Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

When you sit down for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, you know exactly what you're getting: classical piratical adventure with swordfights, damsels, treasure, and men of questionable hygiene shouting "Yarrr!"

The film is competently made, it looks great, and I'm still not tired of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow.  Toss in Penelope Cruz (CDNW) as a foil and love interest, and we have a recipe for high seas adventure that ought to be worth at least a few more entries.  Did POTC IV capture my imagination as well as the surprising Wrath of the Titans?  No, but it was just the thing to help me while away a couple of hours while riding as a passenger on a transpacific flight.  You could do worse.

Wrath of the Titans

I enjoyed Clash of the Titans.  It was a juvenile action-adventure, but it was juvenile action-adventure done right.  Its sequel, Wrath of the Titans, continues in the same vein.  This is a fun time at the movies.

The film is structured around the Hero's Journey, with a reluctant Perseus called upon once more to play a role in the struggles of the gods.  He's assisted on his journey by a cast including Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Rosamund Pike, and even Bill Nighy (CDNW) as Hephaestus.  He confronts elaborate, beautifully designed and realized monsters and obstacles, clashes swords in energetically choreographed battles, and even finds time to squeeze in a character arc.  Star Sam Worthington sells all this, acting mostly against green screens and tennis balls and making us believe he is actually riding, fighting, or conversing with all manner of creations.

Now, I'm kind of a literate guy, and this is the part where I think it's expected of me to opine that if this film inspires one person to read up on the gods and legends of Greco Roman civilization, it will have served its purpose.  Forget that.  The legends of Greco Roman civilization were, as much as anything, entertainment, and Wrath of the Titans is a proud claimant to that inheritance.  By making legends anew in the form of the big summer blockbuster, Wrath continues a storytelling tradition as old as language.  I'm all for it, I loved it, and I look forward to screening this film for my boys as much as I look forward reading to them from our tattered copy of D'Aulaire's Gods of the Greeks and Romans when I get home.