Hey, You Know What Sucked? Wrath of the Titans

By Jane Freeborn, Esq.

Had Wrath of the Titans been the greatest movie of our generation, I still wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as its predecessor, Clash of the Titans. Were I Orson Welles, Wrath would be my Citizen Kane. I will spend my life trying to recreate the abject perfection of that film, but continue to be disappointed that everything is not its holy cocktail of mind-numbing violence, complete lack of explanation, exposition, or expatriots, terrible visual effects, and sheer awesomeness. Clash of the Titans wasn’t a “fun summer popcorn flick;” it wasn’t a “visual feast for the eyes;” it wasn’t “rollicking action escapism,” or any other printed positive attribute it garnered. It was shitty. So so shitty, but it was also perfection in its shittiness. I never want to see Clash of the Titans again, because I want it forever in my mind—like the first time I saw The Graduate—to remain as powerful, as majestic, as untouched as a forest spring somewhere in Canada.

That type of cinema paradiso can never be recaptured. It’s obvious what made Clash of the Titans succeed, what made it earn half a billion dollars. The formula isn’t that hard, because every year, at least 20 mid-budget movies try for the same success, but so rarely do any of them actually achieve it. Wrath of the Titans is everything Clash was, but yet it falls desperately short of its forebear. It should never have been made, because the first one should never have actually been so good.

Wrath of the Titans is like if the house built on top of the sand added another story and a sunroom: maybe the house could have stood the test of time if it didn’t host too many parties, or if it wasn’t inhabited by a pair of incestuous siblings who entomb each other in the walls. But the addition of that sunroom, shoot, that was just the final straw.

Wrath follows almost the same notplot that Clash did. Perseus has someone significant in his life die, gets a call from his dad, Zeus, and has to fight a bunch of computer-generated stuff to save a nondescript and seemingly deserted Greece. Sam Worthington does his all with stoic weariness—which I’m choosing to view as Bruce-Willis-style under-emoting rather than complete lack of ability or awareness that there are cameras filming things and he is not in fact an ancient demi-god.

And, the gang’s all here. There’s a hot girl (Rosamund Pike) who fulfills the classic film prophesy that a hero must earn his predetermined bangmaid. There’s a wacky character actor as the wildcard sidekick (Toby Kebbell), and a respected English actor (Bill Nighy) playing somebody important to the plot who dies within five minutes. But the best performances were turned in by Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and Zeus (Liam Neesan). You could cut their chemistry with a phallic symbol, and the amount of notkisses was maddening.

I love bad special effects (and bad movies in general, shamelessly), but these were good. In fact, the effects were an exemplification of the entire film. It took itself too seriously, but tried to show it wasn’t. If Pirates of the Caribbean parts 2-4 proved anything, it’s that studios can’t make intentionally “fun” sequels of surprise blockbusters, because this time, too many millions are actually riding on their success.  Gone are the days of straight-to-dvd gems like Pumpkinhead 3: Ashes to Ashes—movies so blissfully unaware of themselves that the end product and enjoyment were genuine.

Now I’m not advocating by any means that every film should revel in the basest depths of creation, but does every shitty movie need to wink to let us know it knows it’s shitty, and does every unintentionally bad movie have to have been trying for Schindler’s List heights of proselytizing? Normally I also don’t advocate pure escapism because I feel as though film is one of humanity’s most powerful mediums, and contains the ability to not only make us feel, but make us think and act. But normally I don’t watch movies like Wrath of the Goddamn Titans.

Clash of the Titans occupied some mystical, golden middle-ground, where forgotten March-released C-movies, made with true sweat and love, get to actually succeed. Because in essence, it was the massive budget given to the sequel, with the expectation that it would deliver box office gold once more, that kept the film from achieving its fullest craptastical potential. For shame.