Latest CNNGo.com "Say What? with mrbrown" column: Hollywood, leave the classics alone!
Excerpt:
The wife and I grew up watching "Clash of the Titans", the 1981 Ray Harryhousen version. The cheesy stop motion special effects of that time was cutting age, and we were easy-to-please kids then.Then Hollywood had to go and make a "re-imagineering" of the movie. Re-imagineering usually means we will hack a classic to bits and add a ton of special effects to it so that you won't realise we just violated your childhood memories.
The last time re-imagineering a show was successful, it was Battlestar Galactica, the TV series. Most times, newer versions suck.
Sam Worthington — first a cyborg in "Terminator Salvation", alien wannabe in "Avatar" and now demi-god in "Clash of the Titans".
For those unfamiliar with this movie, "Clash of the Titans" is about Perseus and his adventures. Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, slept with Perseus's mother by taking the form of her husband, a king who led a revolt against the gods in the old days.
Perseus, demigod son of a rapist god, leads a bunch of warriors against the Greek gods who were about to unleash their pet monster, the Kraken, on the kingdom of Argos.
You would think that a movie with such a big special effects budget, and with Jake Sully, Voldemort and Ras Al Ghul in it, would be great. But no, not even the line "Release the Kraken!" could save it. God of War 3, the PS3 game where an angry former Spartan General named Kratos goes around killing all the Greek gods with his Blades of Chaos, had better storytelling. (cont'd)
