Immortals (2011)
Directed by Tarsem Singh
Theseus is a mortal man chosen by Zeus to lead the fight against the ruthless King Hyperion, who is on a rampage across Greece to obtain a weapon that can destroy humanity.
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Immortals ends up being sort of like 300 meets The Matrix in its best moments.
There's a battle sequence that ends the film that has some zest to it, if only because it's shot in "300" Vision, where the action freezes and then speeds up so we can feel every THWACK and GOOOSH.
The more satisfying is to compare it to its two most obvious antecedents, 300 and Clash of the Titans , and think to oneself, "Holy balls!
But if you can’t tell your Medea from Medusa — but love the Frank Frazetta musculature and slo-mo, blood-splattered violence of films such as “300” — buy your ticket now.
Not since "300" has so much Greek flesh been bared in service of such gratuitous carnage.
The movie "300" was important because it was one of the first films to fully embrace the idea that action movies are all about style over substance.
Any further familiarity with Greek mythology will merely get in the way of this slow-building, hyperstylized pastiche, which draws upon the helmer's many influences, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to the gold-toned vistas of Pasolini's "Arabian Nights," with room for rich multiculti costumes (simultaneously Greek, Indian and Orc-like) and Hong Kong fight choreography in the same frame.
We might as well be watching Clash of the Titans.
Immortals plays like the illegitimate offspring of 300 and Clash of the Titans , but while it represents a substantial improvement over the latter, it falls short of the former.
The less said about the most recent entry, the lamentable remake of Clash of the Titans, the better.
Where the remakes of Clash of the Titans and Conan the Barbarian failed to quench the thirst of fantasy action fans, Immortals should appease many a swords and sorcery junkie.
Don't look for sharp dialogue or multifaceted character in this sword 'n' sandals bloodbath, the latest in the abs-obsessed genre featuring " 300 ," " Clash of the Titans " and " Conan the Barbarian ."
Following in the sandals of Zack Snyder’s 300 with a splash of story inspiration from Clash of the Titans, Immortals is a chest-thumping sword, sandal and CGI Greek mythology actioner for those who like their violence with a side of splatter.
The videogame look that dominates the trailers is less obtrusive in the film itself, and the fact that Immortals' leanly muscled gods, who spend much of their time lolling divinely around Olympus in gilded-leather skirts and fabulous headgear, owe a great deal to Bruce of Los Angeles physique photography and James Bidgood's lavishly art-directed Pink Narcissus can be ignored by viewers who'd rather not acknowledge the pervasive homoeroticism (which extends to an 11th-hour vision of the ongoing war in Heaven as one long upskirt shot).
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The genre became a bit of a laughing stock when ‘80s action heroes revisited it (think Conan the Barbarian and its endless imitators), then got a shot in the arm when Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott played it straight for Gladiator.
For, even if Immortals has one of the worst screenplays of 2011 - I don't think that's too much of an exaggeration - Immortals is also one of the better-looking films of 2011, and if it weren't quite so dependent upon the gold-washed color palette that has come to mean "this is the Ancient World" in so many movies (it was codified in its present, exaggerated state by 300, but I think it was probably kicked off by Gladiator ), it would be right up there with the very best of the best.
Perhaps the best approach is to suggest that if you have been avoiding this genre since you saw Marc Singer in 1983’s The Beastmaster, Tarsem Singh’s Immortals marks the right time to revisit it.
"Immortals" was shot in 2D, but was always intended for a 3D post-conversion, which is more than could be said for the lifeless "Clash of the Titans" post-conversion.
"Caravaggio meets 'Fight Club'," is how director Tarsem (2000's surrealistic, psychologically complex " The Cell ") has described his ambitious, no doubt daunting aesthetic aims, and that's a fairly accurate description.
Familiar in its outline, director Tarsem Singh (“The Fall,” “The Cell”) imbues “Immortals” with a striking originality thanks to its settings and a savagery that despite CGI rivers of blood remains ferocious and relentless.
As is typical of films directed by Tarsem Singh ( The Cell ), a weak narrative is overshadowed by showy visuals.
Helmer Tarsem Singh ("The Fall," "The Cell") -- who works from a script by Charles Parlapanides and Vlas Parlapanides -- is less interested in mythological accuracy and more focused on giving himself ample opportunity to show off his visual directorial flourishes when not stealing the super slow motion battle effects from the likes of "300."
The veteran music-video director has little sense of narrative but — as he showed in his debut feature, “The Cell” — is gifted with a rather gruesome sense of sadistic, nightmarish imagery.
But Tarsem Singh may be onto something with Immortals; the Indian-born filmmaker’s third film is the first to allow him a budget (reportedly around $90million) to up-size his idiosyncratic visual style (The Cell, 2000; The Fall, 2006).
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The other way is to compare it to actual good movies - say, the actual good movies made by Immortals director Tarsem Singh, The Cell and The Fall - and to wonder if screenwriter brothers Charley & Vlas Parlapanides were as actively bored by their own screenplay as seems to have been the case.
Director Tarsem Singh’s two previous films -- the brutal, magical The Fall and the reprehensible The Cell -- are lurid fantasias of the psyche... and now, here, in an attempt to go mainstream, Singh trims away the psyche stuff and just goes wild with the lurid fantasia.
The movie was directed by Tarsem Singh, of whose wonderful " The Fall " (2008) I wrote, "it is a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms…( Tarsem ) has made a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists.
Familiar in its outline, director Tarsem Singh (“The Fall,” “The Cell”) imbues “Immortals” with a striking originality thanks to its settings and a savagery that despite CGI rivers of blood remains ferocious and relentless.
Maybe it’s that they’re afraid to advertise “Immortals” as what it is: a movie from the feverish imagination of the man who made “The Cell” and “The Fall,” two of the more viciously fanciful films of the past few years.
Full disclosure: I belong to that oft-referenced "cult" that rates Tarsem Singh 's " The Fall " as a singularly beautiful celebration of storytelling and its near-mythic power to create worlds so fantastic they could exist only in the imagination.
It’s a stunning first image that quickly gives way to narrative nonsense (a turn that’s particularly disappointing if you’ve heard director Tarsem Singh’s supposed first pitch for the film: “Caravaggio meets the school of Fight Club” ).
This movie was Tarsem Singh’s attempt to create what he terms in one of the extra features ”Caravaggio Meets Fight Club,” which was an inspired idea.