If you’re here for a quick, straight-up review, I’ll tell you this right away:

My ultimate reaction to Clash of the Titans was “eh…this is cool, I guess.” It’s Troy meets Transformers.

Certainly, if you loved the original, you’re not going to love this one. They are two totally different movies that both tell the Greek mythological story of Perseus. But if you didn’t too much care for the original or never saw it, and go into it expecting only a bit of frothy 3-D fun, you’ll have a great time.

As we left the screening, I heard equal numbers of people expressing their liking the film as those who didn’t.

The effects alone are worth checking it out for. There’s very little of that jarring fuzziness that happens when CGI effects fail to capture the intricacies of a battle scene, for instance. And it’s subtler than the 3-D we’ve come to expect from Captain EO or even Harry Potter; more about enriching the storytelling than pulling gags and tricking you into swatting a holographic carrot or fork out of your face. The visual depth is wonderful.

I’m not the first to say it, but I’m definitely starting to believe that we are at the dawn of the 3-D era in film.

And the handsome face of it clearly is Sam Worthington, who plays Perseus. I’ll air my bias right here, right now: I love me some Sam Worthington. He’s attractive enough to carry a film, but in a way bland enough to believe him as Everyman. What I really love about him, though, is his voice. It’s gravelly and Australian and suited perfectly to deliver a hero speech.

Worthington’s performance is athletic and underplayed dramatically, but not boring. I’d give it much more credit, however, were it not for the fact that he’s basically playing the same character he did in Avatar. A man torn between two worlds, destined to save one or the other. Who overcomes the odds. Who rides a flying creature that no one else has ever ridden.

The 3-D action hero, Sam Worthington.

Nevertheless, he delivers it with conviction, and in effect the movie is not too cheesy.

The same can be said for the performances of Liam Neeson (Zeus) and Ralph Fiennes (Hades). Neeson brings a bit of well-needed gravity to the film, particularly his scenes, which are shot in ‘the heavens’. Fiennes is thrilling to watch, stalking around Argos, the heavens and the Underworld with the same pure evil he brought to Voldemort and Amon Goeth of Schindler’s List. He steals the film easily.

Everyone else was forgettable. Mads Mikkelsen (Draco) gave a predictable, one-note performance. The women were gorgeous but gave throwaway performances. And Medusa was, shamefully, all effects.

The most interesting element of the film is the religious commentary. The movie’s tagline, “Damn the gods,” is telling, as here the creation of humanity was to serve the sole purpose of worshiping the gods, whose strength is fed by mortals’ prayers. Their rebellion then is received with the anger of a humanoid god.

Sure, Greek gods and goddesses also go so far as to rape the wives of their enemies (as is the story of Perseus’ birth), but the portrayal of these flawed and vengeful gods is enough to make you wonder about the wisdom of subscribing to the Judeo-Christian God of the Old Testament. More easily comparable is the street preacher who begs the citizens of Argos to pray for their salvation. And if the comparison is still a little murky, consider this exposition from the book Ishmael. The teacher asks his pupil to describe our culture’s mythology, and the pupil is stumped.

“This is because you think of mythology as a set of fanciful tales. The Greeks didn’t think of their mythology this way. Surely you must realize that. If you went up to a man of Homeric Greece and asked him what fanciful tales told his children about the gods and the heroes of the past, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about. He’d say what you said: ‘As far as I know, there’s nothing like that in our culture.’”