Wrath of the Titans

The 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans was one of the most lame, clichéd, boring blockbusters of the past few years. It consisted of hard-to-follow action scenes, glued together by contrived exposition scenes and a plot that I want to nominate for most predictable of all time.

Wrath of the Titans is the fresh-out-of-the-oven sequel, and I can't believe they managed to outdo the original in badness.

Sam Worthington returns as Perseus, the demigod son of Zeus (Liam Neeson). In the end of the last movie, Zeus resurrected Perseus' love interest Io (despite Hades being the lord of the dead) so the two can live happily and mortally for all their years. In the beginning of the sequel, Io has died again, and left Perseus with a twelve(ish)-year-old son. Now that the gods are losing their power, the walls of Tartarus are... actually, none of this matters. They go and fight a bunch of monsters, as well as Ares and Hades, to save Zeus from being used as a catalyst to resurrect Kronos (SUPER BIG LAVA MAN). There's your plot.

None of the characters are consistent between movies. Zeus has suddenly turned into Jesus Christ, apparently so overwhelmed by his character development in the first movie that now he's become a xerox of the human-loving Zeus in Immortals. Also, his war with Hades at the end of Clash is handwaved away, so that Hades' "betrayal" at the beginning of Wrath can be made shocking. Perseus apparently got over his hatred of the gods so well that now he thinks he's "not worthy" because he's not a full god. Andromeda, damsel in distress of the first film, is now the Queen of Greece (what?) instead of being the Princess of Argos.

The movie isn't even consistent with itself. It's established early on that the Gods are becoming mortal because humanity doesn't pray to them anymore, but later on a big plot point is made about how the soldiers Perseus is saddled with have a reflex-like habit of praying to Ares, and if they do he'll know where they are. And here's another: At the end, the Redshirt army stays back to "hold the line" while Perseus finds the means to kill Kronos. ...except that they're not really defending anything. They're just camped out in a valley. What are they trying to keep Kronos' army from reaching, the stone wall behind themselves?

I mean, I can see why they just gave up: The first film had a terrible plot, and other than "Zeus vs. Hades", it didn't have much material to work on in a sequel. But at least it tried. I can't believe I'm giving Clash of the Titans this admission: it tried.

But okay, a worthless story can be forgiven for other strengths. Wrath's trailers showed some cool stuff with the Titans coming and killing people and stuff. Well, I guess they would be cool if the action scenes didn't suffer from some of the worst Too-Rapid-Editing-Syndrome I've ever seen, as well as really bad scripting. Perseus kills like three monsters by choking them. Come on, the least this movie can do is have some imaginative kills. And by "imaginative", I do not mean "Perseus suplexes Ares".

Oh yeah. Perseus suplexes Ares. There's professional wrestling in this movie about Greek Mythology.

There are only two good things about this film. Bill Nighy gets a fifteen-minute role as Hephasteus, whom he plays as "Davy Jones with an even thicker Scottish accent trying to act like Jack Sparrow". That's some of the funniest shit I've seen in a while. Also, Sam Worthington no longer has a buzzcut.

Don't see this film. It's shit. If you decide to ignore my warnings, then at least don't see it in 3D. The 3D is pointless and doesn't add anything to the movie. You'll just be wasting even more of your money.

The Grey

The premise for The Grey is very simple, and kind of familiar. That is to say, the same movie basically already exists in the form of 1997's The Edge. Only, in that case it's Anthony Hopkins instead of Liam Neeson, a bear instead of a pack of wolves, and if I recall correctly, that movie was way less good.

Liam Neeson plays a hunter who works for an oil refinery to keep the wildlife at bay in Alaska (apparently they can't afford fences). He is depressed and finds no purpose in his life, only to have things shaken up when his plane crashes into the snowy wilderness. He has to rally the survivors and try to make it back to civilisation. Unnaturally persistent wolves hunt for them, picking the group apart one by one.

Right, so it's a survival drama movie. What's it got going for itself? Well, I'm a fan of Neeson, though that's mostly because he looks uncannily like my dad. He's a good actor, though, and I can't recall a movie where he'd been bad per se. The other actors are also good, and the side characters are written well enough that they don't come off as stereotypes who are only there to be killed. The wolves are really well executed, and come off as really menacing, their presence hanging over the film throughout.

Now here's something the marketing really lied about: There's way less action in the film than the trailers would let you believe. It's a more about suspense and the characters. I prefer it this way, but I can see if some people are put off by the difference. The ending may also disappoint some people, but I liked it.

Now here's something I rarely comment on or notice in a film: The Grey has excellent sound effects and sound editing. When the plane crashes, the film does its best to deafen half the audience, and it really feels like a huge hunk of metal is ripping apart. Every impact in the film is accompanied with a violent sound that makes the viewer feel the blow. The howling of the wolves is damn scary. I actually think that watching this outside the cinema will be way less impressive due to the lowered sound fidelity.

The directing and editing are top-notch: in the beginning, the main character's depression is portrayed more through camera angles and muted sounds than Neeson's melodramatic monologue. Throughout the journey, the cameraman and composer are playing with the viewer's expectations to make it as hard to tell as possible when a wolf is going to show up.

I really liked it. Aside from some pacing issues, faulty marketing and an over-reliance on Liam Neeson, it's an A-grade drama/suspense/action flick. And though this is really ridiculous, I have to add in the fact that Ridley Scott is the producer and they had someone wear a Weyland-Yutani baseball cap. I'm way too easily amused.