Immortals

November 29, 2011

"Immortals" dealt with the Greek hero, Theseus (future Man of Steel Henry Cavill). The arrogant King Hyperion (ever-villainous Mickey Rourke) is searching for the legendary Epirus Bow in his quest to free the Titans to conquer the gods and humanity. Theseus was chosen by the gods to take on Hyperion and save humankind. I am a fan of Greek Mythology, so a movie like this I will not miss. I have even heard people comparing this to Zach Snyder's "300" (which I rated 10 stars) and this made me even more excited to watch "Immortals".

To my dismay, there were so many things wrong about this film. The story-telling was confusing and disjointed. The actors portraying humans and gods had very little charisma to make me care about the story. (It does not bode too well for the reboot of Superman if the screen presence of Henry Cavill is bland like this. Gerard Butler of "300" he is not!) I did not like their interpretation of the mythological characters, from the gaudy golden god costumes to the wire-formed head of the Minotaur. Even the narrations were bad in a cheesy way. This was a throwback to those campy and hammy sword-and-sandals "epics" of the 1950s, only this time with CG.

I think the main conceit of this film lies in the several violent computer-generated fight scenes with all the severing, slicing, cutting, stabbing, exploding body parts, complete with blood that splatter towards the audience. For people who enjoy that type of thrill, this is a movie to watch. For me though, the hyperbolic violence here is just so random. It's like the filmmakers were trying to outdo themselves in thinking of how to top the blood shed in the previous scene. While I will give them an extra star for their gory imagination, I did not feel these scenes added any significant substance to the film at all. I must say though that the Epirus Bow scenes were quite well done.

Because of my high expectations, I found this film to be very disappointingly BAD, in so many levels. Any comparison to "300" is an insult to the previous film. Not recommended at all.