The good news is visually the first trailer for the remake of the classic 80’s fantasy feature “Clash of the Titans” looks great. The CG medusa and scorpions, the mutant witches, and the various human characters all look quite a bit stronger than expected with a few elements looking like they stick closer to the original than I had anticipated.
With Louis Leterrier behind the helm and the success of “300” still drawing envy, this was always going to be the ‘Call of Duty’ version of the Perseus tale anyway – stripped down, bare knuckle, action-heavy escapism rather than the slightly campy, more gracefully paced classic original.
With this first trailer it comes as somewhat of a relief how ‘unstylized’ this is, avoiding the CG-overdose of “300” in favour of real location work and practical action set pieces.
What’s drawing a lot of ire however is the MTV editing. Chalk it up to “The Wolfman” second trailer the other month which ditched the original classic horror film style-trailer for a more visually interesting but poorly cut heavy metal hack job that proved a much bigger hit with the online crowd.
As a result the trailer people here have taken that to the extreme – ridiculously fast flash cuts, pounding rock ballad backing music, and a promo slogan ‘Titans Will Clash’ which has to be one of the singularly weakest I’ve heard in years.
It’s a 67-second teaser so the actual film’s pacing and flow can’t be determined but lets hope it works cause between all the rapid fire cutting there looks to be a hell of an adventure.
