Okay, now that that's over with, let's get down to actual critique.
This is Warner Brothers' sequel of 2010's annoyingly successful Clash of the Titans, which I previously reviewed here. That film in turn was a remake of the 1981 Dynarama extravaganza of the same name, so in an odd sense, this is like a sequel thirty years in the making. In Clash of the Titans, a demigod named Perseus - the son of Zeus and a mortal woman - must travel to the ends of the Earth to claim the head of Medusa and battle the dreaded Kraken. I have already voiced my complaints in my review, so I will not reiterate them here. I bring up Clash of the Titans merely to say that, mercifully, Wrath of the Titans is multiple times better than its predecessor.
Thanks to my upbringing a well as my own personal tastes, I know an uncomfortably large amount of useless knowledge concerning Greek myth, so one may understand why the first film and its distinctly Norse mega-monster would irk me so. This film, thankfully, stuck purely to its Greek roots, with some considerable modern influences that I will touch upon soon.
Wrath picks up several years after the events of Clash. Perseus (Sam Worthington) has grown out his hair, fathered a son, and buried a wife - Io from the first film, who fell ill to a scheduling conflict and never recovered. Despite his fame, Perseus is determined to lead a quiet life with his son as a fisherman, but that wouldn't make for a great movie, so it isn't long before Zeus pays him a visit and a chimera attacks the tiny fishing village for plot-convenient reasons. One thing leads to another, and before you know it our always-reluctant hero is off to save the day once again.
Right off the bat you can tell that none of the writers from Clash have returned. This is no longer a tale of sandy Magi, sea monsters from Norway, and scorpions the size of Mack trucks. This is a tale of fatherhood, a topic all too familiar with those well-versed in Greek myth. To be honest, this is a tale so much about fatherhood that at times it seems to beat you over the head with Poseidon's trident to get the point across. Zeus' favor of Perseus leads Ares, the god of war (and son of Zeus himself) to join Hades in betraying the other gods. Zeus is captured and placed in Tartarus, where his life force is slowly drained to restore Kronos (the head Titan, and father to Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) so that he will reclaim the world from the ailing gods. Since the humans no longer pray to the gods, the gods' powers are failing, so Ares and Hades think that Kronos will grant them immortality if they help free him. A nice touch that also probably saved on special effects is that, unlike in Clash of the Titans, you do not see the gods on Olympus, nor do you see them in their awesome godly armor. The Olympians each don more conservative garb as an effective visual cue that humanity's lack of piety has drained them of much of their former luster.
What I don't understand is why the gods depend on human belief to survive (even though they were around before humans existed), but Titans don't. Slight plot hole, and by that I mean that it's so large that Tartarus itself probably fathered it. As I said before, the concept of fatherhood is all over this movie.
What really bothers me is something Wrath of the Titans seems to have taken from the recent film Immortals (2011), which is the idea that gods can be killed. This seems silly to me. Ancient myth tells that Hera was so displeased with Hephaestus when he was born that she threw him off of Mt. Olympus, and all it did was make him ugly and give him a limp. He didn't die from being a baby flung off a mountain, so why should the gods be as vulnerable as they are in this film? The writers must have felt that having the gods be subject to death would provide a sense of urgency to the plot, but I don't think they fully understand an idea often touched upon in other films: that there are fates worse than death. I think it'd be more compelling if Kronos' revival from Tartarus would have meant dismemberment for Zeus (a common idea for old god myths). Perhaps his body parts would be flung to the farthest reaches of Earth, and he'd spend eternity with his body torn to shreds. That to me seems far worse a fate than "abyss", as Hades at one point explains it. Having gods be able to die just turns them into humans and, for me at least, makes them much less interesting to watch.
While the film largely nailed their return to Greek form (including some very strong story influence from the recent Heroes of Olympus series of books by Rick Riordan), it still struggles with a Greek sense of Zeus and Hades. This would be the modern influence I mentioned earlier. Myth explains that after the victory over the Titans, the three most powerful gods each chose a realm over which to rule: Zeus the sky, Poseidon the earth and sea, and Hades the underworld. Hades was not "banished to hell", as the film would have you believe (and no one would ever tell Perseus to "go to hell", as happens here to set up a lame joke that that is, in fact, where he is going). The Christian influence over these films is hard to miss, with Zeus playing the role of God the Father and Hades serving as Satan. Wrath even includes a theme of forgiveness that may be better-suited for a more overtly-Christian film. This, combined with the aforementioned plot point that gods can die, is in the end a telling difference between the ancient Greek and the modern American psyches. The Greeks were not afraid of death in the way Americans are today. There was no "heaven" or "hell" - everyone went to the Underworld and were then judged and divided based on the worthiness of their souls. Do great things, end up in Elysium or the Isles of the Blessed. Do bad things, rot in the Fields of Punishment, but to the Underworld you would go no matter what. Hades became your lord in the afterlife whether you were a hero or a serial murderer. But put an American spin on the tale, and suddenly gods become vulnerable, the lord of the Underworld and the god of war become the villains, and death is something to fear. It seems little more than a cop-out to try to keep things familiar with the audience, because heaven forbid we should ever have to watch something that may only be familiar to dorks who read about this kind of thing for fun.
Anyway, back to the movie itself. Sam Worthington (Perseus) does his hero thing to mild effect. Liam Neeson (Zeus) could read from the phone book and I'd be entertained. Ralph Fiennes (Hades) adjusted his Hades from the previous film and made the character less creepy, more generic. He ditched his whispering death-voice and mostly just spoke normally. I'm not sure why, but it was disappointing. Edgar Ramirez was sulky and menacing as Ares. Toby Kebbell (Agenor, a demigod son of Poseidon) and Bill Nighy (Hephaestus) were definitely the stand-out performances that offered some great comedic relief and a bit of personality to the film's otherwise dry dialogue. Finally, Rosamund Pike stepped in for Alexa Davalos (who was "unavailable") as Andromeda, but that was just fine with me. Ms. Pike has been one of my favorites since that horrible Bond film with the guy with diamonds in his face, and she did fairly well with what she was given (which is to say not much). It's just as well that she looks completely different from Ms. Davalos, as the Andromeda from Clash and the one from Wrath are entirely different characters. Where before Andromeda was little more than your standard useless damsel in distress, here she is almost perpetually in armor and speaks as casually with Perseus as if she were just one of the boys. There was one thing concerning her character that I hated, however, but I'll cover that in the spoiler section at the bottom.
While I'm on the subject of casting, something did strike me as very odd. Aside from the army sequences, in which I believe most of the humans were CG anyway, there seemed to be very few humans on the set at any given time. Perseus' traveling band of adventurers, despite being accompanied by a Queen, were very few. And even though the Underworld and Tartarus appear to be one and the same in this film, the place is almost completely desolate despite its enormous size. Surely it was not designed, with its human-sized maze network, just to hold a Titan the size of a mountain (to be fair, the entire Tartarus sequence was extremely poorly done). Clash of the Titans at least gave you a sense that Perseus was fighting for a civilization. In Wrath, you could be led to believe that the only ones who would suffer if he failed in his quest would be the Greek army who foolishly set up camp at the bottom of a valley. A somewhat minor complaint, but the writers made the mistake of making the story more personal while upping the level of action from Kraken to Kronos without seeming to think that a mountain of lava traipsing around Greece would probably have a greater impact on its population's well-being than a sea monster who was only really interested in eating a single princess in the first place.
I did not see the film in 3D, having made that mistake once already with the prequel, so I cannot comment on how good or bad those effects were. However, since I understand that the effects were inserted in post-production, I can just about guarantee that they are not worth your money. The movie was gorgeous in 2D, though. The effects were top-notch, the people were (mostly) attractive, and the locales were interesting and varied. The camerawork was pretty good up until the finale, where the action onscreen overwhelmed the camera, and much seemed lost in the translation (though not NEAR as much as was lost in the filming of The Hunger Games. I'm still sore about how poor the "shaky cam" work was in that movie). The plot lagged heavily in the middle and leading into the climax, but otherwise the pacing was fine. The ending was almost touching, save for one point which I will cover below.
All in all, Wrath of the Titans is as I said in the opening line: a fun, beautiful romp through ancient Greece. Go check it out if you feel like watching Sam Worthington beat up on all sorts of monsters and don't mind an experience that, despite its improved writing, feels about as deep as the saucer of whiskey I leave out for the cats each night.
But don't name your son after the Greek sun god, Helios. That's just silly. And strangely ironic. Son god. I see what you did there.
****SPOILER SECTION DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE ENDING OR YOU WILL DIE****
Okay, so as I mentioned before, there was one thing about Andromeda that really bothered me. Towards the end of the film, I remember thinking that I was glad the movie hadn't tried to force any kind of romance between her and Perseus. They certainly got along and all that, but there was never any indication that the two had any feelings for each other. And then, out of nowhere, Perseus walks into Andromeda's tent and gives her a big fat kiss. Then he leaves, and Andromeda is left looking about as stunned as I must have been. I have never, in my whole life, seen a romance as poorly-done as that, with the obvious exception of Star Wars Episode II. It's not even fair to call it a romance. There was zero buildup. Zero resolution. The kiss just happened, and that was it. I don't care that he's Perseus, the savior of Greece twice-over; you don't simply walk into a monarch's tent and start making out with her. It was stupid and forced and actually managed to top the chemistry-devoid romance from Clash of the Titans, which I didn't think was possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment