Fair, but could have been so much better.

Rating: 5/10 (5 August 2010)

Having read a good number of the reviews here, I feel the film is being panned too much by some. However it does need criticism. As a general action fantasy to watch without any preconceptions, it fills the bill as a film that is worth seeing without being a stand-out.
Where it does go wrong is in two spheres. Firstly there has been a failure to produce rounded or likable characters, Perseus is less sympathetic and his motivation is changed from love to revenge. Andromeda's role, like that of mid-level villain, Calibos, has been cut to shreds. Ammon disappears entirely, while the other members of the questing party are just flat, stock characters, seemingly there solely as cannon-fodder, to be taken out one by one by the CGI monsters.
This brings us to the second failure of the film, which is pacing. The time between battles has simply not been used to fill out the main characters or deepen our interest in them and the situation they face. Instead, as many have commented, there seems to have been a fear of taking more than two minutes between each set-piece battle. The fights themselves have a rushed, confused feel, which fails to produce the tension and involvement of the original. Too much reliance seems to have been placed on CGI, and its supposed ability to create a "wow" factor on its own. Indeed, the transition between location filming and staged sets was often too evident. From the deleted scenes disk, I note that the interplay between gods other than Zeus and Hades was cut almost completely. Those scenes didn't seem to be working however, so perhaps that was a good decision.
On the whole, if you threw out your memories of the first film, this was quite enjoyable escapism. Some of the special effects were excellent, and I did not wholly dislike the introduction of Hades to the mix. This could have been so much better though with more attention to the human element, but I still hope to watch the proposed sequel.