Les Immortels

When I first saw the trailer to this movie I thought it would be a lame movie that has mythological elements in it like the recent "Clash of the Titans" movie. But this movie I gotta admit is much better with the direction and the gory and bloodiness of it all. The movie is brutal like how mythological movies like this should be. The story isn't anything amazing or anything like that but the cinematography, the violence and the mythological powers that is portrayed in this movie makes it worth a watch. The parts where the gods comes down to intervene or just fight is very cool to watch and is some of the most entertaining parts of the movie. If the story was good as some of the sequences in this movie this could have easily been a must see movie of 2011. But still it's a entertaining flick that I didn't regret forking over few bucks to see in theater.

7.4/10

"The gods may be on your side, but tomorrow, I unleash the Titans."

With eternally-youthful, barely dressed gods thundering down from the heavens like golden super heroes, and really no connection to the myth of Theseus other than names and a vaguely minotaur-like enemy, Immortals plays fast and loose with Greek mythology. But in some ways, it works. 

The battle scenes are bloody and well-staged (and obviously influenced by 300), but the movie would have been improved by making them more frequent. This is a dark, violent flick and it's easily at its best when carnage covers the screen. 

The story serves, but it's pretty forgettable. Theseus, a peasant unknowingly trained in battle by Zeus himself, must stand against a vicious king who the gods are unable to touch and keep him from releasing the dreaded Titans. I don't predict many awards for best screenplay in Immortals' future, but there's enough story to keep the characters moving and motivated, as long as you don't think about it too hard.  

Despite the influence of 300 in the heavy use of slow-motion in the action scenes, Immortals has its own look and tone that helps it stand apart. Both the sets and the characters are visually memorable, and the movie never sinks to the generically dull depths of the recent Clash of the Titans remake, even during its slower moments.

Immortals never really rises above "decent", and won't topple 300 as the recent king of the genre, but it does manage to have an exciting, epic feel to it and it's entertaining enough to be worth a watch for fans of blood-soaked sword and sandals flicks. In the end it boils down to a bombastic orgy of killing with little substance behind it, but hey, that's actually kind of alright with me. 

Oh, and if you're somehow unfamiliar with how exquisitely gorgeous Freida Pinto is, prepare to have your eyes opened. In a movie full of beautiful people, she still stands out.

The picture is a fun sword and sandals epic with stirring adventures , struggles , bizarre scenarios and turns out to be an acceptable story and quite entertaining . The story is very loosely based on Greek mythology , creating a potpurrí of Gods and legends , mingling elements of various myths . As screen writers state that they chose to change many aspects of the ancient Greek stories to reflect the fact that the Greeks themselves often revised their mythology to conform to new ideas and knowledge . In Classical Greek mythology , Immortals were members of the second order of divine beings, descending from the primordial deities and preceding the Olympian deities . Based on Mount Othrys, the Titans most famously included the first twelve children of the primordial Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Heaven). They were giant deities of incredible strength, who ruled during the legendary Golden Age , and also composed the first pantheon of Greek deities . As they had overthrown the primordial deities, the Immortal Titans were overthrown by younger gods, including many of their own children - the Olympians - in the Titanomachy (or "War of the Titans"). There were twelve Olympian gods and goddesses and they were immortal and unkillable as well . The Greeks may have borrowed this mythology from the Ancient Near East . There were only 12 titans in the myths and they were immortal and invincible . There was a war in the heavens and the Titans lost . Zeus then threw them into Tartarus , which is represented as a mountain in the movie, but in the old myths was a cave at the center of the Earth with minor similarities to Hell, to be imprisoned for all eternity . The picture takes Greek Gods here and there , as in the myths , Theseus (Henry Cavill , he trained for 8 hours 5 days a week to get in shape for the film) was actually King of Athens and (in some versions) a son of Poseidon (Greek god of sea and Zeus' brother, being played by Kellan Lutz), although his legal father was King Aegeus of Athens . Theseus killed the Minotaur , a creature with the body of a man and a head of a bull imprisoned in a labyrinth, depicted here as a man with a helmet made of wires and horns with the help of princess Ariadne whom he later married . In the Theseus story, Crete had its capital at Knossos, and its ruler was cruel King Minos , here Hyperion (Mickey Rourke , he chose to do this movie instead Conan , 2011) defies the Greek God , Zeus (Luke Evans ,he appeared a year earlier as Zeus' son Apollo in Clash of Titans) . Hyperion origin is from a different myth, and was the name of one of the 12 Titans . Epirus Bow doesn't exist in any mythology, but it might be inspired by the bow of Heracles aka Hercules which was used by the Greeks to defeat Troy in the great war . Other Gods appearing are the followings : Apollo (Corey Sevier) , Athena or Minerva (Isabel Lucas) who is the daughter of Zeus (or Jupiter) and Metis, a daughter of the Titans, and goddess of wisdom , Heracles (Steve Byers) ,a son of Zeus who was the only hero to ascend to Olympus to rule with the Gods and Poseidon , he is the Greek god of the sea, equivalent to the Roman Neptune . Furthermore , Sibyl (Freida Pinto, though Lily Collins auditioned for a part, but was turned down by director) was the ancient Roman title for prophetesses .

Big production that blends Greek Gods , fights , feats and spectacular images by means of Computer Generator . Violent movie combines historic events , drama and breathtaking fights . The flick packs nice settings , characters with elaborate costumes and a seamless combination of practical and CGI effects . Every little scene has been given maximum detail, as gowns , environment and set design , adding too much C.G.I. backgrounds and lush frames showing overwhelming combats between Gods and humans . To achieve the effect of gods moving much quicker than humans, those scenes were shot at 1000 frames per second . Brilliant and glimmer cinematography by Brandan Galvin , being "done in Renaissance painting style" . Vibrating and shaking musical score by Trevor Morris . This passable picture was originally directed by Tarsem Singh , though has some flaws and gaps . Tarsem Singh described his approach to the film as being "like Caravaggio (1986) meets The fight Club (1999)" . He frequently collaborated with the late costume designer Eiko Ishioka , until her passing, she was the only designer he had worked with . Tarsem also made similar experiments filled with light , color and weird frames such as ¨The fall¨, ¨The cell¨and ¨Mirror , Mirror¨ .

If you go to this looking for an accurate representation of Greek mythology, you'll be sorely disappointed. If you go to this looking for a decent, nice looking, 300-type action film you'll enjoy it. As someone who knows a bit about classical mythology I can choose to be unbelievably annoyed by them using it as a reference for this film, as it's ridiculously inaccurate, but I'm not.

Leave your smarts/knowledge at the door, enjoy the pretty action and people, the brutal violence and Freida Pinto in the buff, and you'll hopefully feel that you got your money's worth.

That's about it.

I guess it was the year for really bad, dumb CGI video game type films. Immortals is as awful and as deep as the worst mindless video game cut sequences. Being very poorly written may have been inevitable but this films biggest crime is that nothing of note happens for the first hour. The lack of action is puzzling for a movie such as this one. The first hour is filled with CG scenery, "gods" dressed in their best homosexual fetish duds, an occasional ominous soundtrack, and a story held together by nonsense and one brief skirmish where the lead kills three men as he tries to save his mother. Until the final battle, this movie is actually boring. The final battle was cool (although disgusting) but ultimately meaningless when anyone stops and thinks about it. In 3D or regular, this is an ungodly waste of time.