GRIPE: Clash of the Titans (remake)

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Spectator

Mongoose
OK I absolutely love Sam Worthington, from Spartacus, to this, he is the ultimate Swords and sandals actor.
However I just got my Netflix movie "Clash..." and I have to say what a drag.
It make me realize how much a great story trumps great FX, every TIME!
Disclaimer: I saw the original back in the theaters in 1981 w/ my dad, so maybe I'm nostalgic, but damn, am I completely off-base?
 
I know a lot of people who like the new Clash movie because of the video game-like FX, but I'm not all that impressed. They also scoff at the sloppy look and jittery motion of the claymation, but I really enjoy the old claymation more then most of the CGI effects I have seen in movies lately (save for Avatar). I'm generally not impressed by CGI effects because I notice film-makers tend to focus more on the FX then on meaningful story or good acting, thus a slue of bland blockbusters with a lot of style and no substance like Phantom Menace or 2012.

I feel the same with regular hand-drawn animation. Folks get so critical of animated shows for much of the same reasons (more-or-less) as noted above - more so when you throw-in the high expectations of Japanese "anime", and folks who still think all western animated shows are just for kids.
 
My friends sometimes are baffled that I prefer older movies than today's "spectacular events," but I hate the loss of telling a good story. (Maybe that is why Hollywood is writing its own Conan movie instead of adapting one of Howard's). Movies are simply better when a good story with interesting characters are told. The FX should be secondary.

Otherwise, you get interchangeable movies. Change the FX around and it turns out the movies are the same. Maybe Cracked.com is right - and Clash of the Titans is the same as Transformers 2.
 
I love old movies and regularly find myself let down by a lot of modern ones. My favourite five movies are, in no particular order, Captain Blood, Unconquered, The Searchers, Once upon a time in the West and Taras Bulba.
I also quite like foreign language films rather than modern Hollywood blockbusters. Would far rather watch Pan's Labyrinth or Pacte des Loupes than Transformers or Spiderman.
 
gees, i saw the last Transformers in the theater and i would've thrown my popcorn through the screen if i wasn't half asleep. i left the new Crash saying "well the Kraken looked cool i guess." man, i hope they don't ruin the new Conan movie. i swear to God, if it's rated pg-13 i'm going to lose my mind!
 
I think I get really annoyed with big blockbuster remakes because someone feels like the older movie is too dated, so they remake it with all the topnotch special effects and modern style, while sucking everything that made the original film so interesting or meaningful. Much like Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Poseidon, Godzilla, and The Stepford Wives. The last one was a complete joke! The original was dark and cynical (with undertones of changing gender-roles, in a world that wish to be in a wholesome Disneyland vision of itself - in a slightly literal way), but the remake was a really, really awful comedy. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a creepy mix of a Michael Jackson parody and the Ed Wood movie (but without the "its so awful, is good!" feel that makes Ed Wood so interesting).

I think the best example of old vs new is with Star Wars and Phantom Menace. With Star Wars, it was a low-budget sci-fi with vary low expectations. George Lucas could not do everything he wanted because of time and budget constants, but his SFX team did vary well with what they had on hand. Ultimately, it was the right mix of story, acting, and FX that made it an instant classic. Some 30 or so years later Lucas made the prequel and even with a huge budget, a more recognized cast, really sophisticated computer-added SFX, and a lot more time to develop it, he end-up producing something so dry in dialog, so boring in action, and so lame in plot, that is was really forgettable. Ultimately the prequels linked to the original trilogy in such a forced and disjointed way, I'm more content with them never being made! :roll:
 
I definitely agree with you on the Phantom Menace pre-quals.
#1 with JAR JAR BINKS is absolutely atrocious, it is as if Disney Hijacked the damned film.
#2 and #3 were much better and I venture to say that I am actually a fan of #3!

I think enough people go the word to him by the time #3 was made that you had to bring the darker/ grittier elements back into the story.
 
I am a fan of Sam and Spartacus as well, except that he isn't in Spartacus. That is Andy Whitfield (sp?), I can't wait for season 1 to arrive in the stores so I can watch it again and again.

Aric
 
I agree with you, sometimes I watch old movies after I´ve been in the cinema watching the new one/remake, and there´s no color.

A comparison: Aguirre, wrath of God vs Apocalypto. Ok, ok, there are different stories but both of them got several common points: lots of violence, bigotry, jungle fever... but I really LOVE Herzog´s one, with that magnetic Lope de Aguirre, mad for gold and power, proclaiming himself "Emperor of the Peru and Chile" or The norwegian pathfinder vs new one, with those vikings lookalike Chaos Warriors of WHFB...

Yes, new ones could possibly have great SFX, but a film with only that factor, is like the shouts of an idiot, all noise but hollow of meaning.
 
Wolfx said:
I am a fan of Sam and Spartacus as well, except that he isn't in Spartacus. That is Andy Whitfield (sp?), I can't wait for season 1 to arrive in the stores so I can watch it again and again.

Aric
Click to expand...

Whoops, I thought they were the same guy! They are practically identical looking!
 
Phobos said:
I agree with you, sometimes I watch old movies after I´ve been in the cinema watching the new one/remake, and there´s no color.

A comparison: Aguirre, wrath of God vs Apocalypto. Ok, ok, there are different stories but both of them got several common points: lots of violence, bigotry, jungle fever... but I really LOVE Herzog´s one, with that magnetic Lope de Aguirre, mad for gold and power, proclaiming himself "Emperor of the Peru and Chile" or The norwegian pathfinder vs new one, with those vikings lookalike Chaos Warriors of WHFB...

Yes, new ones could possibly have great SFX, but a film with only that factor, is like the shouts of an idiot, all noise but hollow of meaning.
Click to expand...

Damn! I did not know pathfinder was a remake.
You are spot on about the crazily armored viking warriors, very goofy!
 
Another thing I find is that some younger movie viewers would scoff at a movie being in black and white. This could be an older movie without the luxury of color cameras, or a newer movie trying to maintain a B&W feel. For reasons beyond my understanding, they thing such movies are ether too old or too cheesy to hold their interest.

To me, Night of the Living Dead is best seen in B&W, the color version of Casablanca looks just awful (the airbrushed colors really throw-off the mood of this classic film noir), The Wizard of Oz had the best use of color and B&W to convey the moods of both worlds (Land of Oz and Kansas), and a movie like The Terminator looks way better on a grainy old B&W TV set then some topnotch high-definition plasma screen with "digital remastering." I find that B&W hold the mood of some movies - even when filmed in color - while I don't hold anything against the rest for their lack of color.
 
Recently I watched The Call of Cthulu (2005) in B&W, it has a memorable taste to impresionist german films of the 20s, like Nosferatu.
 
Spectator said:
Phobos said:
I agree with you, sometimes I watch old movies after I´ve been in the cinema watching the new one/remake, and there´s no color.

A comparison: Aguirre, wrath of God vs Apocalypto. Ok, ok, there are different stories but both of them got several common points: lots of violence, bigotry, jungle fever... but I really LOVE Herzog´s one, with that magnetic Lope de Aguirre, mad for gold and power, proclaiming himself "Emperor of the Peru and Chile" or The norwegian pathfinder vs new one, with those vikings lookalike Chaos Warriors of WHFB...

Yes, new ones could possibly have great SFX, but a film with only that factor, is like the shouts of an idiot, all noise but hollow of meaning.
Click to expand...

Damn! I did not know pathfinder was a remake.
You are spot on about the crazily armored viking warriors, very goofy!
Click to expand...

Pathfinder is sort of a remake. It's based on a strange little low budget Norwegian film of the same name in which a Saami boy is forced to be a pathfinder for some Estonian (?) raiders. But the tone of the film is completely different - the original is very low kepy, filled with strange shamanic sequences and a very mystical feeling, with lots of details of life in the far north of Norway.

The recent Pathfinder film is basicaly a full on action adventure film. I would say it's not so much a remake as a new film which happens to rip off the plot of an older film.
 
Spongly said:
Pathfinder is sort of a remake. It's based on a strange little low budget Norwegian film of the same name in which a Saami boy is forced to be a pathfinder for some Estonian (?) raiders.
Click to expand...

According to the Wiki article, the bad guys are called "Chudes", and are from Russia/Finland/Estonia, more or less the area of the modern-day Karelian Republic in Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(1987_film)

I saw the remake a couple of months ago, and found it relatively dull. But I have to admit that I liked the look of the vikings; although far from historically correct, they looked really fearsome, like a band of Frazetta's Death Dealer clones!

- thulsa
 
thulsa said:
But I have to admit that I liked the look of the vikings; although far from historically correct, they looked really fearsome, like a band of Frazetta's Death Dealer clones!
Click to expand...

Dark Horse put out a highly successful graphic novel based on the film. The art is amazing (and usable in your Conan game!)

PATHFINDER
 
A good story comes from the scenario and indeed almost all scenarios seems nowadays formatted as if they would stem from the same mould.
 
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