The person who invented revisionist mythology is a genius. It’s all rootless fiction anyway, yes? Who’s to say your interpretation of Zeus is any less valid than that of Socrates, Aristotle or Zorba the.
Immortals might have suckered me with that argument had it not showed us an actual time and a place. (1258 B.C.?!) Think about this for a moment – in a movie about gods and titans, the producers are trying to create an historical air of realism. Sorry, no. Not gonna fly. Revisionist mythology works specifically because it didn’t happen and there isn’t an author whose words you besmirch.
There are a ton of ways to describe Immortals in broad terms: a return to sword & sandal worship, a poor man’s 300, a modern-day Harryhausen, Clash of the Titans with more exquisite ugly. I like to think of it as a vivid exploration within the land of silly hats. Check this out:
Is this the price of living forever? If so, I’m good with death.
The visuals are the key to Immortals. There’s a good guy, local mama’s boy Theseus (Henry Cavill) and a bad guy, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), and Hyperion’s scheme to punish the gods with a magic bow, but the plot doesn’t matter; this is all an excuse to get to overelaborate, overbloody and overproduced visuals. Director Tarsem Singh makes expert overuse of the variable-speed action scene to highlight special moments in decapitation and evisceration. Woo! Rourke is a suitable villain, a classic “let your actions do your speaking” kind of nemesis. He’ll pick and choose his words almost deliberately and then quietly bash some extra’s head in with a wooden mallet. Immortals is that kind of film.
There has been a rather intense dichotomy over the appreciation of Immortals. This isn’t difficult to understand – the film is both visually stunning, if a tad derivative, and intellectually bankrupt. Immortals has little to offer in terms of character development and certainly no anchor in history or recognized mythology, but cannot wait to pound your optic nerves with vivid and occasionally grotesque images. Forced castration? Self-mutilation? Didn’t need to see that; Titus still gives me nightmares.
Don’t take the 2.5 stars as a sign I liked this film. A better interpretation is: Immortals does deserve credit for the visual impression it creates, but let’s not go overboard.
Rated R, 110 Minutes
D: Tarsem Singh
W: Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides
Genre: Eye-splosion
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The Mad Hatter
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The subdued
