Generally my expectations for action movies are quite low. Things blow up, the bad guys die, and we all live happily ever after. My expectations were a bit different for Clash of the Titans. Given how heavily it relies upon supernatural phenomena, I assumed that it was either going to be really good, or really bad. As a movie about a war between mortals and deities, there are obvious logical problems that can hinder the film. Given the fuzzy metaphysical assumptions that are adopted, any sort of realism is nearly impossible to achieve. The only potential saving grace would be if that very metaphysical scheme made an interesting philosophical point. From the outset, it seemed likely that it would be a train wreck.
Admittedly, I was wrong: Clash of the Titans was neither good, nor bad. It did a reasonable job of reigning in the excesses of supernatural movies, though didn't achieve the philosophical importance of a film like 300. Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, and Ralph Fiennes all put in respectable performances. Louis Leterrier deserves credit for taking a difficult screenplay, and making it watchable. While the screenwriters didn't entirely drop the ball, they wrote in their fair share of cliches and fell into some of the expected traps of supernatural films. I was satisfied, though after having walked out of Alice in Wonderland, I'd have been happy with just about anything.
