Saturday, January 09, 2010

movies - Clash of the Titans and the National Guard

We went to see Avatar last night. It was alright. I could have enjoyed it a lot more, I think, but the movie theater was insanely loud, and I had to wear earplugs just to tolerate it. That really shouldn't be necessary, and it pisses me off.

Anyway, at cinemas lately they're playing an ad for the National Guard. It's over 2 minutes of heroic imagery of the Guard doing heroic things, replete with captions that tell us that the Guard never leave a soldier behind, and so forth, and a freaking chorus singing mostly incomprehensible lyrics, but eventually dropping in the line about not leaving a soldier behind. It's bizarre, over-the-top, certainly jingoistic. I'm really offended by ads for the military, because of their portrayal of military service and all this heroic movie magic crapola they fuse to the image of the soldier. Plus, this one is way too long, and the chorus bit is hilariously high-concept.

Speaking of hilariously high-concept, apparently somebody remade Clash of the Titans, which some will remember as the cheesetastic 1981 fantasy flick starring Harry Hamlin as Perseus. Part of what made the old film so amusingly bad was the corny animation bits, but really, the overacting by the gods was pretty cute, too. Plus, it has the lovely irony of having old film stars playing the gods - you know, a clash of the (movie) titans. Ha ha. The new movie has got to be on any reasonable person's short list of recent Things That We Don't Need At All. It looks like it's virtual-cheesetastic.

This morning I woke up with the start of lyrics for a song in my head, and somehow that led immediately to imagining combining the National Guard ad with Clash of the Titans. Now that's the movie we need.

See! The gods bicker, as Guard troops stand by awaiting orders, fidgeting!

See! The Guard sweep in to stop Medusa's attack!

See! Perseus battle the Kraken while the Guard builds sandbag floodwalls on the Mediterranean coast!

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