In today’s contemporary Hollywood, nothing is more enjoyable and thrilling than taking what someone else did 30 years ago and screwing it up.

Adding in flashy CGI, thrilling fight sequences and over-the-top actors really brings it together for a fantastic and wasted experience. Of course, if that can’t cement you in your seat, let’s just throw in some after-the-fact 3-D to make the screen look slightly blurry.

This is what the new rendition of “Clash of the Titans” has become.

Taking the basic storyline from the original 1981 film, director Louis Leterrier creates something of his own visual Gorgon. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a firm believer in staying true to the original and this film doesn’t do that. The newest rendition takes arguably one of the more enjoyable and campier movies of the early ’80s, and turns it into an assortment of flashy action cuts taped together by a disassociated plot.

If you come into this movie looking for a Greek and Roman myth refresher, try and get your money back. Most of the things you know about mythology have been obscured and warped. But that’s all right because nothing really is supposed to make sense.

All you need to understand is that man is angry with the gods, so they start war.

Zeus, captain of the God’s team, is played by Liam Neeson, and he does a great job looking like a lightning bolt himself as his shiny armor makes it almost impossible to see him. His brother and antagonist of the movie is Hades, played by Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes, constantly encased in a shower of soot and speaking as if he smoked too many Virginia Slims, is a good opposite to Neeson but a bad representation of the overall angst that he was supposed to embody.

But that doesn’t matter much because the salvation for the universe is Peruses, played by Sam Worthington. Walking around either the city of Argos, where the war originated, or the countryside with his patented scowl — he is a man of many talents.

The buzz cut and anguished battle cries serve him well however in both the battlefield and box office (amassing $112 million domestically) which makes him an “eye candy commodity.”

Can he actually act? It’s hard to say; yet in a movie beside people such as Gemma Arterton’ immortal Io, he stands his ground and holds his sword and shield high.

Spoiler alert! It doesn’t matter how pretty they are or who Leterrier got to act in his movie: by the end of the film you already knew who was going to be picked off, ripped apart, turned to stone and vanquished.

The movie wrote itself, and every sequence tried desperately to take the “look at me!” approach in filmmaking, ultimately distracting you from a badly designed plot and equally poor characters. Evil is vanquished, the day is saved, and Peruses gets his lady.

Maybe it was written in the stars to fail. Perhaps because Warner Bros. forced a release date on Legendary Pictures while they were still in production, meaning that they had to rush development and thereby let an opportunity for a good movie fall to the wayside.

This isn’t to say that it’s a viable excuse; it’s more a lesson in survival. If you’re given a test and you even have the original that the professor handed out, don’t be afraid to look up the answers, especially if you’re in a rush.
Otherwise, you have no one but yourself to blame for that impending ‘F.’

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"Clash of the Titans" (1981) — If you’re going to watch one, you need to start from the beginning. The movie has a completely different type of plot and a much better sense of accomplishment. Plus, it was considered the best in special effects thanks to its stop motion until “Tron.”

"The Odyssey" (1997) — The TV mini-series that was the fair depiction of Homer’s “The Odyssey.” If you want your fix of Greek myth while still getting your taste of action hero and sword-fighting adventure, then this is the place for you.

"The 7th Voyage" — One that’s a little different but sure to please, it’s about Sinbad the Sailor, how he floats off to an island, battling monsters along the way, to save a princess that’s been shrunk. Oh, did I mention this is to stop a war? Yeah, it’s that kind of movie, but it’s worth it.