The Immortals is visually spectacular film whose main strength is in its vision and, at times, dark and disturbing design elements.
The villain, King Hyperion's hedonistic lifestyle and casual and routine mutilation of his troops make a great contrast to hero Theseus and his little band. I particularly liked Stephen Dorff as Stavros, he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the role and was a pleasure to watch. Hyperion was just a nasty guy, doing nasty things.
Although King Hyperion's method of ensuring men defecting to him don't procreate I'm not sure was meant to raise the laugh it did in the cinema, and I'm even more certain that the method might be flawed, and may merely result in a fractured pelvis.
I would have enjoyed this more if I didn't know so much about the Theseus legend. If you don't know anything about it, don't look it up until after the movie. I wish that I could have enjoyed the movie on its own terms, but even though the large sweeping vista of the movie could have easily had someone of any other name than Theseus at the centre, the recurring bull motif just served to remind me that the filmakers knew what they were building on and just decided to take one element or two and make a completely different story. This is a fault of mine, it is a side effect of my work that I study Classical monsters and those involved with them, and I find it a struggle to put it aside.
What also made me twitch was arming Ares with a hammer that looked suspiciously like (other) inaccurate depictions of a hammer weilded by a certain god of thunder from a completely different pantheon, and just seems to be a cynical attempt by marketing to mimic the recent Thor movie. If it was meant to be a joke, its prescence was not appropriate to a movie of this grade, it is a cheap shot. This is quite a dark and serious epic movie, and it's really not on.
The fight sequence near the end involving Gods and Titans is very impressive. I was expecting gore, but bodies more or less erupted into 'clean' sprays of blood - there was violence, but it was blood, not eviscerations or anything more yucky than blood shown, which I appreciate, not one for gore myself.
The battle scenes and fight scenes in general are pretty impressive!
There was a degree of puzzlement for me...why did Hyperion want to release the Titans anyway? He was doing really well without them. It also seemed a bit incongruous to have the Titans, trapped in the Pit of Tartarus, guarded by truly massive mountain and statues, to be so very tiny, human sized & out of scale with the gigantic surrounds.
This is an epic sword and sandle movie, with landscapes and building built on a, aheh, Titanic scale and while it doesn't have the witty script and lighthearted fantasy of Prince of Persia it really must be complimented on its vision and scope. The recent Clash of the Titans could have learned something from this movie. The 3D also wasn't intrusive, and added to to the experience.
6 out of 10 entertaining and Jason and the Golden Fleas on the Sid and Nancy Scale.
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Leece's Rambling Reviews: The Immortals
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