Searching through a box for weaponry, Perseus (Sam Worthington) picks up a familiar mechanical owl. Gruffly, the reserved warrior Draco (Mads Mikkelsen) admonishes him to put it back.

For one brief moment, Louis Letterier's remake of Clash of the Titans acknowledges that it's discarding everything you might associate with the 1981 Ray Harryhausen/Desmond Davis family classic, including charm. Instead, this new movie delivers too much, throwing everything it can think of to hold your attention except for interesting characters you want to watch.

Where the Greeks were content with heroes being people that did noble things out of heroism, a mélange of modern screenwriters go for the more American motivation of revenge. Instead of being a displaced prince out to claim a throne, Perseus becomes a simple fisherman unaware of his status as demigod.

We've entered into a difficult time in Greek Mythology, apparently - despite the gods actively striding the Earth (in a neat depiction of Olympus borrowed a bit from John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men work), men are rebelling and no longer feel a need to worship. Without love, the gods will wither and die.

Because Perseus' adoptive family gets caught in the crossfire between the armies of Argos and the Harpies of Hades, the mysteriously Australian Greek vows revenge on the gods. Even upon learning that his own father is Zeus (Liam Neeson), Perseus still whines, "I can dooooo ittttttt myseeeelllllffff."

Okay, he actually keeps protesting that he needs no help from the gods to complete his quest. In keeping with the original film, the lovely but vapid Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) will be offered up as a sacrifice to the Kraken thanks to some monumental hubris on her mother's part.

But really, it's hard to care, as this new version does nothing to build her up as anything other than a sacrifice. She's not a prize to be won or rescued. This Perseus won't do something so mundanely heroic as get the girl at the end.

That's because instead of Bubo, this Perseus has Io (Gemma Arterton). Ageless and given the power of exposition, Io too hates the gods for apparently failing to give her a back story. Perseus gathers a fellowship together, they gain a wood-like djinn, Ixas (Hans Matheson), who acts suspiciously like a magical Chewbacca.

Sadly, for all the expense spent on CGI, Ixas turns out to be one of the better effects. The visuals are all fairly slick, but of varying quality. At least with Harryhausen's Dynamation you establish an equilibrium of schlocky cheese; you can get swept up in the rules of the way the world looks. Here it's inconsistent, going from photorealistic to looking like a half-decent videogame cut scene when it gets to Medusa.

That's not the only aspect of Clash of the Titans that has that aura. The script keeps hiccupping along with training sequences for Perseus, almost as if they'd accidentally filmed the videogame script. As a result, the action is choppy, slowing so the movie can preview what the hero needs to do.

He needs to have something besides a look of constipation on his face. In his third action lead in less than two years, Worthington proves he has the pectoral muscles and seems determined enough, but there's nothing really dynamic about him. Perhaps Leterrier tried to make him be a young Jason Statham here, or maybe he just didn't know what to do with any of his actors.

For the film certainly wastes a lot of good ones. Besides Neeson and Fiennes, the director fills his Greek Pantheon with some incredibly talented people and then ignores them. Blink and you'll miss Danny Huston as Poseidon, and the underrated Alexander Siddig wearing the helmet of Hermes.

And also the armor, because for some reason the gods think they're the Knights of the Round Table. A breastplate would be one thing, but they're clad head to foot in shiny gold and silver plate. How can the love of their worshipers get through those cold exteriors?

It must be Zeus' warm smile, showing a charisma that Hades can only envy. That's the biggest "twist" in this version, that the bad guy obviously only pretending to serve Zeus turns out to be only pretending to serve Zeus.

If you see this in 3D, by the way, Clash of the Titans is only pretending to be 3D. All the depth was added after the fact, and it's as haphazard as everything else. The scenery just doesn't have the ability to pull you in like Avatar or last week's How to Train Your Dragon. Worse, when 3D effects are added to actors, it's done in planes that separate out face from ears, and nose from face.

Better you should make sure they don't separate money from wallet. Go back to the earlier film. As crude as it can seem at times, it still has a sense of wonder. The remake just wonders what it really wants to be.