Friday, March 30, 2012

Wrath of the Titans - 2 stars

In this sequel to Clash of the Titans (2010), Sam Worthington once again stars as Perseus, half man and half god. It's been 10 years since the events of the first film, and Perseus just wants to live a normal human life, raise his son, and fish.

One day Zeus (Liam Neeson) shows up and tells him that some kind of a war between the gods is coming. He asks Perseus to help him, and Perseus refuses. When Zeus travels to the underworld to meet with Hades (Ralph Fiennes), he is captured by Hades, who wants to steal Zeus's powers and give them to their father, Kronos. Once Kronos has enough power, he will be able to leave the underworld and destroy humanity.

When Perseus finds out about this, he decides he needs to save Zeus and stop Kronos. So he begins a quest to find a powerful weapon of the gods (so he can kill Kronos) and rescue Zeus.

This sounds like a decent setup for an action / fantasy movie. The problem is the characters are completely forgettable. For one thing, Sam Worthington is a very bland and boring actor. Either he is fighting, or he is standing around moping. He isn't given anything interesting to do in this movie. Another problem is the hectic camera style. When Perseus and Ares, the god of war, are fighting, the camera work is so jumbled that I couldn't tell which way was up. They are fighting and rolling around, and the camera is moving more than the characters. This is one of my big complaints in action movies like this. How about holding the camera still so we can actually see what is happening on screen?

At one point, the characters have to enter this giant labyrinth in order to enter the underworld. The labyrinth looks really cool and imposing. The labyrinth's designer says there are 100 doors that lead to death. Only one way will get them through. Well, it only takes them about 5 minutes to find their way through. One room almost crushes them, Perseus fights a minotaur, then it's over. That was disappointing.

I think this movie is about as bad as the first Clash of the Titans. If you do go see it, don't pay the extra for 3-D. It adds nothing.

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