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YMMV / Clash of the Titans (2010)

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  • Alternate Character Interpretation:
    • When Medusa has the Djinn in her grasp and can't kill him is she having an Oh, Crap! moment or is she just shocked and acting emotional about that someone isn't turning to stone when she looks at them?
    • Aphrodite's cursing of Medusa in the first place. Was it an example of Jerkass Gods? Or maybe in her own way she felt she was helping Medusa out - giving her the power to take revenge on men who would try to wrong her. Medusa retains some of her beauty in this version.
  • Anvilicious: Men don't need gods. Is it really necessary to remind us of that every ten minutes?
  • Awesome Music: The whole soundtrack, courtesy of Ramin Djawadi of Game of Thrones fame, is an absolutely epic collection.
  • Better on DVD: Watching without the bad 3-D conversion the theatrical release had makes for a better viewing experience.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • If you've never seen the original you might be asking yourself what a futuristic robotic owl is doing laying in the bottom of a trunk in ancient Greece.
    • The conversation that young Perseus has with Spyros about his anxieties regarding the new baby and Spyros not being his biological father. It has no bearing on the plot except to set up a character who is killed a few scenes later without so much as a single line. It makes more sense with the original ending where Perseus rejects Zeus and says that his real father is a dead fisherman (the moral being that blood ties mean nothing without a familial bond). However, with that plot point dropped, it does seem a tad random.
  • Critical Backlash: There are some who feel that the remake isn't as bad as the critical reception suggests. One critic noted that the majority of bad reviews came from passionate fans of the original. Some feel that it's a decent popcorn action movie, despite the obvious Executive Meddling that hurt it.
  • Designated Villain: Medusa again, with a deeply tragic backstory. Io even seems to think she deserves pity. Of course, she's more of a means to an end to defeat the real villain, but still. Although here she's shown to be far more malevolent than her counterpart in the 80s version — where she appears to take great delight in killing the soldiers, and cackles whenever she successfully scares them.
  • Die for Our Ship: Io is this to fans of the original, for being Perseus's love interest instead of Andromeda. What's more is that Alexa Davalos's performance as the latter was one of the things fans reacted positively to, so Io being the love interest left a bad taste in fans' mouths — especially with the news that she was shot as a platonic figure to Perseus at first and then retconned into being a love interest.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Alexa Davalos's Andromeda. Despite the backlash from fans of the original, when the first trailer was released — response to Andromeda's "have you seen what's happening out there?" was very positive.
    • The Djinn too, particularly Sheikh Sulieman, thanks to being total badasses who defeat giant scorpions by taming them.
  • Evil Is Cool: Weak plot aside, Hades made for a very chilling villain with a proper air of ominousness.
  • Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Safe to say the majority of viewers would have preferred the original subplot involving Apollo and Athena conspiring against the rest of the gods to help Perseus, as well as Andromeda being the love interest for Perseus rather than Io.
  • Franchise Original Sin: A lot of fans attacked the film for elements that were actually there in the original too. Namely the liberties with Greek mythology - it was the original that used the Kraken rather than Cetus, had Thetis be the one Cassiopeia angers rather than Poseidon, adapting out Medusa's sisters, and creating the Calibos character out of whole cloth.
  • Memetic Mutation: "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"
  • Mis-blamed: Sam Worthington found himself at the centre of controversy for allegedly demanding multiple changes to the story, including Bubo being Demoted to Extra. However, the only source is an interview that has never been verified, and the actor himself later said he had no idea what he was filming half the time because of all the studio interference.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Cassiopeia gets a surprisingly sudden death early in the film, but Polly Walker still makes her impact felt with her Badass Boast of "we are the Gods now!"
    • Medusa as well, as is to be expected with this story.
  • Presumed Flop: The film is often spoken about as a Star-Derailing Role for Sam Worthington, as if it were a Box Office failure, when it was very successful financially and got a sequel. This is likely because nostalgic fans of the original were outright vicious towards it, giving the impression of a huge failure. Sam Worthington still appeared in mainstream roles such as Man on a Ledge and instead preferred smaller independent films, disliking his action hero typecasting.
  • Questionable Casting: Izabella Miko as Athena is an odd choice, since with her blonde hair and typecasting as Ms. Fanservice, she seems ill suited to playing the Goddess of Wisdom, and a better fit for Aphrodite. Indeed, in one of her scenes, she tries to seduce Apollo, meaning that had she been credited as Aphrodite instead it likely would have made more sense.
  • Retroactive Recognition: A pre-The Hobbit Luke Evans as Apollo, as well as Ser Davos and The Hound.
  • Signature Scene:
    • The battle with the giant scorpions in the desert.
    • The battle in Medusa's lair with all the soldiers getting turned to stone.
  • Special Effects Failure: While the special effects in the film were pretty much Visual Effects of Awesome, the half-assed converted 3D conversion certainly applies.
  • Strangled by the Red String: The alternate ending from the Blu-Ray is closer to the original in that Perseus and Andromeda fall in love...even though they barely share screentime together due to Andromeda being Demoted to Extra, Perseus is a Darker and Edgier hero than the "motivated by love" original, and the rest of the movie builds up a different love interest in Io. This is due to Executive Meddling finding Io as a better love interest, cutting most of Andromeda's scenes and re-editing Io from a platonic figure to a romantic one. In the original ending, they do share a kiss...because Perseus is saving her from drowning, and they end on a Maybe Ever After, since the movie was planned as a trilogy and their romance would presumably develop across it.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The entire film was subjected to this, being criticized by nostalgic fans of the original over just every difference, but the decision to turn a relatively faithful Greek story into a thoroughly unsubtle Christian allegory received particular flaks by more intellectual pundits.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Poor Bubo, often regarded as The Scrappy is reduced to a cameo, and a rather callously offhanded one at that.
    • Loads of characters had bigger roles that were cut down in editing. Apollo and Athena played a big part in the plot, scheming against Zeus. In the final film, Apollo only gets a couple of lines in the first council scene and Athena is Demoted to Extra.
    • Likewise Alexa Davalos delivers a good performance as Andromeda. But most of her scenes were cut. She at least gets a larger role in the sequel, although there is replaced by Rosamund Pike.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Regardless of the comparisons with the original, both good and bad reviews agree this was a film that had the cast, the flair, the soundtrack, the visuals, and even the premise to be outstanding. Being a film about the value and meaning of humanity in a world of gods, it actually features a variety of characters that could explore it in different ways: Acrisius (a man who paid the price for challenging the gods), Perseus' comrades (overwhelmed human soldiers), the Djinns (basically magical transhumans), Medusa (whose unfair treatment to the gods' hands needs no explanation) and even Hades (who has a potent Freudian Excuse after all). However, in a general waste that is almost a feat by itself, we end up knowing almost nothing of the inner world of any of them, leaving them as underdeveloped one-notes and nothing more.
    • There were times when it felt it they were setting up to deliver the message "just because they're your children/you created them doesn't justify abusing them," but it never happened. Arguably, however, as Zeus seems to come to a realization along those lines by the end: if the gods hadn't been so hard on the mortals, the mortals never would have rebelled, and the stage for Hades's takeover would never had been set.
    • The first draft of the film was completely different: it mixed several mythologies, and it had Zeus, Thoth, Marduk, Osiris and even Yahweh going against Tiamat and her followers, while Perseus had to join forces with an Earth goddess Love Interest to fight a human cult of Tiamat led by a priest named Fantasos. Even if such film was basically guaranteed to open a religious can of worms, there is no doubt it would have made a really epic story.
    • Even if the final product, if one goes by the behind the scenes notes, the plot was actually going to be quite interesting, with Athena and Apollo essentially scheming against Zeus, and Perseus's comrades getting more character development. For whatever reasons it was heavily cut down into a rather simplistic revenge plot.
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously:
    • Liam Neeson as Zeus gives it his all and as usual he's probably the best thing about the film.
    • Alexa Davalos as Andromeda was one of the few things fans of the original thought was good about this, and some even felt she was better than the original Andromeda. Too bad most of her scenes were cut.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Zeus is this in the final cut of the first film. This is primarily due to him being an antagonist initially but Executive Meddling trying to make him more heroic. So he has an abrupt change of heart and decides to help Perseus. This is after he's already ordered the Kraken on Argos and it's said he raped Perseus's mother.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: For those watching the film in 2D however, the CGI is exceptional. Painfully averted with the slapped on 3D, but even then the Kraken looked freaking awesome. It's a shame he was only there for less than five minutes.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?: Perseus sports a highly modern-looking buzz cut more akin to today's soldiers or action video game protagonists. Soldiers in Ancient Rome did have buzzcuts, but of course Perseus isn't a soldier. Supposedly, the hair is a remnant of an early idea where Perseus would give himself an Important Haircut before going on the quest, but the scenes were scrapped.

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