Film / Wrath of the Titans

Wrath of the Titans is the 2012 sequel to Clash of the Titans (2010). Sam Worthington reprises his role as Perseus, Liam Neeson as Zeus, and Ralph Fiennes as Hades.

Ten years after the events of the first film, mortals have stopped praying to the gods causing them to be weakened. This in turn weakens the wall of Tartarus, risking the release of Kronos, the father of Zeus and The End of the World as We Know It. Perseus at first wants no part in this god problem, but when his father Zeus is captured and held captive in Tartarus, Perseus has no choice but to accept his destiny as a demigod and hero.

---

Wrath of the Titans provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Kronos is easily one of the oldest examples in history/mythology - he ate his children (Hades and Poseidon among others) out of fear of getting dethroned by them if they grew up. No wonder the later Greek pantheon is not overly fond of him.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Not only does Hephasteus sound a bit like Davy Jones, but has the scraggly beard from human!Jones and even says "release the kraken" at one point (in reference to the first film).
  • At the end, Zeus is basically using the Force on the Makhai and Force Lightning against Kronos!
• Age Lift: Hephasteus in the myths is a son of Zeus and Hera conceived after Kronos was defeated, but in the film it's stated that he was the one who created the weapons Zeus and co. used to defeat Kronos (and there's no indication that he's the son of Zeus).
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Andromeda's friend Korrina begs Ares for their lives. Unfortunately, he doesn't care and callously stabs her.
• Alien Blood:
  • When a Makhai is killed, it bleeds lava.
  • When Perseus jumps the Chimera and stabs its neck, a puff of glowing smoke comes out instead of blood.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Ares to Zeus, Zeus and Hades to Kronos. For that matter, Perseus still isn't all that thrilled with his dad.
• Anyone Can Die: The gods can be killed. And some are.
• Ascended Extra: Given Andromeda spent the remake being Demoted to Extra, seems like she's back in her place.
• Bash Brothers: Zeus and Hades at full power. Bonus points for them being actual brothers.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Hades and Ares.
• Body Horror: There's the Chimera, a two-headed monster with no skin on its faces and a sentient tail. A minotaur with a deformed face. Makhai warriors with two bodies joined at the waist. And Kronos, who is a massive titan made of molten magma with fists the size of a village.
• Breath Weapon: The Chimera can breathe fire, with the horned, rhino-like head vomiting gasoline-like fluid that the fanged, ape-like head ignites with hot embers.
• Cain and Abel: Ares is Cain to Perseus's Abel.
• The Cameo: Bubo the mechanical owl reappears as a prop in Hephaestus's home.
• Carry a Big Stick: Ares uses a large mace as one of his weapons.
• Casting Gag: Yet another Bond Girl joins the cast, this time Rosamund Pike from Die Another Day.
• Cessation of Existence: Apparently what happens to the gods when they die. Fear of this is what motivates Hades to side with Kronos rather than fight him.
• Combat Pragmatist: Perseus has no problems fighting dirty to win. Considering the stakes and who he was fighting, he had to.
• Classical Chimera: The first monster Perseus faces in the movie, is a demonic-looking chimera. Changes of note, include the heads neither resembling a lion or a goat and the fire breath needing both heads to work. One head spitting out a flammable liquid, with the other one igniting it, resulting in a giant explosion.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Hephaestus has been alone for so long he talks to a broken mechanical owl (Bubo from the original) as if it were alive and intelligible. Andromeda manages to talk him down with a Whoopi Epiphany Speech.
  • Agenor's speech and mannerisms are also rather loony.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Uttered almost verbatim in one of the dialogues.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Kronos is a mountain-sized man made of molten rock that apparently does not give off any heat. Notably, in the climax Perseus flies Pegasus down his throat and gets slightly singed for his trouble.

• Curb-Stomp Battle: Perseus versus Ares, which is kind of understandable when you're a (relatively) regular demigod fighting the god of war himself. Heck, Ares vs anyone is basically this.

• Curb Stomp Cushion: The Greek army, despite being outmatched by Kronos's Makhai, manage to take down a good number of them.
• Cyclops: The group encounters a trio of them in the film.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: When Ares tries to kill Perseus, the latter's son, Helius, briefly challenges Ares, buying his father time. From the look on Ares face, he was impressed by the boy's bravery.
• Disney Death: Zeus was dying from his injuries, then Hades appears and resurrects him. But perhaps a subversion, since he shortly dies anyway.
• The Dragon: Ares serves as Hades's dragon until he defects.
• Dungeon Bypass: Hephaestus creates one, while he builds the Tartarus, since he built it from the outside to the inside and needed an exit for himself.
• Dynamic Entry: Ares uses one, leaping from another location in the world to the front door of the Labyrinth, using the impact from his landing to knock everyone present into the ground with a shockwave.

• End of an Age: The era of gods ruling over the universe and human destinies is quickly coming to an end.
• Everybody Hates Hades: Played straight at first, then subverted in the second half of the film when he makes amends with Zeus, finally putting Everybody Hates Hades to rest, though he's much more sympathetic here than in the prior film, Foreshadowing his eventual Heel–Face Turn.
• Face–Heel Turn: Ares betrays Zeus and sides with Hades. For certain values of "Face" anyway. Being the god of war, he was always kind of a dick.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Mild case; Perseus discourages his son from dreaming about becoming a god. Considering the kinds of personalities the gods have, he's not entirely without reason.
• Faux Action Girl: Andromeda may lead an army now, but she loses every fight she gets into (except while teaming up against a Makhai with two of her soldiers). She's much more competent as a strategist than as an actual warrior.
• Faux Affably Evil: Ares is speaking very softly and in a kind tone to Helius, all the while making him watch his father receive a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Final Boss: With Hades turning good and Ares being slain, this leaves Kronos as the last threat that needs to be dealt with, and by far the most powerful one.
• Forced to Watch: Helius is forced to watch his father receive a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Ares actually invoked this trope.
• For the Evulz: Ares involves Helius as mentioned above for no other reason than this.
• First Girl Wins: Technically speaking, Andromeda. Whilst Io had apparently been watching Perseus his entire life, she neglected to introduce herself to him until after he'd already met Andromeda. At the end of Wrath, the two apparently begin a relationship (it's implied because of standing Hollywood expectations, but all that actually happens is he grabs her and pulls her in for a surprise kiss when she's talking about battle strategy and there hasn't been a hint of romance between them).
• Genius Cripple: Hephaestus.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Zeus mentions that prayer is the only thing that keeps the gods immortal towards the beginning of the film.
• Götterdämmerung: The gods are dying out, but most of them aren't going without a fight.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Kronos.
• A Head at Each End: The Chimera's snake-headed tail.
• Heel–Face Turn: Hades realizes that there's good left in him and saves his brother's life.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Hephaestus makes one.
  • Zeus as well.
• Hijacked by Jesus:
  • The party is detected by Ares because Korrina idiotically prays to him, even although Ares is officially their enemy now. Her justification? That they are supposed to pray for their enemies. Needlessly to say, this custom belongs to Christianity and would have been outlandish for ancient Greek polytheists.
  • Kronos is literally a living Hell, with a lot of fire and brimstone.
• The High Queen: Andromeda.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The chimera in the first battle. Perseus impales the fuel head which causes it to continuously spew out flammable fluid on itself and the ground, then goads the ignition head into lighting it.
  • Ares brings Perseus's son Helius to the temple he and Perseus were fighting so that the boy could watch him beat Perseus to death. Near the end of battle, Helius distracts Ares for some precious few seconds which Perseus uses to recover, snatch some weapons from Ares's belt and stab him to death with them.
• Hoist Hero over Head: Ares does this to one of Andromeda's soldiers with one hand before throwing him far away.
• Hollywood Tactics: Exactly how fire is supposed to stop the burning Legions of Hell or how a phalanx is going to stop a five-hundred-meters molten deity is left unclear. At the same time it's likely they were hoping that Perseus would be able to defeat Kronos while the Greek army held off the monsters. They did passably well against the Makhai, managing to kill multiple ones.
• Hybrid Monster: Instead of having a lion head and a goat head, the Chimera has one head resembling a manticore-gorilla and the other one like a deformed rhinoceros.
• Immortal Breaker: Zeus's thunderbolt is capable of killing lower gods and similar lesser immortals. The Spear of Trium, however, is capable of killing anything, including Kronos.
• Immortals Fear Death: Hades and Ares join Kronos on the condition they keep their immortality. Gods cease to exist upon death and that thought terrifies them.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Ares does this to Andromeda's female friend.
  • While fighting the Greek army in the climax the Makhai are both on the delivering and receiving end.
  • Perseus does this multiple times near the climax to kill Ares.
• Karma Houdini: Despite having a change of heart by siding with Zeus, ultimately forgiving him, and helping to combat their insane father, Hades is still unpunished for the deaths of Perseus's family and thousands of other people. Sure he lost his immortality, but he seems quite alright with his situation.
• Killed Off for Real: Many of the gods.
• Kill It with Fire: The Chimera. Sort of a Chekhov's Gun noting on how much they focus on the dual-fire system that was backfired on it.
• Lady of War: Andromeda, although more as a strategist considering she loses every physical fight she engages in.
• Large Ham: Hephaestus may not last long but Bill Nighy makes good use of his screen time.
• Last of His Kind: By the end of the film, there's only one real god left, and even he is no longer immortal.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Cyclops move at the proportionate speed of humans despite being over forty feet tall. The Makhai are even faster.
• The Load: Andromeda. Perseus and Agenor do all the work. She loses every fight she gets into and Perseus has to rescue her at least three times. The only thing close to helpful that she does is charm Hephaestus into helping them.
• Love Redeems: Hades of all people.
• Made of Iron:
  • Compared to the first movie, Perseus takes a lot of punishment, and it shows on his body, yet it's still much more than a normal human would be able to take — he's a demigod after all.
  • Agenor himself also displays demigod levels of Made of Iron, considering He took a full-force blow from Ares' warhammer with Poseidon's trident not exactly providing the best shield in that situation. He was struck with enough force to knock him into a pillar, which exploded and collapsed upon impact. Despite this, he still managed to walk it off. Hades and Ares fall hundreds of feet and shake it off, especially Ares who is completely unharmed
• Magma Man: Kronos could be the poster boy of this trope.
• Missing Mom: Io is dead by the time the events of the sequel take place and is Helius's mother. It never really is properly explained what happened to her.
• Mobile Maze: The Labyrinth.
• Mortality Ensues: The level of prayers to the gods has dwindled so much that the gods have lost their immortality and many have died before the movie even started. The gods who are left still have their powers, but they are fading and they are vulnerable to being killed.
• Mortality Phobia: Hades admits he's helping Kronos because he's afraid to lose his immortality because unlike a mortal whose soul he knows goes somewhere else a God simply stops existing.
• Multiple Head Case: The Makhai. If you look closely you can see that if one head is killed, the other one still fights.
• Neck Lift: Ares does this to Hephaestus.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Kronos is effectively invincible save for the Spear of Trion, the one thing that can kill him.
• No Body Left Behind: When the Gods die, their bodies turn to dust.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ares delivers a brutal one to Perseus near the end of the movie.
• Non-Indicative Name: Now there are Titans. Only one of them appears, though, so if you're hoping to see Titans clashing you're still going to be disappointed.
• Offhand Backhand: Ares is so badass, he doesn't have to look behind him when one of the Spartans following Perseus and Andromeda, throws an axe at him, which he deftly catches and throws at his fellow Spartan with enough force to knock the poor bastard into a pillar and crush part of the pillar in the process. He doesn't even look behind him when said Spartan tries to backstab him. He merely turns right as the guy charges, picks him up, and throws him like a doll.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: Kronos' orange versus the Spear of Trium's blue. When the latter touches the former's insides, they even change color from orange to blue shortly before the Titan blows up.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: Perseus fights a Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The Minotaur has a more human, yet deformed, face than the more common bull-headed depiction, though.
• Papa Wolf: Pretty much Perseus's entire motivation for the film.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Agenor.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: Perseus is still hailed as a great hero for his victory over the Kraken and is given a salute of honor by Andromeda's army.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Perseus warns everybody not to pray to Ares, since a god can hear and locate anybody who prays to them and Ares is their enemy. Eventually, Korrina gives in to fear and prays to Ares, thinking he will save her. Ares teleports to the heroes' location and starts slaughtering everybody. When Korrina reveals herself as the person who prayed to him, Ares kills her without a second thought.
• Second Love: Andromeda to Perseus.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Perseus fights and defeats a minotaur. As he's about to finish it off, the minotaur suddenly starts talking in his son's voice, begging his "father" not to hurt him. Perseus kills it anyway.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Chimera's fire breath requires the two heads to work in tandem — one head breathes gas, and the other head lights it.
  • To Tomb of Horrors:
    Hephaestus: This is the entrance to the labyrinth. There are hundreds of doors, all of which would kill you, ha ha... save one. You see, I designed it to play tricks with the mind. After all, the mind is the greatest trap of all.
  • Kronos looks almost like Perses from God of War III; he also resembles his own depiction in Age of Mythology.
  • The Makhai look like Olympus Fiends (with two heads) from God of War as well.
  • The Chimera is a triple Shout Out: The "lion" head resembles a white ape from Disney's John Carter, the "goat" head resembles the reek from Attack of the Clones, and the serpent tail looks like a Xenomorph chestburster.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: At the end of the film, Andromeda is discussing battle plans when Perseus plants one on her lips mid-sentence.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
  • Io appears only as a tombstone.
  • Poseidon gets just slightly more screentime here before getting killed off.
• Super-Strength:
  • Ares crumples his enemies like they were made out of clay, easily neck-lifting people and throwing them far away with one hand. Hell, being slapped by Ares looks like it hurts a lot. He even knocked Andromeda off her feet by grabbing her sword and jabbing her with the hilt. He threw Hades' bident over 50 feet to impale Zeus. He shoved Perseus through at least three marble pillars casually, and then kicking Perseus hard enough to crack the marble tablets behind him. He can even generate minor shockwaves while hitting someone, presuming they are capable of surviving his blows, even generating shockwaves powerful enough to send people flying when using his warhammer.
  • Zeus and Hades kick the crap out of the Makhai attacking the Unified Greek Army, pummeling these Made of Iron Perpetual Motion Monsters with incredible feats of strength.
  • Perseus is no slouch either, having used iron chains of questionable quality to ensnare the Chimera and restrain it long enough for it to kill itself, temporarily holding his own in a push-off against a 40 feet tall Cyclops who can easily rip apart and punch through trees and one hit kill ordinary humans, punching the super-strong Minotaur's horn off and beating him into unconsciousness with nothing but his bare fists and a tiny rock, smashing the chains holding Zeus into dust using a staff while Andromeda with a sword was able to do nothing, and he and Agenor together hold off a massive literal Advancing Wall of Doom before it crushed them.
  • Agenor sends a guard flying by just shrugging his shoulder and holds off the aforementioned wall by himself for some time.
  • The Makhai toss around the Greek soldiers as if they were pebbles, and the Minotaur does the same to Perseus.
• Time Skip: It begins ten years after the previous film ends, significantly longer than the actual amount of time that elapsed between their respective releases.
• Titanomachy, Round Two: Ares conspires against Zeus to free Kronos, who is a giant lava monster from Tartarus. Zeus' son Perseus needs to stop him.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Perseus warns everybody not to pray to Ares, since a god can hear and locate anybody who prays to them and Ares is their enemy. Eventually, Korrina gives in to fear and prays to Ares, thinking he will save her. Ares teleports to the heroes' location and starts slaughtering everybody, including Korrina.
  • It's safe to assume that Kronos recognizes that one and only weapon in the world that can defeat him when he sees it, yet he can think of no better tactic to fight off Perseus on Pegasus-back than opening his giant mouth, thus providing Perseus with a more than convenient way of delivering the Spear of Trium where it needs to be to kill the Titan once and for all.
• Took a Level in Badass: Andromeda in the first film? Damsel in Distress. Andromeda in the second? Leader of an entire army.
• Trailers Always Lie: Zeus's narration about the Titans being freed from their imprisonment is juxtaposed against various monsters that appear throughout the film, including the Minotaur, a cyclops, a Chimera, and various mooks. There is only one Titan in the entire film and those monsters are not at all Titans.
• The Un-Favourite: Ares views himself as this.
• The Unintelligible: Kronos rambles virtually without pause while he's on screen, but what he actually says remains a complete mystery. Not even the language is discernible, although it's probably some form of ancient Greek.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Ares betrays Zeus because he loathes that he casts his favor and affection more on Perseus, his mortal half-brother, instead of him.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Hades bargains with Kronos that if he would set him free, Kronos would allow Hades and the surviving Gods to keep their immortality. However, he does so knowing that Kronos will wreak havoc upon the earth and cause untold millions of mortals to die (And possibly lead to their extinction).
• Would Hit a Girl: Ares attacks Andromeda with murderous intent and callously kills Andromeda's friend when she begs him for their lives.
• Would Hurt a Child: Ares tries to kill Helius, Perseus's son.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to the rest of the Greek Pantheon? The Olympian Gods were all seen in the last one, but here only Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, Hades, and Hephaestus appear. It is possible though that the others have already died due to a lack of prayer.
• Wreathed in Flames: Kronos' body is composed of magma and fire.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Ares performs a vertical suplex on Perseus during the final showdown, to which Perseus later responds with a spear and a sleeper hold.
• Xenafication: Andromeda is now a Lady of War.

---