 ***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.*** Tagline: The Gods Need a Hero. Journey deeper into this epic tale of vengeance and destiny with mind blowing special features, including deleted scenes, an alternate beginning and alternate endings! Power-mad King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) threatens to destroy all of humanity on his maniacal quest to obtain the ultimate weapon - the legendary Epirus Bow that gives the power to unleash war on both Heaven and Earth. But Theseus (Henry Cavill), a heroic young villager chosen by the gods, rises up to stop Hyperion's brutal rampage. With supernatural help from the beautiful oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto), Theseus embraces his destiny and leads a fierce band of warriors in a desperate fight for the future of mankind. Storyline: Eons after the Gods won their mythic struggle against the Titans, a new evil threatens the land. Mad with power, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) has declared war against humanity. Amassing a bloodthirsty army of soldiers disfigured by his own hand, Hyperion has scorched Greece in search of the legendary Epirus Bow, a weapon of unimaginable power forged in the heavens by Ares. Only he who possesses this bow can unleash the Titans, who have been imprisoned deep within the walls of Mount Tartaros since the dawn of time and thirst for revenge. In the king's hands, the bow would rain destruction upon mankind and annihilate the Gods. But ancient law dictates the Gods must not intervene in man's conflict. They remain powerless to stop Hyperion...until a peasant named Theseus (Henry Cavill) comes forth as their only hope. Secretly chosen by Zeus, Theseus must save his people from Hyperion and his hordes... Written by Anonymous Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, March 6, 2012 -- A time-saving word of warning up front: If you're the sort of person who enjoys reading about or studying actual Greek mythology, Immortals will be infuriating. Director Tarsem Singh and screenwriters Vlas and Charley Parlapanides have no deference at all for the eons-old stories they've tried to adapt here, combining and compressing various elements of Greek myth until they're left with a narrative that's somehow both dumbed-down and incredibly convoluted. There's a reason, of course, that myths survive over vast stretches of time--they're damn good, almost irreducibly elegant stories--so it seems haphazard to tinker with them until they're nearly unrecognizable. And tinker the filmmakers have, bowdlerizing the Greek pantheon, reducing the gods to buff, empty-headed super-beings, and giving the film's human hero--Theseus--a weirdly unheroic, inconsequential arc. This is one of the few movies in recent memory where the protagonist's presence in the story has, at best, a negligible effect on the outcome. For all his raging, Theseus really doesn't accomplish much, which makes you wonder why he's even worth immortalizing in this watered-down version of the tale, which substitutes admittedly gorgeous CGI spectacle for actual storytelling. Singh's last film, The Fall, was a step in the right direction, but Immortals reverts back to a lot of the style-over-substance deficiencies of his debut, 2000's The Cell. It's showy and quickly forgettable--the blockbuster equivalent of a shiny bauble. In the film's prologue, we're introduced to a few seemingly key plot points that will later prove almost entirely meaningless. During the great War of the Gods, the Olympians--Zeus and his brood, basically--defeated the previous rulers of the heavens, The Titans, and locked them away in a gilded cube beneath Mount Tartarus, where they've been forced to gnash their teeth for ages on iron rods that look conspicuously like modern rebar. During the battle, the magical Epirus Bow--which shoots arrows made of light and apparently has unlimited ammo--was lost on Earth. Naturally, whoever finds it will be sitting pretty war-wise, in possession of the classical era's version of the A-bomb. Enter Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), a crabby ruler who's so pissed at the gods for failing to protect his dead-of-disease family that he plans on finding the super-bow and using it to somehow in retribution to release the Titans. To this end, he kidnaps the virgin oracle Phaedra (the beautiful Frieda Pinto), hoping her visions will lead him to the bow's secret resting place. Bastard peasant Theseus (Henry Cavill), our supposed hero, gets drawn into this fracas when Hyperion ransacks his village, kills his mother, and hauls him off to mine the salt flats. (Before he slits mom's throat, Hyperion growls at Theseus, "Witness hell," which is Immortal's lame attempt at a "This...is...SPARTA!" one-liner.) Coincidentally, Phaedra is imprisoned in the same place as Theseus, and she quickly realizes that he's, you know, destined for greatness. I'm not so convinced. The story is presumably about how Theseus earns a place among the gods, but with a few notable exceptions, he fails at just about everything he sets out to do. And despite the stern warnings by Zeus (Luke Evans) that the gods shouldn't meddle in human affairs unless the Titans are released, Theseus gets his sorry ass saved by the immortals more than once. He's the central character, but if you took him out of the story completely it would hardly matter. Escaping with Phaedra, he finds the Epirus Bow--the film's MacGuffin--and promptly loses it. He also fails to stop Hyperion from unleashing the Titans, necessitating a deus ex machina that renders futile everything he's done previously. He does kill the Minotaur--a dude wearing a bull's head made of barbed wire--but this is a non-sequitur that has little bearing on the story. The film might've been better had the screenwriters focused more on the wacko lives of the gods, who are really running this show, and less on their puny human counterparts, who ultimately don't matter much. Apollo (Corey Sevier), Athena (Isabel Lucas), Ares (Daniel Sharman), and Poseidon (Kellan Lutz) all make merely perfunctory appearances--jaw dropping displays of godly power, typically--but for most of the runtime we stay frustratingly with Theseus and his do-little storyline. What's crazy is that in the original myths, Theseus is the badass future King of Athens who does a ton of cool stuff in his youth--like slaying monsters at the six entrances to the underworld--but here he's just a random guy who was touched by the gods but doesn't do much with his giftedness. His only real victory is the moral decision he makes not to side with Hyperion, who offers him a Darth Vader- ish proposal to rule the empire side-by-side. I don't know how you can make a character as dramatically fertile as Theseus boring, but the makers of Immortals have somehow done it. They've also consigned John Hurt to a rather thankless wizened-old-man role as Theseus' mentor, a part that gives him next to nothing to do, disappointingly. In marketing the film, 20th Century Fox really pushed the "from the producers of 300 angle," hoping to attract fans of Zack Snyder's similarly violent sword-and-sandals epic. The problem is that Immortals is at once more highbrow--in superficial ways--and less dramatically satisfying than 300. The characters aren't as memorable, and the not-easily-followed story just doesn't have the same visceral impact. In fact, the whole enterprise feels redundant--a 300 redux without the mass appeal. The one thing Tarsem Singh has always brought to the table, however, from his music video origins with R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" onward, is a striking, lightly surreal visual style. Immortals is no different. Singh himself has described it as "Caravaggio meets Fight Club," and that's accurate for the most part, as much of the film consists of high-concept tableaux vivants of ripped ancients mincing each other to pieces in slo-mo. Renaissance painting-meets-comic strip would be another way of putting it, and I'll give Singh this: He's an extraordinary stylist who gets the best out of his production designers. The costumes in particular are fantastic, created by the recently deceased Eiko Ishioka, who's perhaps best know for her brilliant work on Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Unfortunately, eye-candy can't sweeten a bland story. That most famous of Greeks--Aristotle--knew that spectacle was the least important element of drama, but that's a lesson Hollywood has been slow to learn. Style over substance is a charge Tarsem Singh has faced before--he directed The Cell--and it's fair to level the same accusation at him again for his latest film, Immortals, which botches Greek mythology and tries to cover up the mess with CGI gloss and 3D spectacle. And to be honest, the 3D distracts more than it adds to the film's admittedly striking visual style. Immortals has its share of cool visuals and cleverly choreographed fight sequences, but it just isn't entertaining otherwise. If you're in the mood for this kind of film--the revisionist mythological sword-and- sandal action epic--I'd just rewatch 300. Audio/video-quality enthusiasts may be won over the Blu-ray's stunning picture and explosive sound-- and 3D TV owners will probably want to pick up this edition, just to have the option of watching in 3D or 2D--but for most others this is a rental at best. [CSW] -2.6- Nether the story line, the 3D, or the D-Box made this movie a stand out. Don't get me wrong it was an OK movie but it was one that I would call a rainy afternoon popcorn flick. Cast Notes: Henry Cavill (Theseus), Mickey Rourke (King Hyperion), Stephen Dorff (Stavros), Freida Pinto (Phaedra), Luke Evans (Zeus), John Hurt (Old Man), Joseph Morgan (Lysander), Anne Day-Jones (Aethra), Greg Bryk (The Monk), Alan Van Sprang (Dareios), Peter Stebbings (Helios), Daniel Sharman (Ares), Isabel Lucas (Athena), Kellan Lutz (Poseidon), Steve Byers (Heracles). IMDb Rating (03/05/12): 6.3/10 from 46,701 users
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