train-wrecked my belief suspension. Among other things:
o Father attacks this new target without scouting?
o The catapaults are enough to knock a hole in the side of this volcano?
o The big T-Rex dragon never found this weak spot before the catapaults opened it?
Which made the end of the movie even more ho-hum than the contemporary motif I'd been watching all along did. So, overall, the movie gets a big ho-hum.
I was not expecting much from "Clash of the Titans". I saw the 1981 version when it came out, and I was not impressed then. This time I was favorably impressed with what I saw.
What I liked about this movie was the men acting manly in a classic way. I was expecting something like Dragon above. I was expecting the characters to act like manly rappers who wore their armored skirts baggy and their helmets turned backwards. Instead they came across as being fairly classic in their bonding relations, and I liked that.
I liked the mix of allies that comes to surround Perseus.
That said, there was a whole lot that bothered me.
o The basic story premise that the people of Argos would actively rebel against the gods didn't work for me. They may ignore them, not show enough humility, but to actively rebel? That would only happen if the gods were doing something such as heavy taxation, of which there is no mention in the movie.
o All of the gods except Zeus and Hades just sit around. I know that having them do something would make the story unbelievably complex and long, but still... If I was a god, I'd want to be doing something.
o I didn't like Medusa's temple. I liked the peaceful, serene, 81 version much better. It looked like a livable place, this one didn't, and the contrast of the peaceful look with the sneaky violence worked for me.
o The underwater scenes didn't work for me at all. They were too deep and ran too long. Only if Poseidon showed up to help Perseus would I have accepted them. And, as mentioned above for Dragon, the triremes move around without rowers and little wind.
o The Kraken gives us the now-classic CGI roar. <sigh> Happily, the rest of the CGI cast looked much more original. I liked that.
So, in the end, I was much happier to see Clash in this remade version than I was to see Dragon, and that surprised me.
-- The End --