Sam Worthington, star of the new thriller “Man on a Ledge,” told The Playlist that the most important thing to improve upon in “Wrath of the Titans,” the sequel to 2010’s “Clash of the Titans,” was his own performance. “I wasn’t personally happy with my performance,” Worthington said Friday in an exclusive interview. “I didn’t think that I made a character. If you look at it, the way I play it, Perseus is a conduit for action – that’s all he was. He was a wrecking ball, he didn’t really have any personality, and it was a bland performance.”
In both films, Worthington plays the mythical Greek hero Perseus. He said that when the time came to start shooting 'Wrath,' he and director Jonathan Liebesman agreed to focus on creating a character the audience was interested in, and most importantly cared about. “I sat with Jonathan [Liebesman] and said, well, what kind of character do we want to create? Because if you’re going to continue these journeys, you want to at least have empathy for the character and understanding of who that man is, not just, oh he’s a generic fucking action hero.”
One aspect of the first film Worthington had no control over was the decision to convert the film into 3D, which became one of the main focuses of criticism when it was released. Last year, Liebesman said in interviews that he planned to convert the second film rather than shooting in native 3D, but Worthington said he’s confident that they – and especially audiences – won’t have the same bad experience twice. “I think we were one of the first movies to get converted, but I think a lot of time has gone past,” he observed. “Now, I think there’s been a lot of kind of looking into it and figuring it out.” He also indicated that Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, planned for the film to be in 3D from the beginning, instead of making an eleventh-hour decision to convert it purely for commercial reasons.
“I know that the studio themselves are very aware of the fact that was what there was a lot of criticism about that,” he insisted. “They don’t kind of want to undo all of the hard work just because of that. So they’re very on-hand in that process.”
While Worthington is eager to take greater ownership of the projects he’s involved in now, he admitted there’s often only so much he can do before other creative forces impose their influence on the end result. “You try your best and then everyone gets their grubby hands on it makes the movie, and hopefully it survives all of the edits and that stuff,” he said. “Which I’m sure it is – because I watched it; it is surviving. But it was mainly my own performance [I was unhappy with]; I don’t think that if I was paying 16 bucks, I would have booed me. I would have gone, ‘you’re boring, Worthington, move on.’ So you kind of go, well, my responsibility is to the audience to kind of give them something better, and work a bit harder."
Worthington said he’s pleased with the opportunity to be able to go back and work on the character again, and is looking forward to offering audiences the opportunity to follow Perseus through other adventures, even after 'Wrath' is released. “We kind of looked at it as, fuck, we’ve got a second chance, which is not often, to create a different person,” he said. “A Perseus that you may want to go on a new journey with each time. And that involved other stuff that we’ll talk about when that movie comes out, but it’s a different way of looking at an action hero.”
“Man on a Ledge” is being released nationwide January 27. “Wrath of the Titans” arrives in theaters March 30.