Hitting theaters on Doomsday (11/11/11) is Tarsem Singh’s Greek fantasy epic, Immortals, starring a lot of pretty people and one ugly looking Mickey Rourke. The Immortals tells us the story of Theseus (Henry Cavill), a peasant warrior whose mother is killed by the hand of King Hyperion (Rourke), an evil king hell bent on finding the Epirus bow and using it to release the imprisoned Titans from Mount Tartarus in order to rule over mankind and defeat the Gods. Handpicked by Zeus (Luke Evans), it is up to Theseus to rise up and protect the Hellenic people from Hyperion’s army and prevent him from unleashing the titans.
Let’s be honest, we all know going into the film that Immortals is going to suck, we just want to see a bunch of Greeks and Greek Gods kicking ass and shedding a lot of blood in the same CG intensive style as 300. Unfortunately, Singh attempts to tell a story that doesn’t even scratch the mythological surface and the Parlapanides brothers, who wrote the script, broke up any rhythm the film might have gained from its fight scenes with long and drawn-out sessions of dialogue, killing the pace and my overall enjoyment. As a huge mythology fan I was very disappointed in the way everything was presented and told, it actually left me slightly confused.
There are a lot of flaws in the film, some of which I can deal with, and others that truly bothered me, namely the look of the Titans, the costumes, the Gods, timing, and a little bit of the fighting. I’ll start off with the costumes; Mickey Rourke’s battle helmet looked like the costume Max wore from Where the Wild Things Are. You can’t take anybody seriously when they are wearing something like that. Also, Poseidon’s headpiece looked like a fish head and while I guess because he is the God of the Sea it would make sense, but he really looked like an idiot. I honestly felt bad for Kellen Lutz. As for the Titans, not only were they the size of humans, but they all looked the same with a pasty stone look! Hell, Hyperion is technically a titan and the movie didn’t mention that and wait, does he look gray and move extremely fast? Nope. Finally, Zeus didn’t use a lightning bolt at all to kill people. Let that one sink in a bit. I’m just touching on the many issues of the film and won’t even get started on the Zach Snyder slow motion usage and the terrible use of 3D during the fight scenes (hint: blood wasn’t coming at you), but I’ll let you be the judge because that’s what matters when all is said and done.
As for the acting, the movie ends up taking itself a little too seriously with many of the young actors over playing their parts. One of things I couldn’t pinpoint, which my friend pointed out, was that Cavill had no charisma and that really 
explains why I never felt invested in his character, I could have cared less what happened to him throughout the entire film, even as he was fighting the good fight. Mickey Rourke was surprisingly good and very evil. I may not bought his performance the entire time but I think it helped elevate some of the younger cast members around him.
Despite the many flaws, the movie does provide some mind-numbing entertainment, which is what I wanted. There are some really good kills and the fight scene between the Titans and the Gods is actually really impressive, especially Poseidon’s trident kills, they were awesome! Athena (Anne Day-Jones) also kicked some ass while looking good doing it. Lastly, the CG was pretty good for the most part, anytime the Epirus bow was used you knew you were in for a treat. Luckily, there is enough skull bashing to make most audience members happy, but there could have been a bit more.
Overall, Immortals may have been worse than Clash of the Titans and didn’t win me over visually the way 300 did. There are too many flaws in the film to keep track of and there isn’t anything unique that distinguishes this film from other CG heavy fantasy epics. Even when there is action, it is only good about 40% of the time and doesn’t have you feeling pumped up when you leave the theater the way these other Greek epics do (watch it in 2D only!). But hey, at least you might get yourself a sequel so you can give it another shot!
Rating: An unoriginal, flawed Greek epic that’s more disappointing than it should have been (3/10)
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