WRATH OF THE TITANS Director Promises A "Vast & Epic" Sequel

I’m a huge fan of epic films that create a world you can escape to and experience the spectacle and awe of gods and monsters. Creating that world in “Wrath” has been incredibly satisfying. I had just completed “Battle Los Angeles,” so I felt comfortable with the scale of the narrative and the spectacular journey Warner Bros. wanted to deliver to the fans of the franchise, both in terms of the effects-heavy creatures and the epic quest of the hero’s journey. Ultimately, we wanted to take all the spectacle and awe of Greek mythology and give it a more grounded, human element. The mythology also has a wealth of brilliantly devised archetypal characters that we were able to introduce to the narrative in order to create a richer world.

We’ve been lucky that the source material for a project like “Wrath of the Titans” is so vast and epic in nature. We were afforded the luxury of finding the most incredible aspects of Greek mythology, like the highly imaginative and gruesome monsters, and work them into the more traditional narratives of the mythology. I’m a huge fan of the Makhai, a vicious warrior demon composed of two fallen souls from the underworld that have been conjoined, forced to fight as one creature for all eternity. We’ve worked some fantastic stunts around their unusual corporeality.

I have been extremely lucky to work with actors of this caliber. They bring their whole life to the characters, and to watch them work over the course of the film has been a lesson in filmmaking. All of our cast were extremely generous with their performances, and we had a very open set in terms of collaboration and discussion. When you are working with actors as talented as them, you really trust their instincts and take their ideas on board. “Schindler’s List” is a really meaningful film to me, and to have Liam and Ralph together for some of our scenes was incredible. I think we really made the most of their relationship in our film, and we deliver scenes that the “Clash” fans might not expect.

JL: We are grateful to have the architecture from the first film(s) in terms of narrative; the world and characters have been set up and we were allowed to take it and run with it. We wanted to bring a reality to the film in terms of the characters — obviously, when you’re fighting a 1,000-foot monster made of lava, nobody is giving you a gold star for your use of cinema verite, but when you really believe what the character is going through and the emotional journey they’re on, then you start to genuinely hope for their victory against the 1,000-foot lava monster. That investment was very important to us. Sam was instrumental in providing this grounded, gritty performance. We looked at a lot of westerns and some [Akira] Kurosawa films to try and create a journey for Perseus that was real. When he gets beaten up by the monsters, he isn’t impervious to the pain. He’s not a superhero. This is a guy struggling to stay alive and save his family. It’s an extraordinarily real performance against the magical backdrop of the “Wrath” story world, and I think that grounding in reality will help the audience get on board with the world of “Wrath.”