1 of 6 | English-born Australian actor Sam Worthington and girlfriend Crystal Humphries attend the European Premiere of "Wrath Of The Titans" at The BFI IMAX in London on March 29, 2012. UPI/Paul Treadway |
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NEW YORK, April 1 (UPI) -- Australian actor Sam Worthington says his special effects-laden action picture "Wrath of the Titans" is really just a family drama at heart.
Best known for his work in "Avatar" and "Terminator Salvation," Worthington reprises his role of Greek demigod Perseus in the sequel to 2010's "Clash of the Titans." This time around, he tries to rescue his father, Zeus, from the clutches of his uncle Hades, who has captured and imprisoned him in the fiery pits of the Underworld.
Also returning from the first "Titans" movie are Oscar nominees and "Schindler's List" co-stars Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes as fraternal deities Zeus and Hades respectively, who ultimately join forces to defeat their father, the vengeful computer-generated titan Kronos.
"I've been pretty vocal about how I felt personally about the first one and what I did in the first one and I haven't done that in a way of putting the first one down at all. But, I think it's just, to me, it's my responsibility to try and, in this one, create a character rather than just a conduit for the action. I think by coming up with a different dynamic and themes of responsibility for this basically dysfunctional family who just happened to be gods in a world of monsters, you just kept going back to that," Worthington told reporters at a recent press conference in New York.
"Every action scene should relate to family. That became the main factor; drill this family story into this big spectacular blockbuster and, if we lose sight of that, then some of the things I felt were misplaced and misdirected in the first one will come back to haunt us and I didn't want that."
Director Jonathan Liebesman, sitting beside Worthington and Neeson, said humanizing the mythical characters was a priority of his when he signed on to take over the "Titans" franchise from "Clash" director Louis Leterrier.
"I saw the first movie [when it opened] on Friday night. I love these types of movies. There were certain things I loved and there were certain things I thought could have been done better even before I was approached for the [sequel,]" Liebesman recalled. "One of my priorities when they said, 'You get to do it,' is I wanted way more of Ralph and Liam and I also think Sam was incredibly sort of underused in ['Clash']. I think he is an incredibly underrated actor and I thought we could easily achieve much more emotion. The thing I thought was done well in the first movie was there was a massive sense of spectacle, which I think we wanted to retain and so it became a question of how do we blend those two things?"
"He always brought it down to story," Neeson noted. "We knew there was going to be 257 explosions in this particular instance, but he always brought it down to where we were with our characters and what our journey was at that moment."
Asked what differences he wanted to see in the second film over the first, Neeson replied, "I just wanted more interaction with my son and my brother essentially, which I think this script certainly provided.
"The dynamics of how Hades and Zeus became separated, the jealousies that drove them apart. … And the father-son relationship which we can all relate to," Neeson said.
"Wrath of the Titans" was No. 2 at the U.S. box office when it opened this weekend, following the big-screen phenomenon "The Hunger Games."
