Wrath of the Titans

Starring: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Edgar Ramirez

Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman

Rating: I Didn't Like It

I want to start this review with two understandings.  One, I'm usually not hard on movies at all, so, when I say I didn't like something, it probably wasn't very good.  I'll give lots of movies the masses hate the benefit of the doubt and just say that it was OK.  Two, I haven't seen the first movie in this series, Clash of the Titans, but I am familiar with the story.  

Here's the simple premise: Zeus (Neeson) is betrayed by his brother, Hades (Fiennes), and son, Ares (Ramirez), in order to awaken the Titan - and father of Zeus, Poseidon (Danny Huston) and Hades -  Kronos.  The gods are all weakened by mankind's growing disbelief in them, and Zeus doesn't have the power to fight Kronos alone.  He gathers his two brothers and one son to stop him.  Perseus (Worthington), Zeus' half god/half human son, resists at first, but soon realizes he can't escape his fate and joins the battle.  He must first go in search of his cousin, another demigod, Agenor (Toby Kebbell).  The day is saved and life goes on as usual.  

The Good: 

• If you like action, you'll like this flick...maybe.  There is plenty of action.  
• The CG was awesome.  
• I'll bet it looked pretty good in 3D, but I saved some cash and went 2D.  
• Neeson, Fiennes and Huston look like they could definitely be brothers in their makeup.  I didn't watch anything about the movie other than the trailer before hand, and when I got to the theater and saw the displays, I actually thought that Neeson was playing both Hades and Zeus.  
• The comic relief section of the movie was comical, and I think Bill Nighy did a great job as the comic relief character, Hephaestus.  I like Nighy a lot.  

The Bad: 

• There have been lots of times over the years where movies kill off characters you don't care about to advance the plot; however, when they're characters you should care about or ones the film suggests you should care about in the long "sorrowful" scenes of their deaths and you still don't care, well, there's a problem.  I didn't care about any of the characters in this movie.  The whole thing just jumped right in to the story and took off like a bullet.  
• The CG and action had to be good (as mentioned above), because there was hardly any story at all...AT ALL!!!  The plot was practically non-existent except to give the characters something to have a war over.  
• Given, I didn't see the first film, but, judging by the first scene of this movie which was a recap of what had happened previously, all I needed to know was the Perseus had defeated the Kraken, saved everyone, and now lives a peaceful life as a fisherman, all the while hating his father Zeus.  With that in mind, I still don't think I was invested in these characters at all, and I don't think seeing the first film first would've helped.  

The Ugly: 

• So, the movie is called Wrath of the Titans.  That is plural, TitanS.  There was only one Titan in the movie: Kronos.  There were more Titans to deal with in the Disney version of the Hercules story.  BTW, Hercules, known as Heracles in Greek mythology, is Perseus' half-brother.  
• I don't know why, well, I do know why: money, but I don't know why other than that a reason that Neeson is in this film.  Possibly, he could be in some kind of contract to do these films.  It's probably the same contract that's got him making a movie based off a Milton Bradley game.  

All in all, I think this movie is one you could avoid and never miss.  I just don't think it's a good movie, and it definitely doesn't follow the ancient mythology very closely.  If you do decide to give it a shot, wait for the DVD.  I wish I had.  The only reason it got made is because the first film made a little bank.  Plus, any American movie that's built totally around action can be marketed easily to other non-English speaking countries.  Explosions and crazy battle scenes are the same in every language.