My main initial reaction was dismay at the way they ended the flick, not only with Perseus seriously blowing off Andromeda, but then him getting miraculously hooked up again with Io, who had supposedly died earlier in the story. This was just way to "Hollywood happy ending" for me, not to mention turning the legend of Perseus and Andromeda into the legend of Perseus and Io... WTF?!

(Of course, Noah's main beef was that since Io was actually the mother of Apollo and Aphrodite, that meant that in this movie they were saying Perseus was hanging with the mother of some major gods -- not to mention hooking up with his own half-great aunt or whatever that works out to, but I didn't bother Noah with those little details... :P)

Oh, and the whole "Zeus created humanity" and "humans must worship us to make us immortal" was just... dumb. OK, so maybe most people don't know about Prometheus as such, but it's not like you need to add *extra justification* for the gods being douchebags - hell, it's a core tenet of Western Civilization that they are! (cheap shot at the Old Testament passed on for the time being...)  I did like the "Hades is really behind the whole thing, plotting to nail Zeus" - I just wish they'd actually spent some time on it, rather than making it a parenthetical moment.  (The fact they passed on that entire aspect in the Percy Jackson movie likely made this more relevant than I would have otherwise thought..)

But even with that, I figured, meh, go figure, it's Hollywood. But then, after some reflection and looking at a few comments from others, now I know what it was that was really bothering me about Clash of the Titans:

"Sam Worthington, fresh from a turn as the star of Avatar, displays less facial emotion than he did as an animated character. As I remarked upon leaving the theater, he makes Keanu Reeves look positively Shakespearean. At least Reeves knows how to widen his eyes occasionally. Worthington's main acting talent seems to be grunting and flexing his biceps. His acting range consists of sometimes speaking in an Australian accent, and sometimes overlaying that with a bad imitation of John Wayne." -Megan McArdle, The Atlantic

Yeah, what she said - and in spades. Never mind the whole "hero with a shaved head" thing, which just strikes me as wrong (what, is this a leftover from 300 or something?), the fact is that his head stubble had more form and reaction to the story than the actor did. Cripes, I never thought I would say this, but he makes Harry Hamlin's acting in the original look almost outstanding.

(I should note that I have not yet seen Avatar, but the performance in this movie and the fairly consistent commentary from folks I've read makes me even less likely to go see Fern Gully III: Apocalypse Now for the Feel Good Set...)

God forbid that Keanu Reeves has his reputation saved simply by comparison with Worthington's work. That alone would cause some major re-alignment in the riffs critics and geeks have made of Keanu for decades now...

The one final thought I would like to share is that while the final battle scene is really quite spectacular - damn, that Kraken may just be the most bad ass monster I have ever seen in a movie (and the scorpions were pretty damned rockin' too) - the fact is, while watching what felt like the five minute roller coaster ride, I actually got just a little bit bored.

I dunno, maybe it comes from having seen the whole genre evolve, from the asteroids in Empire and the mine carts in Temple of Doom to the hyper-realism and intensity of Transformers. (Full disclosure: When driving home from watching Transformers on IMAX, my limbic system was so charged I literally felt like one of the cars around me could start transforming, and it took me some serious effort to just drive like normal for several minutes...) It's just that after the umpteenth hairs' breadth near crash and high speed twist and turn, it was like "gee, let me guess what's next... another high speed twist and turn... ho hum..." I guess it's just gotten a wee bit old now. Or maybe it was spoiled since I knew that he was going to get the medusa head back before the end, no matter what. Or who knows, maybe I'm just turning into a cranky old bastard.

(I also realized sometime after first writing this that a lot of those scenes were likely set up just for 3D, which didn't even occur to me since we'd gone to see the 2D version...)

So, aside from the shitty non-acting, the ridiculous abuses of the mythos, and sometimes gratuitous SFX... not too shabby, really. But I still like the original better. ;-)