Cinema review: Immortals

Mythical Greece: an evil king wants to free the titans and it’s up to Theseus to stop him.

Tarsem can be a frustrating director, the most important representative of the generation of special effect wunderkind who came to fame in the 90s and then transitioned to movie making, like with many of his ilk his skills as a director are still somewhat lacking.

Honestly I think that he is a real artist, he uses color and settings in a very creative and unique way. In this movie he drew inspiration from renaissance art and created what is visually speaking an amazing experience. All the designs and the costumes are interesting and original but sadly for every succefull piece, like his reinterpretation of the minotaur which is a sight to behold, there is another which is, to put it simply, ridiculous. The head gears of the gods for example are beyond camp all the way to “Lady Gaga would wear it”.

The fights scenes are well filmed and easy to follow. The gods battles are the showstopper here, they are like Matrix on steroids. Actually they are so good that the human battle look a puny and lackluster compared to them. Which leads to the other problem, Theseus, the nominal hero of the tale, does practically nothing to advance the plot and resolve the situation. I’m all for gods’ intervention in Mythical stories likes these but the human hero should do something, if not get rid of him and make the gods the protagonists.

This is actually only a facet of a bigger problem, the plot makes no sense at all, there are holes so big in it that you could fit at least a couple of pantheons and they are so glaring obvious that you can’t help noticing them while watching the movie (Those that you notice while back home and getting something from the fridge, the fridge logic of tvtropes fame, are not that important because they don’t detract from your enjoyment of the movie).

In the end the visual experience is still worth it but it doesn’t manage to convey the sense of epic that should come with a movie like this. With all his flair Tarsem is still not a very good director when it comes to pacing, composition and storytelling and so this movie is oddly devoid of the soul that could have counterbalanced the plot troubles.

In the end it’s been a nice evening and a fascinating throwback to those sword and sandals movies that were all the rage thirty years ago. Actually as a remake of Clash of the Titans this is superior to that terrible thing that we got last year, and it got good 3D to boot.