It was a bad sign in the middle of the blood-letting, acrobatic combat and soft core sex in “Immortals” that I found myself falling asleep from time to time. Since I love all of those things in a movie and had my nap, something else was obviously wrong.
Spoilers perhaps follow.
One thing that was wrong was that the plot was a little difficult to follow. As far as I was able to tell, King Hyperion, played with brutal hideousness by Mickey Rourke, wanted to free the Titans from the prison where they had been put by the Olympian gods so that he can conquer the world or something like that. Theseus, played by Henry Cavill, a mortal chosen by the god Zeus, leads the fight against Hyperion and his evil army. He is assisted in this by Phaedra, played by Freida Pinto, and a motley crew of ancient Greeks. John Hurt shows up as “the old man.”
The writers threw in a lot of Greek history and myth into the story. The Minotaur shows up, for example. So do most of the Olympian gods, wearing awful gold something or another that make them look like there are modeling for something some wears to attend an orgy. Alas, no orgy is depicted.
The other thing that was wrong was that the cinematography was dark enough to be sleep inducing. While there were some spectacular scenes, such as Earth as seen from the top of Mount Olympus, the attempt to get the same “300-style” graphic novel feel was overly soothing when it should have kept one on the edge of one’s seat, with all the violence and occasional sex.
This is a pity. In the genre of ancient Greek myth cinema, the story of Theseus has been somewhat underutilized. Unfortunately, “Immortals” takes that story, throws in some other elements, and puts them in a blender. What comes out is what one might expect from such a creative process.
I am been waiting for decades for someone to try a film version of the Mary Renault Theseus novels, which tries to present a more historical version of the character, sans gods and overt magic. That would have been a far better approach than the mess I saw last night.
Source: Immortals, Yahoo Movies