{"id":2622,"date":"2010-04-04T16:34:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T16:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2622"},"modified":"2010-04-04T16:34:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T16:34:19","slug":"critic_at_large_62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2622","title":{"rendered":"Critic At Large: Clash Of The Titans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0800320\/\"><i>Clash of the Titans<\/i><\/a> 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&#8217;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&#8217; immortal shenanigans for millennia. We&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s more exposition until Medusa shows up to do some ass-kicking of her own. I don&#8217;t have a problem with the film&#8217;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&#8217;s got giant scorpions.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=695\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s narrative pacing to a crawl, particularly in the first half. Things start with momentum; <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2622' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-Gi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}