By Jarred Braxton
“We gods are losing our power. We believed the titans to be imprisoned forever. Now they are breaking free.”
All hell is breaking loose, and the heroic son of Zeus is all that stands in evil’s way bringing on oblivion on earth in Jonathan Liebesman’s (“Battle: Los Angeles”) “Wrath of the Titans.”
The sequel to 2010’s “Clash of the Titans,” is set eight years after the demigod Perseus, reprised by Sam Worthington (“Avatar,” “Man on a Ledge”), vanquished the monstrous kraken and has retreated to a small fishing village to raise his son Helius, played by John Bell (“A Shine of Rainbows”).
This peace will not last unfortunately as beasts that predate the gods, from minotaurs, makhai and chimeras, are slipping out of the underworld prison known as Tartarus and wreaking havoc across the ancient world.
The king of the gods Zeus, reprised by Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson (“Schindler’s List”) tries to reason with his jaded brother Hades, reprised by Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes (“The Reader”), to restore Tartarus but is betrayed by his son Ares, played by Golden Globe nominee Edgar Ramirez, who plots with Hades to drain Zeus of his power and offer it to their father, the Titan Kronos.
If Kronos walks the earth again, it spells certain doom for all mankind and it is up to Perseus, the warrior queen Andromeda, played by Rosamund Pike (“Die Another Day”), and the demigod Argenor, played by Toby Kebbell (“War Horse,” “The Conspirator”), to venture to the underworld and free Zeus from Hades’ clutches before Kronos is reawakened and rips the world apart.
On paper this movie sounds awesome and it looks like a rock-solid action movie, but the final product of “Wrath of the Titans,” is exactly the same as its prequel-a letdown.
The movie just doesn’t incur the wrath in its name and if one is expecting a fire and brimstone texture to this movie, it is more smoke and mirrors to be honest.
Liebesman does sit at the helm of great visual effects in this movie and one can tell that he did his due diligence in researching his Greek mythology, but the problem is that the movie is just flat. The action is there but it doesn’t hit any high marks in any relative area of film making.
Liebesman does a steady job at directing this movie, but there is a lack of ambition present in his approach. He just doesn’t do anything with this movie that blows the audience right out of their seats.
The cast was as mundane and as uninspired as the cast from its predecessor. Even the new additions of Kebbell, Ramirez, Pike and Golden Globe winner Bill Nighy’s (“Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest”) Hephaestus, couldn’t breathe life into this action story.
Audiences could get some kind of educational momento from “Wrath of the Titans.” They can learn about some aspects of Greek mythology that they didn’t know about before, such as the fact that Kronos is the father of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, but that is where it ends.
“Wrath of the Titans,” in all its feeble splendor is an unnecessary but admirable sequel to a very disappointing film from a very tragic genre. It was admirable that the writers tried to add more to a story that didn’t need to be added to but it was completely stale and unnecessary.
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