Word: harryhausen
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...Perseus, has endured a typhoon of negative reviews, for four reasons. One: After shooting the picture in the traditional format, the filmmakers slapped on 3-D effects at the last minute. Two: Director Louis Leterrier and his team dared to remake the 1981 original, replacing stop-motion genius Ray Harryhausen's handcrafted creatures - Medusa, the Kraken, the giant scorpions, etc. - with computer-generated ones. Three: The new picture reduces the role of Buba the mechanical owl, one of Harryhausen's signature inventions, to a perfunctory cameo. And fourth: Well, a lot of critics just don't like...
...Second, on remaking an old favorite. I'll tell you why the middle-aged critical Cassandras remember the 1981 version as a movie milestone: because when they first saw it, they were 11. Not that it didn't boast its antique charms, mostly in Harryhausen's nifty-creaky beasties, but these scenes consume perhaps 15 mins. of a two-hr. movie. The rest is a botch, as storytelling or spectacle. First we're up on Olympus in the company of some swank Brit actors - Laurence Olivier as Zeus, Claire Bloom as Hera, Maggie Smith as Thetis - whose contempt...
...Third, Bubo. C'mon, guys, this whistling clockwork owl was one of Harryhausen's lesser concoctions. Offering comic relief to the 1981 film's solemnity, Bubo was a figure of George Lucas-like whimsy: the echo of R2D2, precursor to Jar Jar Binks. At the end, a wandering poet (Burgess Meredith) says that Perseus' achievements might inspire him to write a play, and when Bubo starts clucking he says comfortingly, "Oh, don't worry, I won't leave you out." The new movie's screenwriters, Travis Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, took that as a cue to usher Bubo...
...Critics who miss the mother-son warmth of the Harryhausen film, and its foregrounding of Perseus's and Andromeda's romance, are also missing the point. Through his travels and travails, Perseus does have a female guide, Io (Gemma Arterton), who fans a brief romantic spark. But it becomes clear - as the young man gathers around him a half-dozen battle-tested guys, led by Draco (that chiseled slab of testosterone Mads Mikkelsen), to confront Medusa and save Argos - that this Clash is a movie of men at work and at war, of hardened soldiers on an impossible mission. This...
...fitting rather than astounding; they're smartly choreographed and shot by Leterrier's constantly prowling, soaring camera work, but aren't candidates for the CGI Monsters' Hall of Fame. In fact, when the Kraken shows up at the climax to claim Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), the creature looks less like Harryhausen's majestic creature from the Greek lagoon and more like Gamera, the killer turtle in a dozen Japanese B movies. There's also an odd, kinky kick to the sight of Andromeda strung up on a seaside platform like the most elegant bondage babe at Voyeur West Hollywood. But mostly...