Wrath of the Titans (2012) Review

Wrath of isn’t quite as bizzare as it’s 2010 predecessor, which is a bad movie so entertaining you can’t help but enjoy it. Wrath is actually decent. Not good. But decent. Still worthy of being a guilty pleasure, but with enough good going for it to separate it from the likes of Clash.

The plot is that all the Gods are dead or disappeared except for a select few who realise Kronos, Zeus’ evil father, is returning to rule/destroy the mortal world. Hades and Ares trap Zeus and it’s up to Perseus to come out of retirement to save him, with a new batch of fancy side characters.

It isn’t without problems. Like Clash it is still paced way too fast and wants everything it can think of to happen within a short run time. This means that, yet again, good ideas that showed up in the writing process are often underbaked and never reach their full potential. Hades forgiving Zeus’ treatment of him and Areas jealousy of Perseus being two of the movie’s best pieces of drama, but never given room to breathe beyond the actors overtly saying ‘this is how I feel about this drama’ every couple of scenes. It feels like there was a lot of creative people working on his whose potential never went anywhere.

It also has a weird casting change where Andromeda from the first movie, originally played by Alexa Davalos, is now portrayed by Rosamund Pike. I actually thought the two were separate characters because of how Pike’s version acts as though she has a long history with Perseus, when the two only had one conversation in the first movie before he left her stranded on a beach after rejecting her. Also Andromeda is nothing at all like how she’s portrayed in the first film, so that only adds to the confusion.

But in other news, stars who didn’t get a chance to shine in the other movie do here as much more screen time is dedicated to Zeus (Liam Neeson) and Hades (Ralph Fiennes) who pretty much carry the movie on their backs. Sam Worthington is much better in this movie too. His performance here, while still one note, makes it look as though he wasn’t even trying in the first.

But of course, this is still schlock. And it’s still schlock of the highest degree. In fact, it’s better schlock than the first movie ever was. A lot of the editing has improved here and it makes the frequent action scenes so much more clear and coherent. Coupled with a lot of practical locations and sets, and you have a surprisingly authentic-feeling film.

The best way to describe this film is as background noise. It’s easy to watch, walk away from if you need to make a drink, and safe to come back to without worry of having missed anything. I would recommend Wrath of the Titans, but it’s hardly priority viewing.