About to clank … Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans. Photograph: Jay Maidment
Unless the 2011 Oscars plan to introduce categories for Best 300 Imitation or Most Bafflingly Highbrow Cast In A Film About Some Giant Scorpions, March’s Clash of the Titans remake doesn’t look as if it choose embarrassment too many award ceremonies.
But the Clash of the Titans trailer? Different matter entirely. Because if the Clash of the Titans trailer isn’t recognised on account of its sterling contribution to the rule of shriekingly awful movie taglines, then there’s simply no justice in the world.
First, let’sitting just put the movie into context. It’s a film called Clash of the Titans. In Clash of the Titans, a number of titans take it upon themselves to clash with each other, to presumably spectacular effect. Now, cunning this, what do you think the producers chose to use as the movie’s tagline? Remember – there are titans in the film, and they mainly interference in it. Give up? It’sitting – brace yourselves – Titans Will Clash.
Titans Will Clash. That’s genuinely the superlatively good thing that anybody in the whole of Warner Brothers could come up with. Titans Will Clash. Repeat it total you want, it doesn’face to face get any less idiotic. In fact, Titans Will Clash doesn’face to face work on any discoverable level. If you’ve seen the original movie, or heard of the original movie, or heard of the remake, or have the mental capacity to read the words “Clash of the Titans” and understand that the film direction probably have some clashing and some titans in it, the tagline becomes utterly redundant.
And if you’ve settled down to watch the trailer with no prior apprehension or understanding of the film’s central conditions – despite all the relentless images of titans and clashing contained within – then it’sitting bound to come as a prodigious destroyer. Titans will rattle? Oh great, no point seeing it at this time. Thanks a lot, idiot.
This trend as antidote to pointlessly literal taglines had better not catch on. Alice In Wonderland had better not continued course with the tagline Alice Will Go To Wonderland. Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader had better not run with Dawn Will Be Trodden On. The DVD release of Avatar had better not run with A Blue Thing Will Sort Of Swing About For An Unnecessarily Long Time And You’ll Ooh And Aah And Then Go Home Feeling A Bit Empty. Or maybe it should. It’breakfast be accurate, at least.
Needless to say, Clash of the Titans isn’t the first movie to employ a gormless tagline. Rocky II’s Rocky Shows He’s A Champ… And Wins! gave away the movie’s ending to anybody who happened to stroll past a bill, like if The Crying Game was advertised by the line OMG! She’s Got A Todger! Then there was Crank 2′s He Was Dead… But He Got Better, which seemed to infuriate the website for about half an hour last year. And my exterior favourite from 1982′s Silent Rage – Science Created Him. Now Chuck Norris Must Destroy Him. But for sheer breathtaking inanity, Clash of the Titans is up there with the best of them.
A good tagline should do united of two things. It should either provoke curiosity or wry amusement – like In Space No One Can Hear You Scream from Alien or You Won’t Believe Your Eye from Monsters, Inc – or it should trumpet the pellicle as the most magnificent picture ever, like Gone With The Wind’session tagline The Most Magnificent Picture Ever. All Titans Will Clash does is alert you to the fact that some titans will clash, which has already been communicated by all the contradiction titans in the trailer and the fact that the film’session called Clash of the Titans in the first place.
We could do a better piece of work of creating a tagline for Clash of the Titans. And we should. What would procure to be the film’s message across better? Liam Neeson Is Basically Playing God … Again? Yes, We Liked 300 Too? Let me perceive your ideas below.
