Movie Review: Wrath of the Titans

Apr 11 2012 by Ian Bunting, Airdrie & Coatbridge

Wrath of the Titans

WRATH of the Titans is the sequel to 2010’s Clash of the Titans and sees the return of Sam Worthington as Perseus, son of the God Zeus (Liam Neeson).

Perseus has to travel into the underworld to rescue Zeus after he is captured by Ares (Edgar Ramirez) and Hades (Ralph Fiennes) in an attempt to unleash ancient evil Kronos upon the world.

The Clash of the Titans remake was visually impressive but painfully short on character development and a decent story.

All the chat from cast and crew previewing Wrath of the Titans claimed it would be a much better, deeper movie than the first... but they would say that.

What we get with Wrath is more of the same, albeit on a slightly more likeable scale.

Clash’s full directing and writing team have been bombed out for this sequel.

South African Jonathan Liebesman (Battle Los Angeles, The Killing Room) directs and brings the required visual flair for a big budget production.

The 3D is very good (especially bodies falling from the sky during a Kronos attack) and much better than the first movie’s post-production conversion work.

Liebesman also gets to let loose with his camera during a fast-paced sequence set in a revolving maze in the underworld.

Classic characters Minotaur and Cyclops, though, are all size and no substance and Kronos’ lair is like a rejected early storyboard for Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings.

Kronos is visually more impressive than previous movie’s ‘big bad’ The Kraken but has the same miniscule impact after a big build.

The writing team is made of debut scribe Dan Mazeau and two others with worrying work on their back catalogues; David Johnson (Red Riding Hood) and Greg Berlanti (Green Lantern).

At least there’s more riding on the ‘quest’ this time around with the world at stake and the gods’ survival questioned.

Plenty of father and son dynamics run through the story too which allows Worthington, very unremarkable in the first film, some emotional scenes with Neeson and young John Bell (Perseus’ son Helius).

Neeson and Fiennes get to see much more action this time around, the former coming over all Gandalf, and Toby Kebbell (Agenor) provides some badly needed humour (“don’t give me the big speech” he says to Perseus during the climax).

Don’t know why Fiennes’ asthmatic voice from the first film has disappeared, though. Maybe the underworld has some powerful breathing apparatus.

A too hoity toity sounding Rosamund Pike replaces Alexa Davalos in the Andromeda role and the character, as well as clumsily supplanting Gemma Arterton’s Io as Perseus’ love interest, is turned into a Xena: Warrior Princess-type.

Wrath of the Titans, like its predecessor, is low on depth and high on action.

Some of the attempts to distance itself from the first movie don’t convince (a character’s late change of heart is nonsensical) but if you liked Clash then it’s worth finding the time for Wrath.

Let’s just hope they don’t milk this seemingly already overdone universe any more or we may soon be seeing titles like Squabble of the Titans or Minor Disagreement of the Titans.

Rating – 6 out of 10.