When I first heard about the “Wrath of the Titans” movie I was expecting to be severely disappointed after all this was going to be the sequel to the dreadful remake of “Clash of the Titans” movie. That no matter how hard it tried could never compete with the cinematic nostalgic perfection of the Ray Harryhausen original version. The remake was ill conceived at best, and featured a dreadfully 3D cinematic viewing experience due to the film being filmed in 2D and converted into 3D giving a almost migraine inducing effects. So you can imagine I was not looking forward to a sequel.
But when the “Wrath of the Titans” finally hit the cinema screens I started to hear good things about it from other people, so I decided to give the movie a chance.
The basic plot of this movie is Perseus (Sam Worthington) the demigod is spurred into action when his father the God Zeus is captured by Hades (Ralph Fiennes ) and Ares (Édgar Ramírez). This is done so as to drain Zeus of power in an attempt to free the evil father of the Gods Kronos. Perseus teams up with Andromeda (Rosamund Pike) and Poseidon’s son Agenor (Toby Kebbell) to go on a quest to save not just his father but the whole of mankind.
The first thing I noticed about this movie was the lazy killing of of the previous love interest Io (Gemma Arterton) It is done in such a way that it almost renders the entire first movie pointless, why save her when she is edited out of this movies script in such a lazy way. The movie also suffers from such a lazy shoehorned love interest in the form of Andromeda, theirs no real romantic chemistry, or even reason as to why the romance is there. But at least Rosamund Pike can act unlike the man who plays Ares (Édgar Ramírez) who is just so run of the mill it hurts to watch his performance. Although on the plus side acting wise Sam Worthington is better in this movie than the first one although he still suffers from being fairly dull. I also think it was a tad unwise to have the original Bubo appear in cameo as it kind of broke the 4th wall reference wise.
Despite these drawbacks the movie is really rather good, not good as in brilliant but good as in it’s an entertaining movie. As this movie is its own movie that does not have a better original to compare it to, meaning that their is no constant comparing of the cinematic quality of two movies. Because of this “Wrath of the Titans” has far more creative freedom to come up with a new Story that actually works well, it has plenty of action and has some very cool scenes. My favorite scenes tended to be the ones featuring Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and Zeus (Liam Neeson) who both easily out act everyone in this movie.
The movie also makes very good use of 3D with some clever set pieces that make intelligent use of it ,and thankfully this time the 3D was proper 3D so I was not left with a stinking headache either.
All in all this movie is well worth seeing even if you where disappointed with the remake this movie should make up for that blot on the cinematic landscape.
I give this movie a 7 out of 10
