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.

Immortals

A few years back, the Clash of the Titans remake shook the world with its blandness and predictability. Now, a suspiciously similar film titled Immortals has arrived in the cinema near you. Do you dare risk it and go see this movie? Could it actually be better than Clash was?

As far as I'm concerned, it's not. Not only is it shit, but it's shit that tries to be something really epic, and looks doubly bad due to reaching for the skies.

Immortals is about Theseus (no relation to the Greek mythic character), played by Henry Cavill, who'll be Superman in the upcoming Man of Steel film. He's a bastard borne of rape, brought up by his mother and taught combat and ethics by the only really good thing about the film, John Hurt. Why does John Hurt teach him combat and ethics? Well, because he's Zeus (no relation to the Greek pagan god) in disguise and wants a mortal warrior who can save humanity from itself. So why does Theseus' mother let John Hurt teach her son? Theseus very aggressively declines an invitation to join the army early on in the movie, so why is he learning how to fight? I have no idea! I guess it's not important to know the basic premise of the plot very well.

Meanwhile, King Hyperion (no relation to the Greek mythic character), played by Mickey Rourke, is conquering the world, set on releasing the mythic Titans and thus reigning supreme over god and man alike. You see, when gods discovered they could kill each other, they started killing each other, and the losers were locked away in a little cage underground. Hyperion wants to free these imprisoned gods because... uhh... umm... then he'll have dozens of gods running around, killing everyone, instead of like five of them sitting in Olympus and staying out of humanity's way?

These aren't even spoilers. All these plot holes happen in the first twenty minutes of the movie.

So yeah, it's stupid and nonsensical, but is it entertaining? Yes and no. The performances are okay, the action scenes are good (really good when gods are involved), the special effects aren't half bad, and even the 3D is pretty cool when it's noticeable, but somehow the story and pacing manage to kill all of this. I was entertained for more than half of the movie's running time, but I still left out feeling disappointed (which is saying something, considering I was expecting this film to blow), because all it adds up to is nonsense. The Three Musketeers may have been dumb, but at least it never shied away from having fun. This film tries to be serious and meaningful, in denial about its own nature.

Immortals is made with a certain aesthetic vibe to it, an artistic cinematography, costuming and directing which at times gives it a feeling of otherworldly beauty. However, most of the time it just looks ridiculous. I might look at the gods' ridiculous outfits without sniggering if their "dramatic" dialogue wasn't overblown and melodramatic. I might not roll my eyes at the bright red robes and veils of the oracles if they had an actual reason for wearing those things they never wear in any other scene. I'll admit that the locations are pretty cool most of the time, but I'd have preferred to get a good look of that big city near the end, instead of just seeing it in the horizon.

By the way, if you saw the trailer for this and thought: "That magic bow looks really cool! I bet this movie will do all kinds of cool stuff with it", DO NOT BE FOOLED. Every single scene where anyone fires the magic bow is in the trailer. It's not the hero's signature weapon. It's a MacGuffin.

I can't recommend this movie for anyone. It's just no worth seeing. Simple as that.