★☆☆☆☆
A word is often used to describe big-budget, high-action blockbusters: fun. We pay money to see admittedly dumb movies because they are supposed to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, this word cannot be applied to the new movie Wrath of the Titans.
After his triumphant defeat of the Kraken in the previous film Clash of the Titans, Perseus (Sam Worthington) is living a quiet life as a fisherman with his young son. It doesn’t take long for chaos to interrupt this harmony. Perseus’ father Zeus (a relatively bland Liam Neeson) informs him that the gods are becoming weaker. Humans are turning their backs on the gods and no longer praying to them. This waning devotion is causing Tartarus, the prison of the underworld, to become weaker, which poses a potential threat to the world.
None of this actually matters, because the filmmakers seem to go out of their way to make the most boring action movie in existence. There are characters, they engage in dialogue and they appear to be part of a plot, yet nothing ever feels consequential. In fact, the movie doesn’t even feel like a movie, but rather a hodgepodge of scenes sloppily edited together to make a somewhat cohesive story.
Sometimes a great actor can save an awful blockbuster by relishing in the mediocrity of the material given to them. Unfortunately, no one is able to save this film. Every single actor gives a wooden and completely forgettable performance. The only possible exception is the always-wonderful Bill Nighy (Love Actually) as Hephaestus. He is actually quite funny and compelling, but unfortunately only appears in two scenes.
Wrath of the Titans’s predecessor, 2010 Clash of the Titans, is a remake of the 1981 classic of the same name and has become the go-to example of awful use of 3-D. Riding on the success of Avatar, Clash of the Titans did a hasty post-production transfer to 3-D as a quick way to make more money. While the film made plenty of it, the 3-D was heavily criticized.
Wrath of the Titans has certainty improved upon its predecessor in terms of 3-D. None of the images are out of focus or distractingly dark. Unfortunately, the methods Warner Bros. used to convert Wrath of the Titans to 3-D failed to make any of the characters match that number of dimensions.