Another example of wasted potential

Rating: 4/10 (13 April 2010)

I would like to start by getting one thing out of the way and that is the 3D is awful. Everything is too dark making day time scenes look like you are watching the film through the tinted glass of car. I am aware that 3D reduces the colour by 20% but it was never an issue with Avatar. I took my glasses off several times and everything looked clearer because this film was not made at all for the 3D transfer.
Moving swiftly onto the film. Staring Sam Worthington the film begins with a weak introduction as we see Pete Postlethwaite trying to work with a poor script. His screen time is brief but good and the film moves quickly on not allowing for any character development. This isn't usually important in action films but in a film that is about a man who plans to kill the Gods, it would help if we felt at least something for them.
This then lead me onto the script which is poor to say the least. The film just moves from place to place without any reason. For some reason after Worthington's boat is destroyed, he his captured by soldiers and taken to their Kings great hall so that he can conveniently be spotted by Hades who is sent to deliver a warning to the city. Everything just happens so that they can move the plot along and this becomes more annoying later on.
The dialogue is also an issue. Ralph Fiennes and Mads Mikkelsen do the best out of the cast but they are never used to their full potential. Sam Worthington's character is hollow and is still in Jake Scully mode from Avatar. The shaved look didn't help either. Liam Neeson, who is a great actor, is given a lot of really bad lines, particularly at the end, which is a shame because I know he could do a lot better with a proper script.
3D was the Achilles' heel of the action scenes (see what I did there...) but taking the 3D aside they were not terrible, they were just underwhelming. The scorpion fight scene started with the characters running through a forest straight to a desert (for sheer plot convenience) and then there were scorpions. The fight was exciting at points but you could not tell who was alive and who was dead.
The Medusa scene was better but for some reason they killed off every soldier (and that strange creature thing who was not explained very well) besides Perseus in this scene so that he would look heroic. Nicholas Hoult played the youngest character and usually the do not die in films so this felt strange when he turned to stone. Sadly this also suffers what the Scorpion scene had where you could only tell who was still alive by seeing who was no longer on screen. The final action scene that involves the kraken was the worst of the three because it was so short and it ended on such an anti-climax when everyone was expecting a battle of man verses monster but instead it quickly turns to stone and BANG the krakens dead. Disappointing.
The CGI was good but a distinct lack of pacing stops this from being enjoyable. We see the statue of Zeus but then it collapses. We soon get to know the soldiers but then they all die and then the kraken appears but that soon dies. There is good material here but it was poorly handled and the film suffers as a result. If you have seen the trailer then you have seen everything that this film has to offer sadly.