Sam Worthington

Last weekend I watched “Clash of the Titans” with a bunch of friends. I was insisting on watching it in 2D, since it was widely known that 3D in the film was added in post-production and hence won’t be anything remotely similar to the real 3D, but my arguments weren’t convincing enough and we went to 3D cinema anyway. Don’t make the same mistake.

As I expected it, 3D really sucked. Do you remember those bulky CRT monitors that we used to have with our desktop computers, back when everyone wasn’t a happy laptop owner? If you do remember them, then you probably remember the horrible experience when such a monitor was configured for a low refresh rate, say 60 Hz. The images on such a monitor were flickering, there was no sharpness, and your eyes and had would start hurting pretty soon. That’s very similar to the experience of the pseudo-3D. Horrible experience in other words. In fact, it was so horrible that we kept taking glasses on and off constantly. One could watch this film totally without 3D glasses, but in certain places it was easier to have them on.

So, was pseudo-3D the only thing that spoiled my experience? Nope. I felt that the movie was very shallow in pretty much every aspect – acting, story, special effects, drama, scale, and so on and so forth. Just to give you some idea with a little spoiler – there wasn’t much of a clash in this film, and there were no titans. About 40 seconds of screen time were given to a rather large creature, which many might confuse with a titan. But when we are in Greek mythology, a word “titan” actually has a very particular meaning. So, no titans.

And yet another something else that didn’t help my perception of this film was a fresh memory of “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief” – another Greek mythology action movie that was released recently. And as much as I didn’t want to watch “The Lightning Thief” it turned out to be quite a nice flick. And it happened to be way better than the titans with no titans.

Overall, I’ll give the titans a 3 out of 5. Skip it and you won’t miss much. If you really want to see it though, make sure you watch it in 2D – save yourself some money and a headache.

P.S.: I only now realized that I forgot to review “The Lighning Thief”. I will correct this shortly.

Terminator Salvation

There are a few brands in the movie industry, which you just can’t miss. Whenever a sequel comes out, whether you liked the previous or not, whether you are a fan or not – it all doesn’t matter, you just have to go and see it. “Terminator” is one of these brands. The first two films were so good, that even now, decades later, I still have vivid memories of some parts of those movies. I still sometimes wake up in cold sweat when I see a huge tank turning around on a hill of human skulls. I still ask myself a question “How do you kill a smart machine, which is made of liquid metal and can blend into any form or shape?”, and I am so glad I know the answer.

And even though I didn’t like the third film of the series, and didn’t expect much of the fourth, knowing that Arnold Schwarzenegger prefers to be a politician these days rather than his usually self, I still had to go and see “Terminator Salvation” in the cinema.

How good was it? A bit. Nothing special. It had the humans and machines, it had the time travel, it had some war, it had plenty of special effects. But it lacked two most important things which Terminator is all about, at least for me – Arnold Schwarzenegger and the huge scale. Call it ambition if you will.

The movie makers at least agreed with me on the Arny. I guess they tried to get him in, and they couldn’t, and they couldn’t make a Terminator movie without one, so they ended up rendering an artificial Anry on a computer. He didn’t come bad or anything, but it’s just not the same.

Regarding the scale, the ambition ,the “WOW! Effect”, they totally blew it. There was no scale to this movie. Nothing that we haven’t seen before, nothing surprising, nothing mind or eye blowing. Same old, same old.

While, McG knows how to make good action movies, and both parts of the “Charlie’s Angels” are here to prove that, I think it’s him to lacks the scale. Scale is something only a few directors have a feeling for. Steven Spielberg is one (and he knows war too). Peter Jackson is another (although I don’t know how good he is with machines). Michael Bay is yet another one (although he is already doing a good job with another robot-related series). McG? I’m not so sure.

And I’m pretty sure it was the director’s lack of magnitude. Because the only other possible reason for not having scale in the movie is budget. And I don’t think budget deficit applies to the Terminator movies. As I said, this is one of those well recognized brands, so there shouldn’t be any problem finding the money or bringing the profits home. I might be wrong, of course, but that is my opinion.

So. The summary. If you haven’t seen it, go and see. It’s worth it. If you are deciding between seeing it in the movies and getting the DVD, go see it on the big screen. It’s just better. But don’t expect much of it either way. And maybe then, when you don’t expect much of it, you’ll enjoy it more. My rating – 3 stars. Not bad, but average.