Immortals Movie Review

by: Jamie Inocian (Guest Contributor)

After the long wait for its release and having been bombarded by its awesome trailer for the past few months, Immortals finally hit Philippine screens on December 7. I was so eager to watch this movie and was really surprised that my girlfriend would spare me the torture of Breaking Dawn so we could catch this film. She and I loved 300 and if the same people produced this movie, it should be awesome, right?

Sadly. It was not. It’s hard for me to point out why this movie disappointed me without spoilers, but I will try my best to do so.

Story

The story seemed compelling enough when reading the synopsis on the Internet: The antagonist, a mad king, seeking a weapon to free the Titans from their prison and unleash destruction on the world; The protagonist, a peasant, trained by the gods to champion their cause and save the day. It’s nothing we haven’t heard of before, but come on… Any man would love to see a good action movie.
The story had so much going for it, but bad story telling and the forced plot points just made some scenes awkward and left me with too many “What?”s and “Why?”s to the point where I just accepted it and laughed; even the ending was weird.

Visuals

Visually, it wasn’t all bad. I was hoping that it would be as stunning as 300, but I guess all of that didn’t matter to me because of the story and how badly it was told. Some of the fight scenes were cool and choreographed well, but the others, particularly the ones involving the gods… WOW! Let’s just say, it was one of those times where I laughed and it was a bloody mess on screen.
My major complaint in this area: THE COSTUMES! The mortals were okay. I wish that the armor looked a little weathered and not something that came out fresh from the laundry, but it looked authentic or believable at best. Those were fine! But the gods?! They looked horrible! It looked like Lady Gaga somehow snuck into Mount Olympus and dressed them up.

Acting

This was the silver lining for me. The actors they cast (Henry Cavill, Freida Pinto, and Mickey Rourke) were good and I really have no complaints about them. I wasn’t looking for an Oscar winning performance anyway.

Final Thoughts

I love greek mythology. I love all the stories about mortals being the champions of the gods and fighting impossible odds to save the world from doom. This would have been a really great movie. The story was there. The cast was there. I’m sure the financial backing was there. It’s just one of those movies that lose out to really bad story telling.

So let’s get down to it, shall we?

Would I recommend that you watch this film?

Let’s just say that I asked myself if it would have been better if my girlfriend and I watched Breaking Dawn instead.

I think you can skip this one, unless you have the money and time to spare.