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Movie Review: Immortals 3D

I love my Greek mythology. Let's see, I first encountered my first Greek god in Grade 5 when I read on my English Reading textbook the story of the seasons, how Hades kidnapped Persephone, the pomegranates, Ceres' despair, and all the stuff that followed. Then movies like Clash of the Titans (the original, not the idiotic, not to mention completely unnecessary remake), The Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts (to a point) and all that heady stuff came and my love was practically etched in stone.

So despite movies like Troy, which is awesome in its own right (because Brad Pitt in a skirt, yo) but which didn't feature any of the gods or goddesses of the ancient Hellenic culture, I'll always have a soft spot for anything remotely touching mythos. It's no small wonder then that one of my most anticipated action movies of the year would be Immortals, directed by Tarsem Singh and starring Henry Cavill (whom I first discovered in the UK series, The Tudors, playing the sexy Duke of Norfolk) as the heroic Theseus tasked by Zeus (Luke Evans in a golden armor) and the other Olympians to stop the Titans from escaping Tartarus.

Visually, the movie is stunning. It's green-screen technology after all and all in 3D. But while Henry Cavill's muscular abs are very nice indeed, they're not enough to distract you from the insipid script or the ham-fisted action on screen.

The storyline is weak and a dime-a-dozen to begin with, but when character motivations are also suspect, I found myself rolling my eyes in several key scenes. Mickey Rourke's King Hyperion is a generic villain whose wanting to destroy the world is barely explained. His costume's nice though. The scars, not so much. Why does he have scars, exactly? So he'll look more evil? And meanwhile, our heroes are baby-faced, clean shaven men (of steel).

The prominence (I use the word loosely here) of the Olympians are bright spots in an otherwise lackluster movie. I love that Athena was given not just one moment but moments to shine in this movie, as opposed to Clash of the Titans where the character barely clocked in. Sure, she got impaled for her troubles (spoiler!), but no matter.

The trailer for the movie showed a lot of gods in action, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to see this movie. I assumed, from the title Immortals and the trailer, that this would focus more on the, admittedly, unruly gods of Greece than on the humans and their heroics, but I was wrong. It's about Theseus and his rise from lowly peasant to hero. Wait, it's about a prophetic vision about the Titans released onto the world, causing havoc everywhere. Wait, it's about siblings Athena and Ares defying an edict from father Zeus about interfering with human affairs. Wait, it's about Theseus doing the nasty with the virgin oracle, Phaedra, causing her to lose her powers but in exchange giving her a son who inherited her prophetic powers. Wait, it's about how the gods refuse to save humans from their sufferings. Wait, it's about a future war between the real immortals, which means that this entire two-hour movie is just a preview of the real movie which may or may not be made.

Load of crap.

Before I go, let me just leave you with the best part of this movie:
Good luck identifying the gods. I can see why the first two would be Poseidon and Athena, but the others escape me.

THE SCORE


Story - 4
Sound - 5
Cinematography - 6
Picture -  5
Special Effects - 8
Acting - 5


Overall - 5.5/10

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