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WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012)

Posted in 2012, 3-D, Cinema Knife Fights, Heroic Warriors, Monsters, Mythological Creatures, Mythology with tags Jonathan Liebesman, Kronos, Liam Neesom, perseus, Ralph Fiennes, Sam Worthington, Titans, Wrath, zeus on April 2, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012)
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: The fiery cavernous dungeon of Tartarus. A group of gods sit around a huge dinner table arguing. MICHAEL ARRUDA & L.L. SOARES make their way around an enormous buffet. Both men are eagerly filling their plates.)

LS: Oh boy! Food fit for the gods!

MA: It ought to be. They’re charging us an arm and a leg for this spread! (MA nods towards corner of the room, where a pile of severed arms and legs lie under a sign that reads “All U Can Eat –One Low Price.”)

LS: Mmm! Volcanic chicken! My favorite. Extra lava sauce for me please! And look – there’s ambrosia for dessert!

MA: Ahh, the food of the gods.

(The gods’ argument suddenly grows louder.)

HADES: I’m sick of you bossing me around! You’re not my father! So stop acting like it!

ZEUS: But you’re so damned irresponsible! What do you expect me to do? I’m looking after your best interests.

HADES: There you go. Talking down to me again! (turns to POSEIDON) Aren’t you going to weigh in on this? He bosses you around, too! Who died and made our brother boss? (POSEIDON just shrugs) That’s your problem. You never take a stand! You let Zeus walk all over you. Aren’t you going to say anything?

POSEIDON: Please pass the fish sticks.

HADES: I’m sick of this family!

KRONOS: Shut up, all three of you! I’m your father, and I say—.

ZEUS: Put a sock in it, old man. You lost your credibility years ago when you tried to kill us.

KRONOS: You’re still holding that against me?

MA (shaking his head): And human families think they have problems! Let’s go sit somewhere else.

LS: Sure. I prefer dysfunction when I’m the one causing it.

(They move to another table)

MA: How about we get started on today’s movie?

LS: Good idea. You start. I’ve got to taste this volcanic chicken first.

MA: I hope you have some antacids handy.

Today we’re reviewing WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012), the sequel to CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010), which was, itself, a remake of the 1981 Ray Harryhausen movie. As sequels go, WRATH OF THE TITANS isn’t bad, but then again, CLASH OF THE TITANS wasn’t a very good movie, and so it would have been pretty sad had this movie been worse. I don’t think it is. I think it’s a little bit better than CLASH.

LS: It is?

MA: Sure. Anyway, several years have passed since the events of CLASH, and our hero Perseus (Sam Worthington) is trying to make a normal life for himself, living as a fisherman while he raises his 10 year-old son, Helius. He’s a single parent as his wife has died. What’s a demigod to do?

As much as Perseus would like to live the life of anonymity, he can’t, not when his daddy is Zeus (Liam Neeson). Zeus drops by for a visit and tells Perseus that things are not looking too good. People just aren’t praying to the gods anymore, and as a result, the gods’ powers are weakening. There are dark forces at work, and they are growing stronger. Zeus wants Perseus’ help, but Perseus isn’t interested. He just wants to raise his son.

You should have listened to your father, Perseus! Zeus is captured and held captive by Hades (Ralph Fiennes), god of the underworld, and Ares (Edgar Ramirez), the god of war, who plan to drain Zeus of his power and give it to Big Daddy Kronos. Kronos is imprisoned in stone because he once tried to kill his three sons, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. Ares himself is Zeus’ son, and he’s angry at his father for favoring Perseus. Nice family!

LS: It could be worse. I heard the Roman god, Saturn, ate his children!

MA: As evil begins to take over the world, and deadly creatures begin to overrun it, the humans are forced to take a stand, and Perseus once again becomes their leader, teaming with the beautiful Queen Andromeda (Rosamund Pike) and Poseidon’s quirky son Agenor (Toby Kebbell), leading them on a quest to rescue Zeus and once again restore order to the world.

LS: I liked Queen Andromeda. It’s always cool to see a queen who isn’t afraid to lead her army into battle, especially one this hot. As for Agenor, I could have done without him. I thought he was kind of an annoying idiot. I know he’s supposed to be the comic relief here, but I found his character more irritating than humorous.

MA: Yeah, Agenor should have been funnier, or at least more likeable, I’ll agree with you there.

WRATH OF THE TITANS reminded me a little bit of the old Arnold Schwarzenegger CONAN movies. They weren’t great, but they were fun, and I enjoyed the ride.

(CONAN enters the buffet, carrying an arm and a leg.)

CONAN: Where do I put these?

MA: There’s a pile right over there. Just throw them on top.

CONAN (throws arm and leg onto pile): I love buffets! (notices gods arguing.) Any of you gods care to arm wrestle?

HADES: Shut up, chiseled chest! Go fill your face before I remove it!

(CONAN’s eyes burn red in anger, and he runs towards table and joins the heated argument.)

MA: Anyway, WRATH OF THE TITANS is not a great movie, but I can’t say that I didn’t have fun watching it.

LS: I’m glad one of us did.

MA: The main reason I liked this one better than the first one was the pacing. I remember CLASH OF THE TITANS dragging and taking quite a while to get going. No problem with that here. Director Jonathan Liebesman keeps things moving along, with one action sequence after another. Some of these sequences are impressive, others aren’t.

LS: I didn’t think many of the sequences were very exciting. And I disagree about the pacing. I didn’t think this one was any better than the first one. I mean, things happen, and creatures attack, and Perseus helps fight them off, but none of it did much for me. And the Minotaur’s snot-covered face was kinda gross.

MA: Yeah, but at least the monsters show up early in this one. They took a while to make an appearance in CLASH.

My favorite sequence involved the Cyclops. I thought the Cyclops looked cool, and the scene itself was rather exciting. Dare I say it, but the Cyclops in this movie looked better than the classic Ray Harryhausen Cyclops from THE 7^TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958).

LS: It’s how cyclopses – or is it cyclopi? – are always popular. I’m surprised we don’t see them in more movies. The three cyclopean giants we see here were okay. When the first one appears, it’s kind of cool. But as the scene went on, I was less impressed with them. And while Harryhausen’s stop-motion Cyclops from SINBAD may not look more realistic, I still prefer that one. Even better was the man-eating Cyclops from the Kirk Douglas movie, ULYSSES (1954). I remember that one leaving a big impression on me as a kid.

MA: If that movie was based on Homer’s epic poem, shouldn’t it have been called ODYSSEUS, rather than ULYSSES?

LS: I always wondered that myself. ULYSSES was the Roman name for ODYSSEUS, after all, not the Homeric name.

(A CYCLOPS rips open the roof and peers inside.)

CYCLOPS: Buffet! (Reaches down and helps himself to the pile of arms and legs. He exits.)

MA: He didn’t even say thank you.

LS: He’s a Cyclops, what do you expect? You know they don’t have any manners.

(Cyclops sticks his head back into hole in the roof and sticks his middle finger out at MA & LS, before leaving once again.)

MA: I wonder if that’s “thank you” in Cyclops language.

LS (sticks both his middle fingers up at the opening in the roof): That means you’re welcome!

MA: Actually, I thought all the creatures and monsters looked good in this one, which is another reason I liked it better than CLASH. The monsters in that one were pretty lame. Not so here. They actually look pretty scary.

LS: The Gorgon in the first movie looked okay.

MA: I also liked Kronos, Zeus’ father, when we finally see him. He looks like a volcanic fire monster once he’s unleashed at the end of the movie. But he doesn’t do a whole lot, which is one of the weaknesses of this movie. While the creatures all look very good, with the exception of the Cyclops, none of them get to do all that much.

LS: Yeah, this new TITANS movie pretty much follows the same progression as the first movie, leading up to the biggest monster at the end. In CLASH it was the Kraken, in this one it’s the giant lava monster, Kronos. Both looked cool, but neither does very much. I didn’t find WRATH OF THE TITANS to be an improvement on CLASH at all. In fact, they were both pretty mediocre.

MA: In spite of the cool-looking monsters, WRATH OF THE TITANS is hampered by a weak story and characters that aren’t very interesting. I couldn’t care less about the squabbles of the gods, and Perseus just isn’t that exciting a hero. What flaws does he have? Not very many. And his motivation is to protect his son, which is admirable, but hardly original. He’s pretty much a superficial character.

Sam Worthington doesn’t do much either to make Perseus a memorable hero. Worthington is fine in the role, but I kept asking myself, is this the same guy who wowed me in AVATAR (2009) and TERMINATOR: SALVATION (2009)? He made lasting impressions in those movies. Not so in the two TITANS films.

LS: I completely agree about that, and I think it’s a major flaw with these movies. Perseus is just not a compelling character. I like Worthington as an actor, but not in the TITANS movies. He almost seems to be sleepwalking through these movies. Perseus has like two emotions, and I just don’t believe him as some kind of mighty hero of mankind.

MA: I actually enjoyed Liam Neeson as Zeus this time around, and as much as I didn’t really care for the gods’ storyline, I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of Neeson on screen as Zeus. He lent a commanding presence here that was definitely noticeable every time he was in a scene.

Ralph Fiennes as the villain Hades, not so much. I thought Hades was a rather lame villain, which is another weakness of this movie: blah villains. Hades and Ares don’t cut it, and Kronos doesn’t show up until the end, and he doesn’t really get to cause that much trouble. It’s another case of the big bad villain being handled way too easily.

LS: I actually found the interaction between Zeus and Hades to be the most interesting storyline here. Neesom and Fiennes are the best actors in the movie, and I just liked seeing them in scenes together. Although I did think that Zeus changed Hades’ mind a little too easily at one point. And by the end they almost seemed more like lovers than brothers.

MA (laughing): Yeah, I would agree with that.

I liked Rosamund Pike a lot as Andromeda, and she was one of my favorite characters in the movie. Good-looking, yet strong, Pike made Andromeda a formidable heroine.

Toby Kebbell was fun as Agenor, the son of Poseidon and Perseus’ sidekick, but unfortunately the role seemed underwritten. He should have had sharper dialogue or something.

LS: Agenor is just a lame character. I hated him.

Oh, and I also liked Edgar Ramirez as Ares. I thought he did a good job.

MA: Dan Mazeau and David Johnson wrote the average ho-hum screenplay, which is a little bit of a surprise, since Johnson wrote the screenplay for ORPHAN (2009) and RED RIDING HOOD (2011), two movies I liked a lot. This one just plays like a sequel. The story was just there and the characters rather blah.

Director Jonathan Liebesman also directed BATTLE LOS ANGELES (2011), and the two movies share a similar style and pace. Like BATTLE, the action scenes in WRATH are slick, well done, and entertaining, but aside from that, there’s not a lot to them. There’s very little story or character development.

WRATH OF THE TITANS was also in 3D, and the 3D wasn’t bad. It looked a heck of a lot better than the 3D in CLASH OF THE TITANS, which isn’t saying much because I remember the 3D in that one being awful.

LS: It’s funny. CLASH was hindered by the fact that the 3D effects were added after the movie was completed, creating a kind of flat, muddy look to the effects. WRATH was made with 3D in mind from the start, and while this movie isn’t as muddy, it’s also not much of an improvement. And a big part of that is the story. It’s just not very good. The same thing was true about the first one. And I don’t think 3D helps make these movies any better.

MA: There’s also a good music score by Javier Navarrete.

WRATH OF THE TITANS is faster and flashier than CLASH, and as such it’s an easy film to watch, and it has some fun exciting moments featuring some cool-looking monsters, so if that’s all you’re looking for, you won’t be disappointed. If you’re looking for more, a movie with a good story and memorable characters, keep looking.

LS: I think the first one was bad. I think this one is almost just as bad. I’d say avoid them both. Is there a way to make a movie about Greek mythology that’s better? Sure there is! Check out JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963), with effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen (who we mentioned before), to see it done right. I also liked Tarsem Singh’s movie from last year, IMMORTALS, a lot more than either of the TITANS movies.

MA: I for one didn’t mind the shallow fun of WRATH OF THE TITANS. It would have been nice had the film been more ambitious, but it’s not. It is what it is, a sequel.

I give it two and a half knives.

LS: I give it one and a half knives. I just didn’t care about it. Wait for it to come on cable.

(Argument at the other table grows even more heated)

LS: In fact, I would rather watch the argument over there than another TITANS movie.

MA: Well, it’s certainly more colorful.

(ZEUS and HADES are having a fist fight on top of the dining table, as the other gods cheer them on).

POSEIDON (looking at camera): Can’t we just all get along?

—END—

Michael Arruda gives WRATH OF THE TITANS ~ two and a half knives!

LL Soares gives WRATH OF THE TITANS~one and a half knives.

IMMORTALS

Posted in 2011, 3-D, Action Movies, Barbarian Movies, Fantasy, Highly Stylized Films, LL Soares Reviews with tags 3D, Freida Pinto, Henry Cavill, mickey rourke, Mythology, Tarsem Singh, Theseus, zeus on November 15, 2011 by knifefighter

IMMORTALS (2011)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

So, I had seen the trailer for IMMORTALS a few times and had zero expectations for this film. It looked like a rip-off of Zach Snyder’s 300 (2006), with some CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010) thrown in for good measure. In other words, there was a chance this one could be a snoozefest. But then I found out that Tarsem Singh directed it, and I was suddenly curious to see it.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the name, Tarsem Singh is the guy who directed THE CELL (2000), about people entering the mind of a serial killer. It was visually fascinating, and starred Jennifer Lopez (in one of her few good movies) and Vincent D’Onofrio as the comatose killer. It wasn’t a perfect movie, but it had some pretty striking imagery. His second film, THE FALL (2006), continued to mark him as a director with a unique vision (Read Dan Keohane’s review of THE FALL here). And now we’ve got IMMORTALS.

It goes without saying that this movie is great to look at. That’s what Singh is all about. But what about the story?

Well, it’s kind of a mixture of original ideas and Greek mythology. It all begins with a battle between the gods and the Titans. The Titans are exiled to earth after they lose the war – encased in a big metal block and held together with steel rods.

Cut to King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), who despises the gods since they did nothing to save his wife and child from death. In retaliation, he dons a mask, builds an army of savage warriors and decides to sweep the earth, slaughtering all those who oppose him. His ultimate plan, however, is to find the fabled Epiurus Bow (that creates its own exploding arrows!) and free the Titans, so they can wreck their vengeance on the same gods Hyperion despises so much.

The hero of this piece is Theseus (Henry Cavill, who is currently filming THE MAN OF STEEL, due out in 2013, wherein he will play Superman), a peasant with a will of iron and muscles to match, who is an outcast among his own people. When he sees his mother killed in front of him by Hyperion, he vows revenge of his own.

But Theseus isn’t just any muscle-bound peasant. He’s a favorite of the gods, Zeus (Luke Evans) in particular. In this film, the gods look like a bunch of Calvin Klein models lounging around in the clouds, watching humankind below.

While the gods watch Theseus’s every move, they are vowed to stay out of the affairs of humans (breaking this rule is supposed to bring them death), unless the Titans are released again, and you can see where everything comes full circle.

Along the way, Theseus comes upon a virgin oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), who can see the future, and who becomes his love interest, and Stavros (Stephen Dorff), a thief who becomes Theseus’s right hand man.

There are a lot of battle scenes, either characters fighting one another, or armies clashing, and they’re all done pretty well. They’re also pretty gory. By the time you start wondering why this movie is rated R, you’ll suddenly notice heads getting splattered with sledgehammers and bodies getting cut in half by swords, and realize that this movie earned its rating with blood.

In deference to actual mythology, there’s even a scene in a labyrinth, and a minotaur of sorts for Theseus to battle. I actually thought this was an interesting take on the story, because instead of an actual minotaur with the head of a bull, we get a giant of a man who wears a barbed-wire mask in the shape of a bull. Hyperion refers to him as “The Beast” (Robert Maillet) and at one point sends him off to kill Theseus. The resulting battle is very well done. In another bull reference, the Beast, when we first see him, tends to a fire beneath a giant iron bull, which we just know is a pressure cooker used to cook prisoners alive, long before someone actually cracks it open to find out.

Singh does it all with a very painterly touch. Much like 300, it’s CGI used to create an entire world, but Singh is a much more creative director than Zack Snyder, so the images and story are a bit more interesting this time. I thought it started out a little slow, but once we get to the action scenes, it livens up immensely. Mickey Rourke does an enjoyable job playing the heavy in this one. Cavill is serviceable enough as a Spartacus wannabe. And Pinto does a good job of standing around and looking pretty.

Like other movies of its ilk, the story of IMMORTALS is its weakest link. But it made something like the remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS look even weaker in comparison. Mythology, it seems, is hot again, and so far Singh has given us the best recent movie version.

This one is also in theaters in both 3D and 2D versions. I saw it in 3D, and it was fine, but 3D still fails to astound me, and I’m sure it would have been just as dazzling to look at in 2D. So save your money if you can.

I’m on the fence about what kind of rating to give this one. I’m waffling between giving it two and a half knives and three knives, and it basically comes down to, if this kind of movie sounds good to you, check it out, and if you’re not so sure, wait for the rental version.

IMMORTALS is a decent enough film, but no masterpiece. Which isn’t to say that Tarsem Singh isn’t capable of making great movies. He’s someone I plan to keep my eye on. In the meantime, even his flawed films are worth seeing.

L.L. Soares gives IMMORTALS ~ two and a half knives (or three knives, depending on his mood)

(Note: The horror movie 11-11-11 was also due out this weekend – as mentioned in this month’s “COMING ATTRACTIONS” column, but it must have been in very limited release, since none of our staff was able to find it.)

GOD OF WAR III

Posted in 2010, Michael Louis Calvillo Columns, Video Game Reviews, VIOLENCE! with tags ares, god of war, hercules, kratos, sony ps3, video games, zeus on April 21, 2010 by knifefighter

REVIEW OF THE VIDEO GAME GOD OF WAR III
by Michael Louis Calvillo

Hell yes! I am pleased to announce that I will be kicking off my inaugural Cinema Knife Fight column with a review of one of the best games ever made. And no, no, no, this is not foolish, overblown hyperbole. Oh no, my friends, this is gaming perfected, this is button mashing refined, this is the gloriously gory GOD OF WAR III!!!

Gaming fiends like me have been waiting for years upon years (okay, only three, but in video game years that’s like forever) for The Ghost of Sparta to return and extract his revenge upon the mother of all assholes, Zeus. We’ve been dreaming geeked out fever dreams about killing the King of the Gods in full HD and anxiously theorizing about nerdy computing thingies like power and architecture and how SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America) will get all futuro on our asses, milking the PS3’s powerful processors for all they are worth. The last two games in the trilogy ran smooth as butter and harnessed every ounce of tech running underneath the PS2’s hood (and they looked damn good – even for last gen’s pixilated crop of 64 bit offerings), but the tech has changed exponentially since and it’s high time we had our favorite anti-hero tearing up that nuclear powered, 3.2 GHz, beast of a processer beating at the PS3’s digital heart.

So then, Kratos, everybody’s favorite, ash-covered (FYI – the ashes staining his muscled skin belong to the charred remains of the wife and daughter that he accidentally killed) Spartan is back to kick mucho ass and–

Wait.

Hold it.

Before I go on I have some business to settle…

You see, I teach high school English, and even though I am a million years old (which translates to thirty-five in teen speak), I still play these damn games. I can’t help it. I’ve considered selling off my systems and giving it up. But dammit, I can’t! I was raised on Intellivision and then Nintendo and then Sega and then more Nintendo and then Sony and then Microsoft and then more Sony, and the damned technology keeps improving and improving and I just can’t seem to keep my anxious thumbs away…

In any case, many of the kids that I teach play the same games I do, and if you know anything about teenagers it’s that many of them are narrow minded (but lovable) little bastards. One kid in particular swears by Microsoft’s XBOX 360 and hates Sony for some pea-brained reason or another. He enjoys calling me a Sony fanboy (even though I have both consoles and play both systems equally) and taunting me and telling me that the PS3 is the worst system ever made. Well, that little booger can suck it, because GOD OF WAR III is a PS3 exclusive and his bullish myopia is preventing him from experiencing gaming nirvana.

Okay then, where was I?

Kicking mucho ass?

Right.

Okay, here we go…

GOD OF WAR III is all about vengeance, baby. It’s KILL BILL meets CLASH OF THE TITANS and if that sounds awesome to you that’s because it is. The story so far? Here you go… Kratos, a badass Spartan in life, nearing death on a blood soaked battlefield, prays to Ares, the God of War, for the strength to carry on and kick as much ass as possible before checking out. The Olympian answers Kratos’ plea and turns the war-hungry Spartan into a killing machine, fusing a pair of nasty blades to a pair of nastier chains woven deep into the skin, muscle and bones of his forearms. Reinvigorated and fueled by rage, Kratos decimates an entire army’s worth of foes and triumphs in battle, but Ares, enchanted by his new plaything, doesn’t let up. He sends Kratos into battle after battle until our hero is savage, amped on bloodlust, and out of his mind. Worn down, less a man and more a murderous beast, Kratos begs for release, but Ares pushes and pushes until at long last, he agrees to free the Spartan so long as Kratos consents to giving it his all in one, final battle. Kratos consents (as if he has a choice), and anxious to be freed of his burden, anxious to die, swings his blades into action. But, at battle’s end, Ares, the cruelest of all the Gods, tricks Kratos into murdering his own wife and daughter and then leaves him to wallow in misery.

Kratos is pretty broken up, but he isn’t the wallowing type. Instead, he vows to do the impossible and kill the God of War.

That’s the set-up for the first game, and with a little help from Athena (who isn’t too fond of Ares herself), our man manages to carry out his mission. Along the way he kills plenty of popular players from Greek Mythology, even dying in the process and clawing his way out of hell (thus earning the ominous moniker, The Ghost of Sparta). At game’s end, Kratos succeeds in killing Ares and is ready for relief. But, lamenting his family and longing for death, he is forced into taking Ares’s throne and becoming the new God of War.

Part two opens with most of the gods pissed at the newly minted Olympian. They can’t believe a mortal killed one of their own and they want Kratos out. Zeus sort of agrees (we learn that Kratos is actually one of his many sons) so he double-crosses Kratos, strips him of his godhood, and then casts him out. Kratos, already angry at the world, vows revenge for a second time and makes it his mission to kill Zeus for betraying him. He kills tons of beasties and few big names (Perseus, Icarus) and even aligns himself with the Titans, but Zeus defeats him at the game’s climax and he is unable to kill any of the other Olympians. Down, but not out, the game ends with a whopper of a cliffhanger – Kratos riding on gargantuan Gaia’s back as she and her Titan brethren ascend Mount Olympus to stick it to their divine oppressors.

GOD OF WAR III begins right where part two left off. It’s a grand opening to the grandest and the best of the GOD OF WAR games. Fighting off sword-wielding skeletons while traversing the overgrown brambles growing out of Gaia’s massive back, Kratos bobs and weaves and contends with the enemy horde while the ground shifts and sways beneath his feet. Though game play is more of the same – you hack and slash and build button presses into balletic combos, eviscerating your foes into symphonic movements of blood and guts – GOWIII ups the ante in terms of scale and beauty. The PS3’s processing power renders some amazing set pieces – fighting atop Gaia, fighting inside Gaia, toppling Cronos (yet another Titan), whose fingernails (which you get to rip off) are bigger than Kratos – these are moments that will go down in video game history as benchmarks ushering in the next generation of graphic prowess and epic magnitude.

Like the other GOW titles, there are some interesting puzzles and like the other GOW titles, the little suckers plagued me and had me screaming at the television. But thanks to the tech push, the new puzzles are interesting, if anything because of their sheer size. Some of them are so freaking huge that they employ multiple rooms and utilize the game’s monstrous scale to drive me even crazier. True, moving this block or pulling that lever or trying how to figure out the best way to keep this pressure plate depressed, I kept thinking, Crap! I just want to tear shit up! Crap! I want to kill, not think! Crap! Crap! Crap! But then that’s the beauty of GOW (it’s not for the impatient) and in retrospect I loved every torturous second.

The aggravating puzzles serve their maddening purpose, but GOW III is primarily about stylish warfare and if I am a little whiner working those puzzles, I’m all wild man sneers and grimaces and groans and elated grunts while destroying those unlucky enough to cross my path. Combat situations bring out the inner animal and taking out hundreds of rushing fodder (skeletons, guards, hellhounds) while battling the requisite gargantuans (Minotaur, Cyclops, gorgon), peppered in to the mix to make shit that much harder, generates a specific kind of bliss that I just can’t put into words. Overwhelmed, fighting off the hordes, my brain exists on an alternate plain of existence. I become a beast, a demon, a bad-ass combo machine. What’s more, GOW III adds in three new weapons. Though Kratos’ trusty Blades of Chaos are still my favorite method in which to dispatch foes (what can I say? I like cutting things up), Hercules’s Nemean Cestus, Hades’s Claw of Hades, and a secret weapon (I won’t spoil it for you) forged by Hephaestus for the sole purpose of killing Zeus, are actually pretty fun to play with and worth putting the Blades aside for a while (a short while). But why put the Blades down if you don’t have to? The coolest thing about the new weapons is that you can swap them out on the fly, mid-combo, opening up some marvelous bone-crushing possibilities. Start with the Blades, hack fools up, switch to the Cestus (huge gauntlets that crush, crush, crush) to pulverize a few baddies and then rip their souls from their bodies with the Claws of Hades. Fun!

Fans of the series and newbies looking for some serious M-Rated action will go giddy over the excessive gore. Kratos disembowels and decapitates (in one the most gruesome segments he rips Apollo’s head from his shoulders in excruciating slow motion detail – Apollo’s head is used throughout the rest of the game as a flashlight) his victims with relish. He tears a Minotaur’s guts from its belly and rips a Cyclops’s eye from its head (complete with bloody, trailing stalk) and each Olympian (Hades, Poseidon, Apollo, Hermes, Hephaestus, and Zeus) meets a disgusting, bloody end that has to be seen to be believed.

Oh, and for those of you excited by animated nudity (I find it kind of creepy-weird), don’t worry, Kratos’ journey isn’t just blood and guts – there’s a little heat. The lovely Aphrodite (who shows up to offer Kratos a good time) and a number of slave girls make bouncing, shirtless appearances.

So then, there’s nothing better than hunting down and killing Olympians and even if you haven’t played parts one or two, most everything will make sense. There are certain sequences that offer a bit more emotional resonance for longtime fans and I really appreciated them (I’ve sunk a good sixty hours of my life into all three installments), but again, newcomers shouldn’t have any issues picking up the sticks and going to town. I do have to admit that there are a few hokey bits and I wasn’t super satisfied with the way things ultimately came together (I envisioned a different ending), but alas, considering the whole package, they’re petty, teeny-tiny grievances. Sony has crafted a truly epic experience and there is no denying the heart thrumming satisfaction gamers will feel enacting The Ghost of Sparta’s final vengeance.

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WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012)

IMMORTALS

GOD OF WAR III

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