{"id":5301,"date":"2012-07-24T01:11:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T05:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5301"},"modified":"2012-07-24T01:11:45","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T05:11:45","slug":"br-wrath-of-the-titans-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5301","title":{"rendered":"BR: Wrath of the Titans (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>V to Z<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Good\/ BR Transfer: Excellent\/ BR Extras: Good<\/p>\n

Label: Warner Home Video\/ All\u00a0\/\u00a0Released: June 26, 2012<\/p>\n

Genre: Fantasy \/ Action<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Perseus is recruited by Zeus to defend humans and Gods when Papa Kronos is poised to awaken from the Earth’s core.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Deleted Scenes \/ Maximum Movie Modes \/ Focus Points \/ DVD and Ultraviolet Digital Copy<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

After the success of Clash of the Titans<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (2010), it was a no-brainer to green-light a sequel, reassembling most of the key characters for another post-apocalyptic threat in ancient Greece that\u2019s barely thwarted by young Perseus (Sam Worthington) and whichever Gods are left after a major betrayal.<\/p>\n

Wrath<\/strong> of the Titans<\/strong> is wholly contrived, yet Warner Bros. gave the production plenty of money to ensure the smaller cast is balanced with epic special effects. Wrath features some stunning visual creations, with the re-awakened Kronos a marvelously terrifying humanoid lava monster who\u2019s almost indestructible once he\u2019s re-energized from a long slumber by grandson Ares (Edgar Ramirez) and son Hades (Ralph Fiennes), using the energy from a captured Zeus (Liam Neeson).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing new to the plot nor does the script add anything wondrous to the fantasy genre, but like Ray Harryhausen\u2019s productions (which include the 1981 Clash of the Titans<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] from which the rebooted franchise stems) the cast is larded with young stars and aged, very serious thespians whose physicality and voice training give credence to lightweight, almost functional dialogue.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the editor\u2019s delete bin lies a wealth of scene trims, dialogue extensions, small character moments, and extra bits of humour that were seemingly hacked out of the final cut, because in spite of its visual beauty, Wrath<\/strong> feels like a basic storyline that was developed, rewritten, and eventually trimmed down to a production with one sole focus: get to the action.<\/p>\n

The dialogue that survives is adequate, and the surprisingly vivid cast of character actors \u2013 including Sinead Cusack (Hoffman<\/a><\/strong>) in a rare film role \u2013 gives slight gravitas to the whittled down scenes, but either director Jonathan Liebesman (Battle Los Angeles<\/strong>) or the producers felt the film was lagging, or during the editing stage a sense of mounting impatience brewed heavy, because for all of its classical ornamentation and grandly rendered action sequences, Wrath<\/strong> is a choppy mini-epic designed for the video game crowd who may feel like they\u2019re being cheated.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s very strange is how well the action scenes with CGI are choreographed \u2013 not as fast-moving game extracts, but tightly edited, classically paced moments that reveal kinetic montage and natural flowing movements for the monsters. Even the crazy voyage to Kronos\u2019 lair \u2013 a master puzzle city that shifts like components within an elaborate stone clock \u2013 aren\u2019t nearly as jarring as the straight dialogue scenes, where characters start an action or state an intention, and we jump cut to the event in progress. The only character whose scenes survived this mangling is Bill Nighy, who plays metal forger and puzzle city designer Hephaestus. Nighy carries on conversations with himself, with little owl Bubo (once again making a cameo after the remake), and babbles through caverns where he\u2019s surrounded by sand-encrusted dead tech. His scenes are expository and amusing, and the editors seemed to have left his scene steals intact \u2013 making his eventual exist the most affecting.<\/p>\n

Missing from the characters is Perseus\u2019 wife Io – Gemma Arterton was reportedly unavailable, so she\u2019s dead from the sequel \u2013 but her absence allows the screenwriters (all credited 3) to follow through and bring Perseus and Andromeda (Surrogates<\/a><\/strong>\u2019 Rosamund Pike) together. Also new is new hero Agenor (Toby Kebbell) as Poseidon\u2019s own half-human love-child, and Arterton lookalike Lily James plays na\u00efve Korrina whom we all know will betray her comrades and cause grievous loss. Ramirez does what he can with his generally jealous and annoyed character, and both Fiennes and Neeson play everything grave to ensure their generally minor characters maintain some resonance to the end.<\/p>\n

With many of the gods transformed to dust by the final reel, it\u2019ll be interesting to see how the next batch of writers will tackle the franchise\u2019s inevitable installment, although for Part 3, the producers should allow for some classical drama in their classically stationed saga.<\/p>\n

The Blu-ray\u2019s transfer of the 2-D version is first-rate and sports a really punch 5.1 mix that will give the home theatre a potent workout. Less impressive is Javier Navarrete\u2019s score which feels like a forced order to mimic Ramin Djawadi\u2019s design for Clash<\/strong>; Navarrete has written gorgeous orchestral scores for Guillermo del Toro (Pan\u2019s Labyrinth<\/strong>), but with Wrath<\/strong> one senses he was given a limited amount of creative choices.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Official Website<\/a> — Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0V to Z<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ V to Z . Film: Good\/ BR Transfer: Excellent\/ BR Extras: Good Label: Warner Home Video\/ All\u00a0\/\u00a0Released: June 26, 2012 Genre: Fantasy \/ Action Synopsis: Perseus is recruited by Zeus to defend humans and Gods when Papa Kronos is poised to awaken from the Earth’s core. Special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1453],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1nv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5301"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5315,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions\/5315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}