I went to see Clash of the Titans because I was in the mood for some rampaging CGI monsters. And I got about thirty minutes of that, but I also got about an hour of expository padding that slowed the film’s narrative pacing to a crawl, particularly in the first half. Things start with momentum; we learn that the Greek gods are irked with humans for thumbing their noses at Mount Olympus after putting up with the gods’ immortal shenanigans for millennia. We’re also introduced to Perseus (Sam Worthington), the product of one such shenanigan that Zeus perpetrated on a mortal queen. Perseus is left for dead as an infant and rescued by a kindly fisherman. Perseus comes of age in unremarkable fashion until his family is killed in the crossfire of a skirmish between the god Hades (Ralph Fiennes with a creepy beard) and the uppity citizens of Argos. Perseus then decides that Hades needs a good ass-kicking.
But the ass-kicking takes its own sweet time in getting set up. We have to sit through a lot of male bonding and listen to some skinny prophet of doom blather on before the giant scorpions start hitting the fan. And then it’s more exposition until Medusa shows up to do some ass-kicking of her own. I don’t have a problem with the film’s by the numbers approach or its cardboard characters, but it would have been nice if the movie had streamlined the distance between the numbers. Still, it’s got giant scorpions.
