Wrath of the Titans (2012)

Do you know what film I was really impressed with? The 1981 film ‘Clash of the Titans’. The acting’s pretty decent and the film had some really good effects at the time. Are they dated special effects? Oh yeah, definitely, but they were still really good for the early 80s. So it was inevitable that Hollywood decided to remake it back in 2010.

And did that film suck? Oh yes it did. Terrible flow to the story, bland acting, especially from Alexa Davalos, irritating characters, characters which didn’t even exist in the original, and two of the worst climatic battles ever with the Kraken and Hades. I should put together a review of ‘Clash of the Titans’, but I will be bringing up points concerning the Kraken and Hades in another posting, and I don’t have accessed to the 2010 film, so I’ll postpone that for the time being.

Ten years after defeating the Kraken, Perseus (Sam Worthington), who hasn’t aged a day, lives with his son Helius (John Bell) (Possibly a reference to Helios, son of Hyperion, one of the twelve Titans) in a fishing village, while the useless Io from the ‘Clash remake’ has died (I’m guessing Gemma Arterton didn’t want to reprise her role). Andromeda meanwhile has turned into a blonde (Rosamund Pike) and has become a fighting Queen after seeing what kind of monsters lurk in the shadows.

Zeus (Liam Neeson) asks Perseus to accompany him, Ares (Edgar Ramirez) and Poseidon (Danny Huston) to the underworld prison Tartarus, to meet up with Hades (Ralph Fiennes) for what is essentially an emergency meeting; the people are no longer believing in the Gods, which is killing them and weakening the bonds which hold Kronos, the father of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon, who will essentially rip the planet asunder. Perseus declines, and Ares joins forces with Hades, taking Zeus hostage in order to free Kronos.

 

So, first things first. Despite the ending of the first film, Perseus still hates the Gods, despite the fact that they reconciled at the end of ‘Clash remake’. Then again not only did they forget this, Zeus apparently forgot that Hades tried to destroy him ten years earlier, and therefore Hades was the antagonist. So what you’re telling me, is that the antagonist from the last film, is still an antagonist in this film?...I never saw it coming.

Our other villain Ares is, to be honest, a really good villain, he and Hades actually make the best villain tag team; Hades grows stronger as the fear from humanity grows, and Ares gets stronger as the soldiers pray to him for strength in the coming battles. Of course the film makers also forgot about Hades gaining strength from fear, as he also gets weaker as the film goes on; at one point he even admits he’s afraid, as well as doing a major character U-turn.

Kronos meanwhile provided a much better climatic battle than the Kraken, but only because Kronos lasted a whole minute longer than the Kraken. Actually, the whole basis of defeating Kronos changed. In the remake, it is explained that Zeus, Poseidon and Hades joined forces, with Hades controlling the Kraken to defeat Kronos However in ‘Wrath’, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades instead had three staffs (the Lightning Bolt, the Trident and the Pitchfork respectively) which together formed the Spear of Triam. I suppose with the Kraken dead and Medussa’s head not even being mentioned, the film makers had to make up something to defeat Kronos.

Okay, I have to say this now. Is ‘Wrath of the Titans’ better than ‘Clash remake’? Honestly? Yes. Sort of. Worthington gives a much better performance than ‘Clash’, there’s an actual interesting character in the form of the Navigator (Toby Kebbell, I’ll come back to him in a second), a proper villain in the form of Ares, Neeson and Fiennes are awesome (As always), and the fight scenes are actually entertaining in this one.

 

Back to the Navigator. Firstly, he does have a name, but I can’t remember it as people keep referring to him as the Navigator. I must admit, I didn’t like him at first because they were doing a Captain Jack Sparrow thing with him, but he actually became more interesting, funny and actually useful as the film went on. He was certainly the best character in it.

Rosamund Pike as Andromeda. Wow. What can I say, apart from “I hate her”? I have seen her in two other films, ‘Die Another Day’ and ‘Doom’, and she just isn’t that good an actress. She’s bland, she’s wooden, she has virtually no emotion. In her defence she does give a better performance than Davalos did in ‘Clash remake’, but she still felt out-of-place in this. The only purpose she had in this film, was having the Navigator in custody, apart from that she gives NOTHING to this film (Unless you count the nameless cannon fodder soldiers who go up against Kronos and his army).

 

Oh and you remember how they tried to have some form of romance between her and Perseus in the remake, but passed her over because they had to resurrect bloody Io from the grave? Yeah, they make Perseus and Andromeda a couple in ‘Wrath’. At the last second. Literally. Seriously, they had one close moment to try and signify a romance, but that’s it, they hardly have any other dialogue together.

The plot, well, it’s actually better played in the remake. But only barely. The remake may have been stupid, but at least they made sense, ‘Wrath’ just glances over everything. Gods are dying, why? People hate Gods but pray to them still anyway. Poseidon also has a demigod son who either no-one knew about, or no-one thought of when Hades tried to destroy Argos ten years ago. The Navigator knows of a fallen God, for some reason, who knows a shortcut to Tartarus, how convenient, Andromeda seems to have forgotten to have told any of her soldiers in ten years that Perseus owns Pegasus (Who isn’t in the film that much) so that they don’t shoot him down, etc, etc. The film moves too fast for the viewer, so the viewer doesn’t actually care what’s going on.

It tried to do what ‘Underworld: Awakening’ where they tried to get to one fight scene as quickly as they could. The problem is that ‘U:A’ actually tried to make sense and develop what was happening between the fights, ‘Wrath’ essentially did the same thing as ‘Clash remake’; fight, walk, fight, walk, fight, walk. Oh, and before I forget, yes this film is a psychiatrists dream for family problems.

The effects meanwhile, are about as good as the remake, and I’m not a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I do like CGI, but most of the time CGI looks fake. As I’ve previously explained in another review, CGI isn’t really that effective because it’s not really there, and you can really tell in this film, especially Tartarus, the minions of Kronos, and the labyrinth shortcut to Tartarus. Okay the minotaur, the chimera and Kronos himself looked brilliant, especially the Minotaur because that wasn’t CGI. Oh, and before I forget, the 3D, of course, SUCKED.

So yes, this is a bad film, but it isn’t a really bad film. The acting is mediocre, the effects are okay, the villains are better than the ‘Clash remake’, but it is let down by awful dialogue, a cast dominated by bland characters, and a lacking plot. And they didn’t use Bill Nighy to his full potential!