immortals: where good is dumb, and so is evil
Note: This review was written two months ago, when the movie itself was still in theaters and there was nothing to do at work. I found the doc file again just now and thought I'd post this.
Immortals is a bad movie. It tries too hard to replicate the sheer gore and brutality of 300 (which I also found bad, but not hilariously stupid) and adds the glitz and glitter of a 70s disco party, only with muscled guys in miniskirts instead of drag queen inspirations in sparkling jumpsuits. There are no characters and there is no plot, only still shots somehow cobbled together to make a "movie."
And you know what? I enjoyed it.
Sure, my enjoyment was in the form of snarky laughter in the company of friends, and I did spend most of the movie shaking my head at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, but I've always enjoyed a snark-bait movie. Also, the guys are exceedingly hot.
The "Plot"
The plot is nonexistent. We have instead a clip-show that's very (very, very, very... to the nth power) loosely based on classical mythology. The looseness is such that all the characters in this movie could've been named differently and we wouldn't know it. This movie is about this guy Theseus, who is a gorgeous nonentity that's been mentored by Zeus in disguise. Both of these characters bear little resemblance to their namesakes in mythology, the former less than the latter. His mother is killed by some warfreak named Hyperion, and he's enslaved. In the slave oasis (or whatever it is), he meets the virgin oracle Phaedra, whose powers will be corrupted if she is deflowered.
Of course she practically begs to be defiled as soon as they get a proper bedroom, thereby becoming dead weight to the plot halfway through the movie and rendering the sacrifice of her decoys (who let her escape, thus earning themselves the honor of being roasted alive inside a metal bull) useless.
There's also something about Hyperion wanting to release the Titans using a bow which Theseus loses so easily it might have been just another weapon he was holding. There's also something about Zeus trying to keep the gods from directly involving themselves in this mess by killing the ones who disobey him. There's a lot of fake blood, narmy slow-mo, and a really awkward rousing speech. There's little else.
Man, that rousing speech really sounded like a really bad mashup of ghetto rap and Queen's We Will Rock You. The entire theater was cracking up the whole time.
The love story - if it can be called that - is less a love story and more an excuse for the idiot oracle to get rid of her powers, thus making things more tense in the finale where she's just simply decoration. It's an excuse so Theseus can have a son and the audience will feel sad that he can't be there for his "family" at the end. Actually, most of the plot points are so contrived, it can honestly be said that Immortals is made up of nothing but excuses.
This movie has no background to make it solid. We don't know anything about Theseus except that Zeus has been tutoring him for years as Mr. Ollivander, and that his mother has been raped. We don't know why the gods are interested in him. Is he a demigod? Has an oracle foreseen his fate? We don't know if his a warrior or a shepherd - he could be a lazy layabout for all we know.
And what about the gods? Where are the rest of them? Why do I get weird incest-y vibes from Zeus and Athena?
What's with the weird slow-mo ending of immortals fighting against an obviously painted sky?
*sighs* I think I just lost about ten IQ points from watching this movie.
The "Acting"
There is no acting in this movie. There's only fanservice and creepy grins. The good guys provide the former, and the bad guys the latter. When they aren't angry, the expressions on these people's faces are blank, and their actions are robotic. When Frieda Pinto wailed in despair over the deaths of her "sisters" (nice job ruining their efforts to preserve your life and your powers, btw), I winced. It was so... fake, like everything else in this movie.
I know Henry Cavill to be a far better actor than what he gets to showcase here. His Charles Brandon in The Tudors was stilted during the first season, but became increasingly nuanced during the next three, and he rises to the challenge. I know he actually has talent for drama. He is wasted here, and the "script" does him a disservice by making him do that stupid speech. I wish him better luck in choosing his next projects.
Frieda Pinto still plays the "beautiful love interest with little personality" role she was famous for in Slumdog Millionaire. The difference is that her character there was a luminous object of affection, a lifelong dream of the main character rather than a real person, but a powerful character nonetheless. Here, she's nothing more than a side dish to the main story, an object of lust as opposed to love. She's there to provide fanservice, nothing more. The overly-stylized, dark and barren setting of the movie saps her of whatever allure and depth she has and turns her into someone who's just there to get naked. Her "acting" was embarrassing.
Aside from Zeus (who is remarkably well-played by some actor I don't know who deserves commendation for rising above the murky waters of bad acting that is this movie as well as John Hurt) and Athena (who is less... warrior woman-y than I expected, but nonetheless is clearly the vulnerable, child-like badass goddess the movie clearly wants her to be seen as), the rest of the gods can vanish into oblivion for all I care. I know Emmett plays Poseidon, but whenever he is onscreen, all I can pay attention to is that stupid hat. I can't quite decide what it is - is it meant to evoke the head of a fly?
The guy who plays Hyperion (I am not even bothering to research the names of these actors) plays the hammy evil warrior well. He is hampered by the script, but at least he's the hammy evil warrior he's supposed to be.
I give the actors playing the oracle decoys props for managing to evoke sympathy and pity from me. They're the only good guys who managed to trigger any other emotion from me aside from massive facepalming. Them and the poor priest who cut out his tongue to protect that idiot oracle's secret.
But yeah, that's about it. The rest fade into the background like the extras they are.
Oh, yeah, the mother is pretty good too, especially in her death scene. The brave, encouraging she gives her Theseus, knowing that her throat was going to be slashed seconds from now, was actually pretty touching. Too bad moments of honestly good acting are overshadowed by this movie's efforts to be a graphic novel in motion, ala 300 or Sin City.
The "Special Effects"
Good Lord, is everything in this movie CG! And obvious, fake-looking CG, too. The CG blood is obviously CG blood, and so are the CG landscape, the CG buildings, the CG fight scenes (especially that godawful ending scene), the CG way the gods move... I get that they're trying to replicate the dark CG-ness of 300, but I wish they'd cut down on the gold sparkliness of the gods. The overly-faked scenery and muscled men (in fairness, not overly so) provide a graphic novel feel to the entire thing, which in fairness is what it's probably trying to do.
That last scene with the gods and "titans" fighting each other was just pure hilarity. The "heaven" background is blatantly stolen from some Michelangelo-type painting. The slow-mo of Theseus and some random titan rising up the sky in miniskirts is just so ridiculous, because the scene is shot from a very low angle and the audience can practically see their groins. Also, the slow-mo baring of teeth and clashing of swords. And then cue the rest of the immortals doing the same. The entire thing looked like some druggie comicbook otaku's idea of what a celestial war should look like: ruggedly handsome white men in gold minidresses fighting masked guys in black-and-red minidresses against a matte painting of a cloudy sky.
In the end, the good guys remain the good guys. The rest are either bad guys or cannon (sword?) fodder. This movie may try a little too hard to be gritty and stylish, but it's made all the more funny - and by extension, enjoyable - by this. I don't care for any of the characters, the plot and dialogue are atrociously written, and the settings are a weird combination of conspicuous CG and matte painting. That's prime snark material right there. It's so much fun. I had a great time laughing (I know everyone else did), even if it did make me feel dumbed down afterwards.
Immortals is a bad movie. It tries too hard to replicate the sheer gore and brutality of 300 (which I also found bad, but not hilariously stupid) and adds the glitz and glitter of a 70s disco party, only with muscled guys in miniskirts instead of drag queen inspirations in sparkling jumpsuits. There are no characters and there is no plot, only still shots somehow cobbled together to make a "movie."
And you know what? I enjoyed it.
Sure, my enjoyment was in the form of snarky laughter in the company of friends, and I did spend most of the movie shaking my head at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, but I've always enjoyed a snark-bait movie. Also, the guys are exceedingly hot.
The "Plot"
The plot is nonexistent. We have instead a clip-show that's very (very, very, very... to the nth power) loosely based on classical mythology. The looseness is such that all the characters in this movie could've been named differently and we wouldn't know it. This movie is about this guy Theseus, who is a gorgeous nonentity that's been mentored by Zeus in disguise. Both of these characters bear little resemblance to their namesakes in mythology, the former less than the latter. His mother is killed by some warfreak named Hyperion, and he's enslaved. In the slave oasis (or whatever it is), he meets the virgin oracle Phaedra, whose powers will be corrupted if she is deflowered.
Of course she practically begs to be defiled as soon as they get a proper bedroom, thereby becoming dead weight to the plot halfway through the movie and rendering the sacrifice of her decoys (who let her escape, thus earning themselves the honor of being roasted alive inside a metal bull) useless.
There's also something about Hyperion wanting to release the Titans using a bow which Theseus loses so easily it might have been just another weapon he was holding. There's also something about Zeus trying to keep the gods from directly involving themselves in this mess by killing the ones who disobey him. There's a lot of fake blood, narmy slow-mo, and a really awkward rousing speech. There's little else.
Man, that rousing speech really sounded like a really bad mashup of ghetto rap and Queen's We Will Rock You. The entire theater was cracking up the whole time.
The love story - if it can be called that - is less a love story and more an excuse for the idiot oracle to get rid of her powers, thus making things more tense in the finale where she's just simply decoration. It's an excuse so Theseus can have a son and the audience will feel sad that he can't be there for his "family" at the end. Actually, most of the plot points are so contrived, it can honestly be said that Immortals is made up of nothing but excuses.
This movie has no background to make it solid. We don't know anything about Theseus except that Zeus has been tutoring him for years as Mr. Ollivander, and that his mother has been raped. We don't know why the gods are interested in him. Is he a demigod? Has an oracle foreseen his fate? We don't know if his a warrior or a shepherd - he could be a lazy layabout for all we know.
And what about the gods? Where are the rest of them? Why do I get weird incest-y vibes from Zeus and Athena?
What's with the weird slow-mo ending of immortals fighting against an obviously painted sky?
*sighs* I think I just lost about ten IQ points from watching this movie.
The "Acting"
There is no acting in this movie. There's only fanservice and creepy grins. The good guys provide the former, and the bad guys the latter. When they aren't angry, the expressions on these people's faces are blank, and their actions are robotic. When Frieda Pinto wailed in despair over the deaths of her "sisters" (nice job ruining their efforts to preserve your life and your powers, btw), I winced. It was so... fake, like everything else in this movie.
I know Henry Cavill to be a far better actor than what he gets to showcase here. His Charles Brandon in The Tudors was stilted during the first season, but became increasingly nuanced during the next three, and he rises to the challenge. I know he actually has talent for drama. He is wasted here, and the "script" does him a disservice by making him do that stupid speech. I wish him better luck in choosing his next projects.
Frieda Pinto still plays the "beautiful love interest with little personality" role she was famous for in Slumdog Millionaire. The difference is that her character there was a luminous object of affection, a lifelong dream of the main character rather than a real person, but a powerful character nonetheless. Here, she's nothing more than a side dish to the main story, an object of lust as opposed to love. She's there to provide fanservice, nothing more. The overly-stylized, dark and barren setting of the movie saps her of whatever allure and depth she has and turns her into someone who's just there to get naked. Her "acting" was embarrassing.
Aside from Zeus (who is remarkably well-played by some actor I don't know who deserves commendation for rising above the murky waters of bad acting that is this movie as well as John Hurt) and Athena (who is less... warrior woman-y than I expected, but nonetheless is clearly the vulnerable, child-like badass goddess the movie clearly wants her to be seen as), the rest of the gods can vanish into oblivion for all I care. I know Emmett plays Poseidon, but whenever he is onscreen, all I can pay attention to is that stupid hat. I can't quite decide what it is - is it meant to evoke the head of a fly?
The guy who plays Hyperion (I am not even bothering to research the names of these actors) plays the hammy evil warrior well. He is hampered by the script, but at least he's the hammy evil warrior he's supposed to be.
I give the actors playing the oracle decoys props for managing to evoke sympathy and pity from me. They're the only good guys who managed to trigger any other emotion from me aside from massive facepalming. Them and the poor priest who cut out his tongue to protect that idiot oracle's secret.
But yeah, that's about it. The rest fade into the background like the extras they are.
Oh, yeah, the mother is pretty good too, especially in her death scene. The brave, encouraging she gives her Theseus, knowing that her throat was going to be slashed seconds from now, was actually pretty touching. Too bad moments of honestly good acting are overshadowed by this movie's efforts to be a graphic novel in motion, ala 300 or Sin City.
The "Special Effects"
Good Lord, is everything in this movie CG! And obvious, fake-looking CG, too. The CG blood is obviously CG blood, and so are the CG landscape, the CG buildings, the CG fight scenes (especially that godawful ending scene), the CG way the gods move... I get that they're trying to replicate the dark CG-ness of 300, but I wish they'd cut down on the gold sparkliness of the gods. The overly-faked scenery and muscled men (in fairness, not overly so) provide a graphic novel feel to the entire thing, which in fairness is what it's probably trying to do.
That last scene with the gods and "titans" fighting each other was just pure hilarity. The "heaven" background is blatantly stolen from some Michelangelo-type painting. The slow-mo of Theseus and some random titan rising up the sky in miniskirts is just so ridiculous, because the scene is shot from a very low angle and the audience can practically see their groins. Also, the slow-mo baring of teeth and clashing of swords. And then cue the rest of the immortals doing the same. The entire thing looked like some druggie comicbook otaku's idea of what a celestial war should look like: ruggedly handsome white men in gold minidresses fighting masked guys in black-and-red minidresses against a matte painting of a cloudy sky.
In the end, the good guys remain the good guys. The rest are either bad guys or cannon (sword?) fodder. This movie may try a little too hard to be gritty and stylish, but it's made all the more funny - and by extension, enjoyable - by this. I don't care for any of the characters, the plot and dialogue are atrociously written, and the settings are a weird combination of conspicuous CG and matte painting. That's prime snark material right there. It's so much fun. I had a great time laughing (I know everyone else did), even if it did make me feel dumbed down afterwards.