Wrath of the Titans Review

Wrath of the Titans Review
By Simon Jago

A sequel to the 2010 remake of ‘Clash of the Titans’, the aptly named Wrath of the Titans this time actually features some Titans. With the 2010 remake having no Titans whatsoever, the sequel promised so much more with posters of the volcanic Kronos attacking ancient Greece. However, would this Gods Vs Titans free for all be one for the history books, or just an epic waste of time?

A decade on from the events of ‘Clash of the Titans’, Perseus (Sam Worthington) is attempting to live a simple and humble life as a fisherman with his son Helius. However, this is not to last as there is trouble in the heavens. The human races’ lack of faith has slowly drained the power of the Gods, weakening their control over the imprisoned Titans. The walls of Tartarus are crumbling and evil is escaping.

Meanwhile Zeus is lured to the underworld with Hades (Edgar Ramirez) and Poseidon (Danny Huston) where they are confronted by Hades (Ralph Fiennes). Ares betrays his father Zeus and with the help of Hades they capture him and reveal they plan to drain his power to feed and release the monstrous Titan Kronos. All hell is set to break loose… literally.

Despite the 2010 remake of ‘Clash of the Titans’ being rough around the edges and far from perfect, it still had a certain charm to it and I found myself enjoying the film. However, with all the promise of bigger and better things, its sequel is a massive disappointment.

As a big fan of Greek mythology I was looking forward to a ‘Titan’ film actually starring a Titan but in the grand scheme of the movie, the actual release of Kronos is almost a sub plot as we focus entirely on Perseus realising his relationship with his thunderbolt chucking father and the value of respecting your heritage, even if you’re the bastard child of a horny God.

The film is littered with unnecessary mythological references, the worst of all being the Minotaur, which looks more like a bovine member of ‘Right Said Fred’, and he is definitely not too sexy for his shirt. Bill Nighy’s Hephaestus is an annoying take on the God, and despite some interesting designs of the classic Cyclops and Chimera, they all seem thrown into the movie for good measure and fail to live up to the expectation.

Some of the new characters are infuriatingly annoying such as Toby Kebbell’s Agenor, son of Poseidon. If the quest is to collect demi-god children to help fight the Titan menace, what on earth is wrong with Hercules? You have a man strong enough to strangle the Nemean Lion to death, but instead they look for a wisecracking loser who can read maps. Yeah I can see it was a hard choice for the writers.

Wrath of the Titans has some good moments, and even though it has the same style as the 2010 remake it certainly fails to capture the same charm. When you have Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades fighting hordes of Underworld demons, you want to see them kicking arse for more than a couple of minutes. This film had everything there but sadly just went wrong. I felt the wrath of this film, having to sit for 90 minutes enduring its unnecessary existence.