Immortals
If you like sword-and-sandal epics where British-accented Greeks run around bloviating about gods and honor while engaging a battle against some neighboring city-state for some really unknown reason, Immortals is the movie for you. It has all that and more! Artsy blood splatters! Gods dressed in ridiculous outfits! Action sequences! A nearly-naked Henry Cavil (for the females)! A pretty damn naked Frieda Pinto (for the males)! It's everything and more that a standard Greeks-and-Gods movie is supposed to be. Including inherently shitty.
I can't think of too many of these movies that I actually liked. 300 comes to mind. But I loved the over-stylized, graphic-novel feel of the movie. The 1981-vintage Clash of the Titans was more of a guilty-pleasure sort of thing. And I'm not sure it was so pleasurable either. I think I like the idea of it more than the movie. One of those I remember as being so awful it's good in a perverse way. Only it probably actually sucks. Badly. And then there was....? Hmm. The new Clash of the Titans? No. Not so hot. Fairly entertaining on some levels I suppose. Spartacus? Ben-Hur? A.) I've never seen either of them (blog-cred drops) and B.) Those were not- to my knowledge- standard sword-and-sandal affairs. Definitely not Greek epics (Romans, both), and they were more historical fiction than mythology. Soooo... yeah. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but I think most of these movies generally suck. And Immortals carries that torch brilliantly.
As with most of these types of movies, Immortals' sole reason for being is to showcase fairly good looking people in less than generous amounts of clothing kicking-ass and defending honor. In this case, Henry Cavil's Theseus is sort-of tapped by the gods (see, the gods vow not to interfere in the affairs of humans, lest they lose faith in their own abilities) to help prevent the evil King Hyperion for unleashing the Titans on all of existence. Who are the Titans? Less worthy gods. See, the gods had an epic battle royal with the Titans eons ago and, well, the gods won and trapped the Titans in some mountain. Hyperion (Mickey Rourke, not giving a damn that these types of movies almost require an attempt at a British accent. No, he plays prototypical American enemy. All mugging and faux-intimidation. Think of it as his character in Iron Man 2...without the Russian accent...which might have been welcome here. Really along with Stephen Dorff's riverboat gambler take on the Greek thief, Stavros, these two stick out in a sea of pompous Brits... and not in a good way. After all, when in Rome...er... Greece do as the Grecians do. Don a British accent!) for reasons either I've forgotten, were inadequately explained, or didn't really exist, wants to unleash the Titans on humanity...I think it's so his tribe can rule the world or something. I'm thinking though that the Titans really are only going to care about snagging a rematch with the gods and if they survive that will lay waste to everything and everyone. This all sort of plays out.
Ok, so maybe it is a bit more involved than that. Theseus is a bastard peasant shunned by his own people.... and an incredible warrior. He ends up joining with Dorff's thief-with-heart-of-gold Stavros, as well as a mute priest, and Pinto's virgin oracle. She sees visions...valuable visions... so long as she doesn't get down with anyone. And here I need to make a point... I suppose I should issue a spoiler alert. Ok, so here's the deal with Pinto's Phaedra. She has to remain a virgin to keep having these visions. For much of the story, these visions are crucial. Only these visions will lead Hyperion to the mystical bow that will allow him to unleash the Titans. Hyperion needs Phaedra... and he needs her virginal. See, this particular iteration of the Greek world knows what a powerful weapon Phaedra could be. So these priests ban together to protect her and in so doing provide her with three faux-oracles. The idea being that you never know which one is the true oracle. It's a lot harder to capture four than one, eh? And if you just grab one at random, you have a 25% chance of hitting the vision jackpot. Ah, so, Hyperion's baddies find the monastery where the oracle and her faux friends are being kept and they lay waste to most of the priests and capture the oracles. They also have Theseus and his motley band. (I'm getting to my point...sorry). At one stop, they manage a daring escape, and to ensure that their precious vision-seer can escape with Theseus and the boys, her oracle-lite sisters nobly decide to stay behind and face the consequences of not being an oracle with Hyperion's crew. You can probably guess how this plays out. Hyperion finds out that there is one missing, guesses that it's the true oracle, and decides to torture her sisters in an attempt to get them to weasel Phaedra out. Not such a hot prospect for the sisters. And pretty much by-the-book for such stories. So what's the problem? Oh, not long after Theseus and company escape, Phaedra decides that a.) Theseus is freakin' hot (and he thinks likewise of her) and that her visions aren't really a gift, but more of a curse... sooo... she beds the dude. Yep. Virgin no more, visions no more. Don't worry, Hyperion finds the bow anyway...well...actually Theseus does... that's not what I'm getting at. So her three sisters submitted to torture...and yep....they died...so they could keep her alive and keep her valuable gift intact. And not even a couple of days after her sisters sacrifice themselves to save her because she has this gift, she decides that eh, it's an inconvenience and Henry Cavil... I mean Theseus... is luscious. Anyone else see anything wrong with this? Pretty much makes her one of the most deplorable "heroes" I've seen in a while. Consider the following: these three women were enlisted, implored to give up their lives for the sole purpose of offering this other woman protection...and maybe companionship... but mostly for protection. They then decided themselves to submit to capture and torture to keep Hyperion off her scent for a while. Why? Because she is such a super gal? No. Because she has these valuable visions and they don't want them falling into the wrong hands. So these three women give up everything... including their lives... for Phaedra. Her thanks? She sexes away her gift make their sacrifice irrelevant on a broader scale. They've now sacrificed themselves so some admittedly gorgeous women can traipse about with a standard issue stud. Pretty damn selfish. Did the filmmakers realize that they were creating a horribly selfish character? Probably not. They likely didn't play any of their story-elements forward. Actually this is all pretty clear. They crafted the story on what looked, sounded, or felt good in that moment and failed to connect all the dots. What does that amount to? A really, really up and down story featuring plot holes and inconsistencies. And it also seems particularly empty and substance-less... even for a popcorn flick.
When you add to all that one of the hokiest, corniest, most cringe worthy final sequences (gods and Theseus battling Titans in the sky... they look blatantly super-imposed in the sky...and as though they are fightingeach other in the zero-gravity room at space camp...it's beyond silly and firmly in the dumb range) and you have the makings of an awful movie. Which, actually on the surface is hardly surprising. What is more surprising is how awful the story is. After all, it should be hard to screw this up. Stick to the formula: hero is shunned by is people, hero is tapped to rise above and deliver his people a victory, hero falters a bit, hero has huge showdown with ultimate bad guy, hero defeats bad guy...narrowly, hero score the girl and lives happily ever after. They have all the basic elements of the story but they do nothing to hide the fact that they are attacking the form as though it were a series of checkboxes to be checked. And check they do. Of course they also try to add wrinkles to the formula... and those wrinkles eventually become cracks that sink an already bad movie even further into the shit pot. Ah, but the famed Tarsem Singh and his ability to create a visual carnival is what will save this movie! Or so the thought was. Problem is that a.) Tarsem is probably overrated and b.) he either proves this by giving his best effort and it comes off as an unoriginal, visually unimpressive ... at best flick or by phoning it in and providing the same result... and if he feels he can just skate by and people will drool at his mastery...well... then... he's overrated. You just can't coast, man. Bring me something fresh. Been there and done that? That's a waste of time... which is probably the best way to describe Immortals on the whole.
Grade: D
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