I HAD A THOUGHT, about midway through Wrath of the Titans, when Perseus (Sam Worthington) fights the minotaur (a terrifying minotaur). "Wait," I thought, "wasn't it Theseus who fought the minotaur?" But then Sam Worthington suplexed the minotaur and stabbed it to death with its own severed horn. So... maybe the wrong question to ask.

When videogames were in their infancy, the natural assumption was that they'd gradually become more like movies. But I'm not sure anyone anticipated that movies would wind up meeting them halfway. Wrath is a film that revels in the visual language of videogames, and not the affectionate, postmodern Scott Pilgrim way, either: Items are just... equipped, because explaining where they came from would be a waste of time; quests are assigned by whatever NPC/character happens to be around; the film even begins with a boring tutorial level set among a bunch of dumb huts.

The plot could fit on a pair of knuckle tattoos, so I'm just going to tell you some of the cool things that happen: Perseus tricks a chimera into exploding. Bill Nighy yells at a mechanical owl. All the monsters have two heads and shoot fire. Rosamund Pike is very pretty. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes act at each other. An army fights a volcano. Someone flies a laser Pegasus down a lava monster.

A word on Rosamund Pike: She's the kind of actress who has Doom on her IMDB page right after Pride and Prejudice, which makes her worth keeping an eye on. Throughout Wrath, she's plucky and brave looking and jumps around and swings her sword a lot. It's a good performance, considering the fact that she doesn't actually do anything for the entire movie. Her costars are just a couple of bad dudes out to save President Zeus from a lava monster, but for some reason including a major female character was taking things too far.

But actually criticizing Wrath would be like punching a mailbag full of hot dogs. This is a movie that's an amalgamation of finishing moves and boss fights. There's as much substance here as eating a handful of Cadbury Egg filling—but haven't you always secretly kind of wanted to do that?