Wrath of the Titans

dir: Jonathan Liebesman

Clash of the Titans didn’t have any Titans in it. Wrath of the Titans has a Titan in it.

Lovers of simplistic arguments take heed: therefore, Wrath of the Titans must be a better film than the film that spawned it or at least more truthful in its advertising. It has a Titan being Wrathful, so needs must be true.

"Must" implies "has to". It's not an ambiguous word. There's certainty in it.

Shame it's a fucking lie.

This film is terrible. It's embarrassing to watch good actors like Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, Danny Huston, almost everyone else except Sam Worthington shame themselves like this for a paycheck. Only a paycheck could justify this. Why else, and who else was demanding this? Doesn't this seem like a completely bizarre alternate-universe object that somehow squeezed through some portal from some other place where people needed to a parody of how truly unnecessary a flick could be?

There are scenes where a very bearded and very bedraggled Liam Neeson is having... something leeched from him, but also, there's this white, sticky stuff all over him. It’s bizarre and unintentionally comical.

I know Neeson has no shame when it comes to collecting a paycheck. He was in the A-Team remake, for fuck's sake. He is in the upcoming sequel to Taken, called, I imagine, Taken 2: Even More Takened. And he was in an actual film in actual human history called Battleship, based on the "you sunk my" game of the same name, which I have seen but will never, ever review or speak of again.

But even he must have felt terrible about being in this flick. The only thing worse would be having to pretend you're Sam Worthington's father. That's got to take every acting fibre of one's being not to expire in a shameful puddle of tears and self-hatred.

Worthington plays Perseus, a demi-god who rejects his demi-godness, choosing to live as a humble fisherman. Sure, he was a hero in the first flick in this odious series, but it's not for him. He prefers the simple pleasures of living in squalor, with his son and the other squalid peasants surrounding him, most of whom are slated for Hades's realm.

It appears that, in some alignment with the original myths, there were these Titans, the baddest one being Kronos, who was the father of the Olympian gods. Zeus (Neeson) et al imprisoned Kronos because he was a giant lava-type monster that wanted to kill everyone. They imprisoned him in a place called Tartarus, from which he is trying to escape, with some help from certain arseholes amongst the Olympians.

Their power is waning, you see, because no-one prays to them any more. Why would they? The gods are too busy getting drunk and shagging the unsuspecting and the unwilling to be granting prayers or making it rain. Either that or they know not to fuck with The Jesus, who will surely soon be coming onto the religious scene.

Along with Kronos dripping all over the place, and starting to move, all these demon type things start escaping from the prison, which means certain doom for all of humanity.

Who can save us? Well, a bastard son hooking up with another bastard son of Poseidon's (Toby Kebbell) might be able to do it. And maybe a hot chick in armour (Rosamund Pike)! And maybe Bill Nighy as the god of making stuff Hephaestus?

Yeah, throw Bill Nighy into the mix. The kids will love that.

I didn't hate the first flick at all. As a remake of a sub-standard flick, it was less sub-standard, and didn't bug me too much. I watched Clash at the cinema, though not in 3D. Nothing could have compelled me to see this one in a cinema, so Blu-Ray had to suffice. I can't imagine that I missed out on anything.

With everything that's perhaps not that good throughout this whole flick, the dislike provoked by Sam Worthington would perhaps have been the most avoidable. They could have avoided this inevitable conclusion by having him act differently, or utter better dialogue, or generally be less awful. They could have put someone else in the role, any role, since I don't think anyone cares if the hero in one of these kinds of flicks is called Perseus or Priam or Themistocles. Anyone could have done better. Also, they could possibly have had a less lobotomised script which makes no sense and is incapable of hiding the fact that it makes no sense, which is a fatal flaw.

It takes a whole bunch of other decent actors and makes them look like they're killing time over their summer break by performing in London pantomimes. No-one really seems to be anything like what they think they're portraying, mostly because they seem confused as to what exactly they're playing at.

I can't blame the actors (except Worthington), but I can blame the director and the screenwriters and everyone else. Even the caterers and the carpenters. Their depiction of Tartarus doesn't even make any sense. It's an impregnable prison that nothing can get into or out of. Except when they can. And it's a labyrinth that can't be figured out or solved because it's constantly shifting. Except when it is. And Perseus and the rest of the Olympian folk have powers and shit that allow them to do all sorts of stuff except when they don't and they can't, but then they can and do again for reasons even J.K. Rowling would have called contrived.

Ares, the God of War, looking like he's in a Spanish shampoo commercial, hates Perseus because... and does all sorts of bad shit like killing a bunch of his own worshippers because... I guess because he's the God of War, goddamn it. He haaaaates Perseus, but we're meant to see that it's sibling rivalry thing, since he feels like Zeus loves Perseus more, despite the complete absence of any evidence of such.

Um, okay. So you're going to kill everyone in the world because your deadbeat god father who made you the god of the single most common pursuit in human history except for fucking and nose-picking didn't love you enough? Okay, if you say so. As motivations go, I guess its a doozy, even if it's nonsensical.

I guess, with siblings, whether it's real or not, the perception of favouritism can wound a person deeply. And a god? A god whose reason for existing is to be the embodiment of War itself? I guess it hurts even more, despite the fact that Perseus is just like the thousands of other bastards Zeus fathered and neglected for most of their lives. Having a father who's such a pimp player must be deeply wounding, even to the omnipotent.

It's almost making me well up in sympathy. Tito, get me a tissue.

No-one should expect these kinds of flicks to make sense, and picking at them like a rotting scab helps no-one either. By 'no-one', I mean me, because obviously I'm aware of the fact that when I like a film, the plotholes don't seem so glaring, or even as holes for that matter. If a flick doesn't have my attention or affection it does give me the requisite time and motivation to ripping it apart. Even that doesn't account for the fact that past a certain point everything that happened or was said started making me cringe. It doesn’t look that crash hot either, in this day and age.

Few people are going to make this comparison, but I'm going to. I'm going to be the bold one who goes out on that shaky, querulous limb: This stupid, stupid flick makes John Carter of Mars look much better by default. At least it looked great and had a story, goddamn it. This has a bunch of people looking pretty fucking confused. Its only saving grace from my perspective is that it was only an hour and a half long. If it had been any longer I would have ejected the disk from my player, flung it with malice from the window and probably decapitated some poor orphan puppy dog trotting outside on the foothpath. Still, it's about 90 minutes too long all the same, and I recommend it to absolutely no-one.

Don't bother, unless your eyes are feeling masochistic.

3 times it looked like the director went out of his way to shame Liam Neeson out of 10

--
“I am so sorry for having done this to you. Can you ever forgive me?”
- “Why do you ask this?”
“Because I forgive you, for this.” – I think they’re apologising for being in this movie – Wrath of the Titans