Immortals

The Tarsem Odyssey

Writer: Vlas Parlapanides & Charley Parlapanides

Cast: Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, Freida Pinto, Luke Evans, Stephen Dorff

Producer: Gianni Nunnari, Mark Canton, Ryan Kavanaugh

Cinematography: Brendan Galvin

Music: Trevor Morris

Company: Relativity Media

Release: November 11, 2011

“Immortals” is two movies – one of them awful and one of them great. The great version happens if you turn the sound off and take in the film as a visual experience… a silent epic in the vein of “Intolerance” or “Cabiria.” Purely viewed as a visual tone poem, Tarsem succeeds in creating a mood that engages, stuns and is ultimately transcendent.

The awful version is if the sound is on. Which, unfortunately, is how you’re supposed to watch the film.

Our main character is Theseus (Henry Cavill), who has been chosen by the god Zeus (Luke Evans) to fight for humanity since the gods cannot interfere with man. Or something. Theseus is trying to take down King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), who needs some magical bow to unleash the Titans, who are vanquished gods held prisoner in a box. Or something. Theseus is teamed up with an Oracle named Phaedra (Frida Pinto) and Stavros (Stephen Dorff) because… stuff.

Look, I’m going to be bluntly honest and say nothing in the movie makes sense. Not a single character motivation. Not a single decision by a major or supporting character. Not a single moment directly tied into the Greek mythology this story is purportedly based upon.

Nothing.

And yet the screenplay keeps marching forward with purpose, hoping no one notices. And because Tarsem makes everything surrounding these awful characters so visually engaging and epic, it’s very easy to stop focusing on what’s happening onscreen and instead focusing on all the pretty. Yes, the only way it works is to approach every moment as an island unto itself, completely broken off from the rest of the film.

Then again, even those individual moments sometimes aren’t great, thanks for the most part to a bunch of heinous dialogue by Vlas Parlapanides and Charley Parlapanides (who didn’t pen another film until 2017’s “Death Note.” Sounds about right.). Apparently ancient Greeks loved their puns, because seconds before Hyperion lights someone on fire, he says “Let me enlighten you, priest.” After a Monk chops off his tongue to prevent himself from telling Hyperion some important somethingorother, Hyperion says this howler: “A monk can be made to talk with or without his tongue.” Had this been a silent film, I wouldn’t have had to listen to lines like that. But alas…

Let’s talk about the characters, I guess.

Theseus is looked down on by his community because he is a bastard, and yet refuses to move from the very dangerous cliffside where he lives because…uh… He lives with his mother, who smiles early in the film, which seals her fate of dying horribly in front of Theseus. Even after that happens, Theseus’ motivation to avenge her death doesn’t really come into play until almost an hour into this two-hour film. That’s right, there is no narrative drive for our hero for an hour. Apparently Theseus is important because he’s Zeus’ favorite, and can protect humanity or whatever, and part of that means keeping this magical bow out of the hands of Hyperion. Is there any amazing quest to find said bow? Nope, Theseus literally just happens upon it by accident in a catacomb. Also, I think Zeus may have bet on the wrong horse, because Theseus seems physically incapable of not dropping the bow at very important moments. After he finds the bow, he drops it after 43 seconds of screentime. And that’s only the first of his gaffes. Maybe Theseus’ hands were extra slick from oiling up his eight pack?

Speaking of that eight pack, I really hope one day Cavill gets an opportunity to show that he is more than his rockin’ bod. His performance here is adrift, and his physicality in the action has no interest either. Understandable on both counts, but still a shame.

Theseus still comes off way better than Pinto’s Phaedra, who is yikes. When we first meet her, she smiles devilishly and says “I’m stronger than I look.” Subsequently, she abandons her best friends to their death needlessly, does nothing remotely strong in any action sequence except be in danger, hands her virginity to a man she met two days before, then disappears for the entirety of the film’s third act. I bring up her having sex not to slut shame, but because as an oracle she can only see past the curtain when she is a virgin, and instead of waiting a week for the war to end… a week where she could have seen a lot of incredibly valuable information about the enemy… she hands away her gift to a man who may well end up teaming up with the enemy (according to one of her visions). Like I said, yikes.

That said, Pinto excels in the one human moment in the script, where she tells Theseus he must give his mother a proper burial “not because you believe, but because she believes.” It’s so sweet and Pinto gives such weight to it that you wish she had more (well, anything) to work with elsewhere.

Rourke was in the middle of his “cast as the villain in everything” era, just like Christoph Waltz, Michael Shannon and Javier Bardem. He must have watched Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now” forty times as his only research, because in literally every scene before the finale, he is either eating things in a disgusting manner or playing with water for no reason at all. Every. Single. Scene. I wish I could say he brings any real danger or menace to the role, but I can’t. All I got from it was that he was never taught proper table manners and liked going “splish splash” like a big boy.

The screenwriters aim to make Zeus dignified, making him appear to be a hero instead of the asshole cheating rapist douchebag he really is in Greek mythology, which is certainly a decision. Evans tries to conjure up a lot of power when he says things like “we must not interfere in the affairs of man!” even though his character has been doing just that for decades by training Theseus from childhood for battle. To do this, he dresses up as John Hurt (no one would guess!) and gives Theseus insight like the following: “It’s not about living as such, Theseus. It’s about living rightly.” Oy.

Other characters are introduced with much fanfare to disappear for most of the film, only to be dispatched in seconds near the finale. The most egregious of these is Joseph Morgan’s Lysander, who is a soldier who betrays the Athenians to become one of Hyperion’s men. In thanks, Hyperion scratches his face open and takes a sledgehammer to his balls. Yes, you read that right. After this, Lysander all but disappears, coming back for approximately eight seconds in the final battle and barely getting a line out before he is murdered.

Let’s talk about that finale. The Athenians are on one side of this big wall while Hyperion’s soldiers are on the other about to break through. Hyperion has the bow now and, instead of firing a bunch of arrows to bring down the wall, he fires a single arrow that opens up a tunnel about as wide as a two-car garage for his men to storm through and be picked off. If he was going to do this, why did he have his soldiers line up almost a mile wide across the horizon before the battle? Because it would look awesome in the trailer, of course!

All of the above said, I do not dislike “Immortals.” It has too many great things in it to be a bust. Do I wish that Tarsem had a different screenplay… written by anyone else… to interpret? Yes. But I don’t think Tarsem really cared about the story he was telling more than giving us amazing imagery along the way. I mean, just look at that opening, with the trapped Titans in their box, their jaws clamped down on metal, awake and eager to escape their prison. That’s an awesome way to open a movie… certainly the best of Tarsem’s filmography so far. And don’t even get me started on the Bronze Bull, which actually gave me a nightmare the first time I watched the movie. Tarsem frames almost every major sequence either on a cliff or on some high precipice. At a certain point our heroes wander through the desert for whole minutes of screen time to escape cliffs, and finally arrive at… different cliffs! That said, the way he and his cinematographer Brendan Galvin (who Tarsem would re-team with for “Mirror Mirror” and “Self/Less”) frame those cliffs is breathtaking at least for the first 20 times.

And the final battle between the Titans and the gods is a stunning action set-piece, using CGI and 3D (I saw it in 3D in theaters opening weekend and it was one of the best iterations of the technology I’ve ever seen) brilliantly. Blood, gore and body-parts go everywhere in various combinations we have never seen before. It’s gross, but it’s weirdly a work of art too.

And that final image of Theseus at war in the heavens, with all of the Immortals battling on different planes is one of the most indelible of his entire career – newer action films with mythological elements like “Wonder Woman” have tried similar things to lesser effect. It’s just a wow moment in the best possible way, and leaves you walking out of the theater on a high.

Tarsem’s muse Eiko Ishioka provides amazing costume work, per usual. Theseus and Phaedra are given pretty designs, but Ishioka really excels with the military uniforms, Hyperion’s crazy hat and the amazing, amazing (so amazing I said it twice) god work. Each god has a headpiece that helps define him or her and nothing much else, but that’s enough to make a huge impact.

This was also Tarsem’s first time collaborating with composer Trevor Morris, who he would re-team with for “Emerald City.” Morris was obviously given the missive to compose a score like one of the myriad of other interchangeable ones coming out from Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions, but here exceeds all expectations with some great themes and wonderful action writing.

When “Immortals” was released in 2011, most reviewers drew a straight line between it and 2006’s action blockbuster “300,” which retold the story of a small group of Spartans battling the entire Persian army with much visual bombast. And while I have written many words about how “The Cell” and “The Fall” were unfairly critically connected with other films, I make no such excuses for “Immortals.” It obviously only exists because of “300,” and several sequences and aspects were shoehorned in because they wanted to capture the same feel and get the same audience.

I like “300” a lot, and must admit that it is a better film than “Immortals,” simply because the story is more engaging and straightforward. That film’s hero, Leonidas (Gerard Butler), has a clear motivation throughout, as opposed to Theseus, who flounders about looking for something to kill for most of the running time. That said, the special effects from “300” have not aged well, whereas the effects in “Immortals” still hold up better than most blockbusters released today.

It was a modest hit, grossing over $225 million on a $75 million budget, a number roughly half of what “300” earned several years prior. Talk of a sequel was bandied about for a few weeks before disappearing, and it seems as if the film has lived the rest of its life in those deep $3.50 DVD bins at Wal Mart. There’s no cult following to be found, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to attract one any time soon.

Reviewers were understandably lukewarm. Reading them today, I’m actually surprised they didn’t go harder on the movie. The reviews are near-universal in their praise for Tarsem’s visuals (oh, and the costumes) and dismissive of just about everything else. Roger Ebert, who awarded Tarsem’s first two films four stars each gave this two stars, hilariously declaring in his opening line “’Immortals’ is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see.”

What more can you add to that?