Clash of the Titans Review Thread

[cybereality]

So I just got back from seeing Clash of the Titans in RealD. What can I say? It was exactly what everyone said it was: a cheap cash-in. The 3D was, at times, mild and other times practically non-existent. Although there was some 3D effect it wasn't enough to really add much to the experience and didn't look all that different from watching it in 2D. To be fair there wasn't any bad 3D, as in things at the wrong depth or anything. Its just that it was barely anything noticeable. This is really sad because I think many people will take this to mean conversion can't be done and I think it can. For example. G-Force has all the live-action converted from 2D and it looked really good. Its just that for Clash of the Titans they did the conversion in a scant 5 weeks rush job to make the release. So given the time constraints it could have been worse. Maybe thats is a good thing, I don't know. But its movies like this that dilute the word 3D and it doesn't do justice to the technology.

In terms of the movie itself I thought it was OK. Certainly entertaining but it was nothing original. Its one of those movies where you know whats going to happen in every scene before it happens. Very predictable. The acting and special effects were good though. It stars Sam Worthington, from Avatar, although it took me til the credits to realize where I knew him from. So the movie was alright but nothing I would have bothered seeing without the 3D, hence the cheap cash-in worked. Hopefully this will be a lesson to future movies in terms of doing quick conversions.

[Fredz]

This is really sad because I think many people will take this to mean conversion can't be done and I think it can. For example. G-Force has all the live-action converted from 2D and it looked really good.

I didn't see G-Force in 3D, but by reading this document it seems there were quite many flaws in the 2D to 3D conversion process in this movie, even if the author globally qualifies this conversion as "good". It's a very subjective appreciation and I think I would have been a lot more critical since I'm very picky about details. Anything that isn't perfectly done in a movie can quickly break my suspension of disbelief, and I'm pretty sure it would have been the case with this movie.

Even when shooting in 3D you can still obtain plain bad results (Journey to the center of Earth beeing a good exemple, see this review or that one), adding another hurdle like 2D to 3D conversion can only ruin the result a little bit more in my opinion.

I think this process is inherently flawed too, you can't recreate the 3D information that was lost during a 2D shooting and there are some specific techniques that you need to use in 3D filming which you can simply not recreate when you start with 2D material.

Still, I understand a lot of people are a lot less regardant than me, but I'm quite happy to see a lot of negative reviews on recent 2D to 3D conversion attempts (Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans) and I really hope it will contribute to rapidly stop this trend of 2D to 3D conversion.

[android78]

To be fair there wasn't any bad 3D, as in things at the wrong depth or anything. Its just that it was barely anything noticeable.

I actually disagree with this. At least in the cinema I went to see it in (it was one of the biggest non-imax cinemas), the 3D was very obvious... unfortunately, so were the flaws. There were very few converted scenes that didn't have something wrong with them. One that annoyed me the most was closeups where the characters faces were close together. The scenery to far left and right of the screen was at almost correct depth, but the scenery between the faces seemed to be stuck to the other side of their heads.
But... if it wasn't that, it was the scenery stuck to the heads of characters (apparently it takes too much time to make each individual hair 3D) or stretching of heads horizontally, or the 3D just being plain wrong for the faces (which makes noses appear to be attached to cheeks).

I agree with Cyber, aside from the 3D the movie was... OK. I'm a sucker, and paid to see this movie basically because it was 3D. It left me with a sour taste in my mouth and I am still skeptical that 2D->3D conversion can actually be pulled off without terrible artifacts, and only time will tell. I think before I go and see another 2D->3D conversion I'll wait for a few of the guys on this forum to review it . Compare this movie to something like 'How to train your dragon' and it looks like a joke, even without the 3D.

[cybereality]

I'm still convinced conversion can look good if they spend enough time on it. Remember they did a 5 week rush job on this movie. Wait til G-Force comes out on Blu-Ray 3D and check that. If I remember correct the 3D was really convincing. However Alice in Wonderland looked pretty bad and they had a lot of time to work on that.

[Likay]

We finally got Real-D-cinemas (a few at once actually) in a nearby town so no more 350 kilometres trips for me.

After seeing the movie i say this is crap. It's like the producers in last minute found out it's a crappy movie and threw 3d in just to attract a few more... The first 15-20 minutes looked slightly better than the rest of the movie, it's just like the budget ended there or something. Compared with the 3d-trailers for toystory3, the legend of the guardians, shrek etc you really had a "wtf is this?"-moment when the actual movie started...

3D in some scenes was ok but mostly it's simply annoying: Different depth in different scenes, different ways to generate 3d, sometimes sceneries seems quite ok until you realize everything looks like a tilted paperboard... o.O Imagine a nice decent dawn scene where people are riding and you realize they're lying flat to the ground like paperfigures drawn by strings... Sometime peoples heads seems to have a depth of about a half metre, sometimes scenes have no depth at all etc etc.. This is my first real experience with entirely converted movies. I've seen conversions i can live with though but this is not one of them.
By trying to figure out the technique it seems like they're using "2d+depth" algorithms in slight different ways. This method simply aint doing it for me unless in carefully done photos.
Someone said "if you can't do 3d properly then don't do it at all...". 3D-cinemas would do better without 3d-clash and i hope it won't scare away too many newcomers for 3d.

I have yet to see Alice but the trailer looked fine to me though. If 3d-s crap in it then it's most probably a better movie though.

[craylon]

I saw it last week in 3d and was pretty dissappointed as well.

The 3D effect for me made the movie look like 300 from time to time witout the artitic influence. The 3D created layers seperating the actors from the background but not in a pleasant way. Actually I tought the "psydo 3D" made the visuals worse then they would have been and I wonder if this should be the 1st movie to charge you a few bucks extra to see it in 2d instead of 3d.