The lesson of Jack the Giant Slayer: Delaying failure and fixing the unfix-able is expensive and often counter-productive.

As most of you know, Warner Bros. intended to release Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Killer in June of 2012 before pulling it from release, ordering reshoots and the like, and calling it a more kid-friendly Jack the Giant Slayer.  I don't know what the film's budget was prior to the date change and related reshoots, but it was probably a lot less than the $195 million that they ended up with.  And for what?  The film opened this weekend to $28 million.  If patterns hold for this kind of release, it'll likely top out at $70 million domestic at best and around $250 million worldwide as a best case scenario.  But point being, how much better of an opening could Warner Bros. expecting for a half kid-friendly/half dark-and-violent retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk starring absolutely no one of any box office worth? How much worse of an opening would Warner Bros. be looking at had it just gone ahead and opened it in June of 2012 as they intended?  Is it really worth the extra tens-of-millions of dollars that they ended up spending on the picture? Delaying the inevitable oftentimes merely gets you the same result at a greater cost.

Review: Wrath of the Titans (2012) mostly delivers the big-scale, cheesy matinee goods, in genuinely glorious 3D to boot.

Wrath of the Titans

2012
99 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Jonathan Liebesman's Wrath of the Titans is arguably about as 'good' as a movie called Wrath of the Titans can be expected to be.  It is convincingly acted by its principals, has a story that mostly makes sense, and has at least a few scenes of genuine visual enchantment.  I could complain that I wish it had more of what it does right (epic battles of humans versus gods, some wonderful set designs, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes having a full-blown 'camp-out') and less of what it does wrong (an almost beside-the-point narrative, a relatively blank-slate supporting cast, generally useless attempts at character development), and clever readers will notice that I just did in an offhand fashion.  But the picture delivers the goods in ways that the Louis Leterrier original did not two years ago.  It is also clear that Warner Bros learned its lesson regarding cheap 3D-conversions.  While Clash of the Titans became the poster child for the evils of 3D-cash ins, Wrath of the Titans features some of the most impressive live-action 3D seen to date.  If you're actually going to spend money on something called Wrath of the Titans, it is honestly worth seeing in its 3D glory.  Of course, there is irony in me recommending something that works best as a cheap Saturday matinee in a format that makes it noticeably less cheap, but that's your conundrum.

Fool me once... Ironically, the Wrath of the Titans trailer looks spectacular in 3D.

As you may recall, the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans became the whipping boy for lousy 3D-conversions after Warner Bros. hastily converted the 2D feature in order to cash in on the success of Avatar.  The film opened with over $60 million (mostly due to some terrific trailers) and eventually grossed nearly $500 million worldwide.  Alas, the picture was critically-slammed and took it extra-hard on the chin for some truly terrible 3D-conversion work, which was barely in evidence and served to only make the film so dark as to be occasionally unwatchable.  The Jonathan Liebesman-directed sequel, Wrath of the Titans, is being released March 30th.  Judging by the 3D version of the trailer, Warner Bros. doesn't plan on making the same mistake twice.

Review: Immortals (2011) shares the politics of 300, the plot of Clash of the Titans, and negates its worth as 3D spectacle by looking glorious in 2D.

Immortals

2011
110 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

While Immortals has been advertised as a knock-off of 300, it's actually pretty much a variation on Clash of the Titans through-and-through.  In fact, the only real similarity it shares with Zack Snyder's 2007 blockbuster is its (unintentional?) racism and its rather explicit right-wing politics.  Like 300, the film involves a very white guy (Henry Cavill, who will indeed make a fine Clark Kent in two years) who does battle with another white guy (Mickey Rourke, in arguably better form than he's been in anything since The Wrestler) who is pissed off at the Greek gods because his wife and child slowly died of some unnamed illness.  Fair enough, but at the end of the movie (yes, there will be spoilers, even generic ones...) we get a big (and very impressive) battle between the Greek gods and the evil Titans.  The Greek gods are dressed in gold armor and are as Anglo-Saxon as can be (played by Luke Evans and Isabel Lucas, among others) while the Titans are well, savage humanoid monsters with really dark skin.  So we get a climactic battle between angelic white people and demonic black men.  Subtle...