Immortals (2011)

A visual masterpiece that will only pale due to the fact that we saw this style before in 300; Immortals looks like another world or dreamscape rather than a historical depiction of earth or mythology. It is a graphic novel come alive with an attractive cast of good guys and horribly scarred and ugly bad guys. If you go into Immortals with the expectation of seeing your Homer myths played out accurately, I will warn you right now that it will probably tick you off.

Immortals is actually a bastardization of Greek mythology as it utilizes names from different epics to tell a somewhat unique tale of the battle between Gods and Titans. Like 300 I took heavy issue with this due to the people I know that will watch this movie, assume it to be reflective of the historic texts and argue for it with knowledgeable people who will all but laugh at them.  It’s very dangerous the way that writers and directors are taking liberties with our history and I implore those of you that are truly interested to read the actual poems and get your source of information there.

The story is of Theseus (Henry Cavill), a bastard child and warrior who lives with his mother on the side of a cliff where he is tutored by a mysterious old man. On the other side of the land, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is intent on releasing the Titans to take on Zeus and his gods – the only thing that he would need for this however is a weapon known as the Epirus bow. Theseus learns his destiny from a beautiful Oracle by the name of Phaedra (Freida Pinto), and is forced into the position of warrior of the Gods when King Hyperion marches on his city.

My Favorite Thing About Immortals…

I LOVED the depiction of the Gods. Zeus (Luke Evans) is young and handsome, and all of his fellow Gods are similarly young and good looking. Think about it… why in the hell would a God choose to be old and ugly? Sure Hephaestus is said to have been ugly and deformed but that’s speculative, I grew tired of the ancient, weird looking Zeus that movies have always shown so this was a breath of fresh air. This Zeus was excellent and Athena (Isabel Lucas) was as badass as she was beautiful, I really, really wished they had gotten more screen time as opposed to the situation that was occurring on the earth.

Too… Little… Action…

This is one of those movies where I wished it was action from beginning to end. In actuality it NEEDED to have action from beginning to end since unlike 300, it did not have a strong enough story to supplement the slower areas of the movie. It was very, very slow for the first hour or so as we watch Theseus struggle to shake off his civilian life to become the warrior that he is destined to be. The only things that kept me interested during that first hour was Freida Pinto’s beauty and the cruelty of Hyperion.

King Hyperion is a bastard amongst bastards, I mean he is absolutely wicked and cruel. I cannot even describe the amount of cruelty this character had but trust me when I say that every time he took the screen someone was being tortured or killed. It is almost comical the way they portrayed this sociopathic lunatic but like the looks of good vs. evil, Immortals does not leave anything to interpretation. The good are really good and the bad are ugly and severely evil.

Action hounds, you will have to wait till the last 10 minutes of the movie to see all the insane action from the trailers. This will be a huge problem for many of you being that it is what draws fans to the movie. You will get an epic melee with the Gods but it only left me wishing it had been a whole movie worth of that caliber of fighting but alas we are given story and the story was forgettable at best.