Review of Wrath of the Titans (2012) by Filipeneto — 17 Nov 2018

I'm always afraid of sequels. I'm not the only one, there are even several actors who don't like it. This film explains the reason: the're almost always worse than the previous film which, in this case, wasn't particularly good. And although I realize that the title is a reference to an older film (that is, this is a sequel to a remake), it remains a poor choice for a title, but that's the least relevant criticism here. If the first film seemed insipid and filled script failures with a CGI avalanche, it had at least the virtue of having a history closely related to Greek mythology. This movie lost that, preferring to create something new that gave continuity to the previous story. It's a legitimate choice... but it failed squarely.

The plot takes place ten years after the events of "Clash of the Titans". Perseus lives a mortal life with his son when he's called by his father, Zeus, the king of the gods, to aid in a problem with the instability of the walls of Tartarus. Soon after, this problem disappears, no one ever talks about it, and the gods turn against each other in an internal war, when Perseus will participate to avoid the return of Cronus, a primordial god, father of Zeus, and basically prevent the end of the world. I found this highly predictable plot plodded like a bad patchwork. A disaster completed with insipid and uninspired dialogues, several cliches reused from other action epics (the use of slow motion in battle scenes, for example), and such an amateur editing and post-production work which seem to have been done by trainees, in their first fifteen days of office! It's perfectly clear, throughout the film, a brutal pace difference, with moments where everything happens very quickly and others where the action creeps like honey in the Summer. If we cannot blame editors for these pace differences, we can only point the finger at the awkward director Jonathan Liebesman, who perhaps did better by dedicating his time to filming home movies with puppies. It should be noted that neither he, nor the scriptwriting team, had any part, as far as I could tell, of the previous film.

About the cast I can say that there are great actors who manage, with great talent and dedication, to make the film not a total waste of time. Liam Neeson is flawless and delivers clean service to the audience; Ralph Fiennes did a good job, perhaps even better than in the previous film; Sam Worthington seems to have learned from the mistakes he made in the previous film but remains stupid and presumptuous; Bill Nighy was very good and gives some light moments and situational comedy; Alexa Davalos gave way to Rosamund Pike, who made a nimble and brave queen, something that I really enjoyed because she's a talented actress who only used to do unemotional and cold characters.

The film reproduced the formula "if the script does not work, drown it with CGI and action to make it work". When will filmmakers realize that CGI has become ordinary? It's no longer possible to build a good movie only with lots of visuals and brutal action scenes. There needs to be a good story behind all that, and this movie just doesn't have it. I could tell about the unrealistic way I watch the fight scenes, as this seemed to me totally choreographed... but even that loses relevance if script's not there. It's a movie that isn't worth watching more than once, just to see how bad it is.