Wrath of the Titans

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Michael, Alex, Paul

Is it an improvement on the the last effort? Well, yeah I guess so. But that's very faint praise indeed. At least this time they just seem content to let Sam Worthington do his natural accent and not care what it sounds like.

It felt like there were about 5 lines of dialogue in the film that weren't some kind of basic exposition. This film is really all about Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades, which is great, that's what we want to see. Unfortunately all other characters, including our protagonist, are shoehorned in just to fight some creatures and pad out the running time.

Look, it's not like the original Harryhausen films were great works of drama. We watch them to see fantastic creatures and people fighting them. But this all just feels hollow in a way that they never did. I ca see the father son relationship thing they are going for with Perseus and Zeus, but giving Perseus a son, who serves no purpose but to emphasise this theme is rather annoying, especially when they could have focused on fleshing out Ares' character more to do the same thing and work better as an antagonist at the same time.

Thank the gods they killed Io though. Bringing her back at the end of the first one was the most ridiculous slap in the face of their own storytelling I've ever seen committed.

Danny Huston actually gets some lines this time. Bill Nighy pops up and delivers the only memorable character in his brief time. Once again Bubo is the butt of a joke but nevertheless fits in better this time. Rosamund Pike takes over as Andromeda and they finally end up together like they were supposed to the first time around although it's just as undeserved this time as it would have been then, which is why I understand they ended up bring back Io in the first place. And for some reason she's a warrior queen because all females need to be able to kick ass as good as the men or your film is anti-feminist or something. God that really shits me, it makes no sense for her character.

They learnt nothing from the notoriously bad 3D post conversion on the first one. Except how to fake jabbing an audience better by adding in black bars for one shot so the offending object can appear to sit outside the screen. A trick I saw pulled off more often and with more confidence in G-Force.

I will give it this. If you want to see dudes fighting monsters, it delivers. At the end of the day, that all this film seems to be aiming for and you'll get that. The effects are done well, the creatures look great. Anything more than that and you're better off playing God of War again.