Wrath of the Titans: **/*****, or 5/10
A classical education can be a real
pain in the ass at times. Sure, it helps you get a basic
understanding of most major European languages and supplies you with
an ample fondness for the riches of Greek and Roman mythology, but it
makes mindless action movies based on said myths that much harder to
swallow. Case in point: Wrath of the Titans.
Two years ago, the remake of Ray
Harryhausen's final masterpiece of stop motion photography Clash
of the Titans unfortunately made some money. The reason for this
is still unclear, since it wasn't a very good movie and remains one
of the most textbook examples as to why 3-D post-conversion is a bad
thing, considering the piss poor 3-D effects that made the hair of
the protagonists seem to float around and the digital FX that much
more obviously pixelized. At least it delivered a decent amount of
man versus monster battle action, but that's where the enjoyment
ended. At the end of the movie, the demi-god Perseus (Sam
Worthington) finally defeated the terrifying Kraken and settled with
his new lover Io (Gemma Arterton) for a peaceful life, declining an
offer from his father Zeus (Liam Neeson) to join the gods at Mount
Olympus. Seems like a fairly conclusive ending, but when there's a
potential for more money to be made Hollywood usually overrules
common sense and demands a sequel, regardless of whether people asked
for one, or whether there's more stories to be told with the
characters. Wrath of the Titans oh so cleverly avoids the
latter obstacle by reducing the need for a plot to a minimum and
focusing first and foremost on the creature action. Ignoring the
orginal realm of Greek mythology completely, Hollywood now makes up a
few more adventures for Perseus, taking elements from various other
beloved classical myths and mixing them together in an awkward
pastiche of largely action driven setpieces.
A decade has passed since the previous
movie, and Perseus (still the overly butch Sam Worthington with his
outrageously ill placed Aussie accent) now lives the simple life of a
fisherman together with his son Helius (John Bell) after the death of
his wife Io (Gemma Arterton undoubtedly did the right thing by not
returning, though it makes the obnoxiously obligatory romance with
Andromeda in this movie ever so convoluted). Of course this will not
do for an action flick, so Zeus (Liam Neeson, still fairly regal, but
definitely on auto-pilot), his estranged father, warns him trouble is
stirring in Tartarus, the monster dungeon of the underworld: the
Titans are breaking loose, and he would like his son to join him in
vanquishing this evil (sounds familiar? It should, since both the
recent Immortals and Disney's Hercules were centered
around a suspiciously similar plot). Perseus once again tells him to
sod off, having little interest in the affairs of the immortals with
which he has little affinity despite his blood ties to them, so Zeus
departs without him, accompanied only by his other son Ares (Edgar
Ramirez), and his brothers Poseidon (Danny Huston) and Hades (the
ever reliable choice of villainy Ralph Fiennes, whose heart, like
Neeson's, doesn't really seem to be in all this), trying to keep
their imprisoned father Kronos in check. The latter turns out to be a
towering behemoth of molten rock and lava: apparently, this is the
sort of thing to happen to gods locked away in hell for too long.
As is fully predictable, Hades again
double-crosses Zeus, this time in league with Ares. For some reason,
the god of war is utterly jealous of Zeus' relation with Perseus,
even though it's blatantly obvious in this film and the last that
Perseus has little love for his father and ignores his divine descent
as much as possible: even in this film father and son have all too
brief exchanges of dialogue, revealing that whatever relationship
they have, it doesn't warrant jealousy at all. This makes Ares'
motivations feel out of touch with reality and generally poorly
conceived, but if there's a story need to make a bad guy out of an
Olympian god, in the general contemporary mindset of oversimplified
'good versus evil' the god of war is the 'go-to guy' nevermind the
reasons, as is Hades as the god of the afterlife. And so these two
rogue gods capture the ruler of heaven and chain him in the depths of
Tartarus, in such a way that his life essence flows to his enraged
father Kronos with whom they have made a pact to regain their
immortality after his plans to destroy the gods have been carried
out. As if...
Now it's up to poor Perseus to rescue
both his father and mankind from Kronos' imminent rampage that will
wreak total havoc upon the world, and he is sent upon yet another
quest to obtain items that will stop the big bad guy, along the way
encountering various characters and computer generated creatures as
he moves from setpiece to setpiece, with little a break inbetween
since this movie runs for only 99 minutes and there's gotta be as
much action as possible to detract attention from the fact the
(supposed) writers simply regurgitated the previous' film overall
plot to save money on cramping in as much pixels as possible. So we
see Perseus and his ragtag band of warriors – including compulsory
female empowerment in the presence of Queen Andromeda (this time
around played by Rosamund Pike, since former queen Alexa Davalos,
like Arterton, also felt she could spent her time in more useful
ways) and unsuccessful comic relief supplied by Poseidon's lowlife
son Agenor (Toby Kebbell) – face Chimaeras, a family of Cyclops, a
Minotaur and Siamese twin Machai warriors in the build-up to the
ultimate epic battle with the film's gargantuan antagonist Kronos (in
essence, Perseus' grandfather; not that he seems to care for this
fact).
The creatures are the film's most redeeming feature and provide for the film's only memorable scenes: in fact, it comes as no surprise the whole film feels constructed around a string of interchangeable fights with monsters randomly taken from every corner of Greek mythology. At least some effort was put into making sure the beasts look good on the big screen. They do, with the exception of the Minotaur, who's just a guy in a suit making ample use of shadowy lighting to hide the fact he looks like a guy in a suit. It's nice to see a break from CGI here, but this particular creature feels totally out of touch with the others and delivers a rather ridiculous performance in a fortunately short fight scene. Apparently a labyrinth, even an ingeniously designed specimen with moving corridors and an ever changing layout, always needs a man/bull hybrid to feel more authentic, even if the budget can't afford for him to look convincing or menacing. The other monsters fortunately fare better action wise, and make for some respectable eye candy to make up for the Minotaur fiasco. And after all of them have been subdued, it's time for Kronos to get his comeuppance in another grandiose climactic end battle, one that however fails to amaze as much as the Kraken fight that concluded Clash, considering Wrath simply exchanges a huge water monster for a huge lava monster. More could have been done with an ex-god, especially one related to the king of gods, who also happens to be the protagonist's grandfather, than make a big beastie out of him and having the hero simply kill him off.
And
speaking of gods, what happend to the rest of them? Only five
Olympian gods (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Ares and Hephaestus (Bill
Nighy) made it into this film, despite the presence of more of them
in Clash of the Titans.
One could say the story didn't allow for all of them to be
incorporated in the final film, but it makes the movie feel
incomplete. Zeus desperately asks Perseus for help against Kronos,
but not the likes of Apollo or Athena? Surely a goddess of wisdom and
battle tactics would have come in handy, plus it would have provided
for more compelling female presence than armour clad Andromeda
joining Perseus in his valiant quest but not adding worthwhile to it
overall, except getting his tongue in her mouth for little apparent
reason when the dust of battle has settled (zero chemistry here
between Worthington and Pike). Adding other gods to the mix would
have made sense, but they probably would have needed to much screen
time, taking away from the monster acton Hollywood feels this movie
is all about. Probably all for the better, considering the messed up
relations of the gods we got are petty enough.
When you turn a blind eye to the
monsters, Wrath of the Titans is basically nothing but a
terribly soapy family squabble. Kronos was rejected by his sons Zeus,
Poseidon and Hades, who afterward started arguing amongst themselves;
Ares feels rejected by his father Zeus who himself is largely
rejected by his own son Perseus; Ares and Hades team up with Kronos
against their family but succumb to in-fighting too; with Ares
eventually using Perseus' son Helius against his half brother. Oh,
and Agenor rejects his father Poseidon too. Io did the right thing by
dying before this movie started so as not to get involved in all this
petty bickering. It's really tiresome to hear 'my father', 'my son'
or 'my brother' after every line of dialogue, especially amidst
battle scenes, just to make sure audiences will remember who's
related to who.
And that's the main problem of this
movie: it fails to anticipate audience intelligence and therefore
relies solely on delivering fight scenes instead of fleshing the
family arguments out into something less convoluted, as if Greek
mythology was all about heroes dispatching monsters. That might be
what people remember most about such myths, but it wasn't simply the
single element driving them. Last year's Immortals made this
perfectly clear by refraining from the use of creatures completely,
instead centering the action around the differences between gods and
humans directly, which still resulted in ample action and digital
effects. Wrath of the Titans however doesn't feel the need to
enrich itself by adding anything worthwhile to its simple action
oriented take on classical mythology. If you've grown up with Greek
myths like I have, you will undoubtedly leave the theatre with a
profound sense of lacking: if you care only about seeing cool
creatures running around killing people and being killed, this movie
is made for you, since that's all it offers. And apparently this
simpleminded approach sells like crazy, considering a third Clash is
already in the works... are there any monsters from Greek mythology
yet left for senseless slaughter?
And watch the trailer here:
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