“Titans will clash!” proclaims the trailer for Clash of the Titans, which is the biggest and most bare-faced movie-promotions-related lie of recent years. That’s because, as the opening voice over informs us, our story begins with the Titans all long dead and replaced by the Greek Gods we know and love: Zeus (Liam Neeson), Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and so on.

But calling the movie “Clash of the Accents” probably wouldn’t have had quite the same ring no matter how impressive Sam Worthington’s all-‘stryne, all the time performance is. And it really is an impressive performance: while the rest of this film sometimes seems a little unsure of exactly what tone to take with its mish-mash of myths and monsters, Worthington – as Perseus, son of Zeus, raised by humans – gives a star-worthy performance as a decent down-to-earth bloke who just happens to have to kill a whole lot of giant creatures.

Humanity has declared war on the gods, figuring that the gods (who need humanity’s prayers to stay immortal) need them more than they need the gods. No-one really seems to have thought this war idea through, and soon Perseus’ family is dead and the local king has been given a choice by Hades: either sacrifice your daughter, or the Kraken will destroy the city and everyone in it. 

Perseus decides to create a third option and puts together a Bronze Age dirty dozen to help him find a way to kill the Kraken. As usual when the gods are involved, there turns out to be a bit of back-stabbing going on atop Mount Olympus, which means that Perseus’ quest seems to get more complicated – and more monster-heavy – with every step.

Clash of the Titans seems to take an age to get started and then ends all in a rush, but the odd pacing actually helps the film. Taking a little time to let us get to know the cast early on helps us to feel something when they fall into lava or get turned to stone by the medusa in the home stretch, and unlike some monster movies this one knows that less is more when it comes to big battles.

It also does a reasonable job of keeping the bad dialogue to a minimum, though the un-aging love interest Io (Gemma Arterton) does invite Perseus to “ease your storm” , which hopefully will become the pick-up line of 2010. Otherwise there’s plenty of guys in leather skirts, flying horses, giant scorpions, flying demons, a massive sea monster, a lot of flesh burning and / or melting, some very impressive Icelandic locations and Ralph Fiennes somehow managing to out-ham UK comedian Steve Coogan (who played Hades as a faded rock star in the recent Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief) with a version of the king of the underworld who might as well have been called Whispering Jack.

If there has to be some whine with the cheese that this film so expertly serves up, it’d be about the 3D effects. This film wasn’t originally filmed in 3D and it shows in some shoddy rendering, especially whenever it’s a person (as opposed to a monster) in 3D. It’s distracting rather than engaging, and it lets the rest of this otherwise enjoyably silly but action-packed film down.

Clash of the Titans opens in cinemas today.
You can view the Clash of the Titans movie trailer here on TheVine.

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