THE ORIGINAL SOAP OPERA
The beauty of Wrath of the Titans is its extremes and, like all good daytime dramas, the presence of a 10-metre Cyclops
‘ What I like about Greek myth and that genre of storytelling is the extremity of it,” Bill Nighy says on one of the extras for the Blu-ray release of Wrath of the Titans.
Nighy plays Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods and a character with a wild backstory. Hephaestus was born lame, which did not sit well with his father, Zeus. The thunder god cast him down from Mount Olympus, but owing to its great height he fell for nine days before landing.
“Not three hours,” says Nighy, who seems to take this affront personally. “Not five hours, but a whole week of falling until he hit an island in the middle of nowhere. It’s a mad story.”
That pretty much describes the entire plot of Wrath of the Titans, the sequel to the remake of 1981’s Clash of the Titans. Hero Perseus (Sam Worthington) must fly a mythical winged horse to an impossibly remote battlefield where an irredeemable demigod can traverse an unnavigable sea to an uncharted island, on which an impenetrable labyrinth connects to an uncrossable lake of fire in an unimaginably deep realm, home to an invincible Titan. “Mad” is just the beginning.
The Blu-ray extras include capsule biographies of some of the film’s secondary characters, including the half-man Minotaur, the half-sighted Cyclops and the Makhai, evil spirit warriors about whom little is known from Greek mythology, which gave the filmmakers licence to create their own monsters.
The scope of the film meant much had to be left to the imagination of the actors
There are professors of classics on the Blu-ray who discuss the lineage and genealogy of the gods from the primordial Gaia on down. Although all you really need to know to enjoy the film is that the ancient Greeks basically invented the soap opera.
The size and scope of the film meant much had to be left to the imagination of the actors during filming. Earth-shattering Titans and 10-metre Cyclopes would have to be added in postproduction. Rosamund Pike, who plays Andromeda, says she tried to imagine “the scariest dude ever,” and then multiplied that by 250, an oddly precise equation. Worthington was shown a green ball atop a 10-metre stick so he knew how to look the Cyclops in the eye; one behind-the-scenes moment also shows him fighting a rather unfrightening though large rubber hand.
The film’s explosions were real, however. The extras show how the filmmakers rigged up a long trench with buried explosives to simulate the churning ground created by the tunnelling of a two-headed creature called a chimera. “There is a chimera in the hole,” director Jonathan Liebesman says at one point. “How can you not tell?”
Special effects supervisor Neil Corbould says he prefers using real explosions with real sets “because you get interaction with the actors.” Or, in other words, when you blow up a building, bits of it hit them.
The most surprising extra on the Blu-ray is a trio of deleted scenes. Here I was thinking they threw everything they had into the movie, and they were still holding back. Presumably they’ll also need something new for the next sequel. Blast of the Titans?