WRATH OF THE TITANS

CONTAINS MINIMAL SPOILERS

It's been a bit of a trend for a few years now: big CGI spectaculars in which astonishingly muscled blokes in skirts and armour take on giant monsters or opposing armies with swords and spears. In the wake of Zack Snyder's nonsensical but strangely enjoyable 300, we've had Prince Of Persia (okay), a remake of Conan The Barbarian (rubbish), Immortals (mostly rubbish), assorted direct-to-DVD thudfests like the Scorpion King franchise (currently up to number 3), and a remake of 1979's Clash Of The Titans, which really wasn't any good either but obviously did well enough to spawn this sequel. It's an improvement, if scarcely any kind of an interesting or memorable achievement, but it rattles noisily along with terrific effects and enough big scary monsters to scare the hell out of the ickle kiddies who shouldn't be in there anyway. 12A should mean 12, not seven.

According to a quick poke around Wikipedia, this shouldn't even be called Wrath Of The Titans because there is only one Titan in it, admittedly a pretty wrathful one: Cronos (possibly spelled Cronus or Kronos), father of Zeus and Hades. It's ten years after the events of Clash, and as the Gods lose their power since no-one believes in them any more, Hades (Ralph Fiennes) is attempting to bring him back into existence from his imprisonment in Tartarus by draining brother Zeus (Liam Neeson) of his divine lifeforce. Or something. Heroic Perseus (Sam Worthington) has to journey into the impregnable underworld prison of Tartarus to rescue Zeus before Cronos awakens....

It is extremely silly, very loud, generally pretty humourless and impossible to care since most of what's on screen is computer generated anyway; for all the reality on show it might as well be a hand-drawn cartoon. I didn't bother with the 3D conversion that's been pasted on afterwards and opted for an ordinary 2D showing (just as I did with 2010's Clash Of The Titans) and to be honest I can't imagine the depth of headache I'd have staggered out of the cinema with if I'd seen it in 3D; probably up to the Transformers 3 level of pounding migraine. Frankly the film is loud and senseless enough when shown flat. Yet I confess I rather enjoyed it as a perfectly watchable, stupid fantasy movie: it's always nice to see Neeson and Fiennes and Rosamund Pike doing their thing in movies which are frankly unworthy of them, Sam Worthington does the he-man hero routine perfectly well, while Bill Nighy unaccountably plays the fallen God Hephaestus as a Yorkshireman.

The IMDb suggests there's going to be a third one but given the events in the last couple of reels I'm not sure that's a viable idea, since certain members of the cast don't make it to the end. Much as I had enough daft entertainment out of this one - certainly more than out of Clash - I don't think they need to keep on with them and would honestly rather they tried something else. It's enjoyable enough but the winged horse is dead now, so stop flogging it.

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