Review of Immortals (2011) by Jesse O — 06 Jul 2012

I really have no idea what to make of this movie whatsoever. I mean it's not good. First things first, and this is what pissed me off the most. I saw this movie on DVD and the picture brightness was fucking terrible.

There were a lot of scenes where it was so dark that I LITERALLY couldn't see ANYTHING. I had no idea what was going on or who was on screen. If it had been a few scenes here and there then it'd have been OK, still bad but I wouldn't have minded as much.

But I'd say that I couldn't see about 40% of what actually happened on screen and that is completely unacceptable. I have no idea if it was the same watching in the theaters, so I can't say whether the movie was too dark to begin with, but whoever did the transfer to DVD did a fucking awful job at it.

Which brings me to the other negative, which I think would be related to the brightness issues. I don't know if it was just me but I felt that with the way the story was presented I just kind of zoned out and didn't really pay attention.

I don't know if I should blame the script for not doing a good enough job at explaining what was going on and WHY it was happening or the darkness of the scenes just took me out of the story right from the very beginning.

but I just simply didn't care. Really...what was the movie about??? I mean really? Gods, titans, bows, Mickey Rourke trying to act bad-ass, holy wars...yes it involves all of these aspects but how they all fit together? Well I have no fucking idea.

If you like your movies to be one of those annoying 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles that take so long you don't even want to bother finish them, then this is the movie for you. I'm sure I could've figured it out but I just didn't care and it was pretty shoddily put together by the people who wrote it, or somebody else who re-wrote it and destroyed the original script, so why should I bother? I'm sure it doesn't even compare (DUH) to whichever Greek myth, or myths, this movie is inspired by.

Visually the movie is good, Tarsem Singh (and his cinematographer Brendan Galvin) have a good eye for visuals and some of the action scenes are really well shot and choreographed. Really it's just the ONE scene with the gods and titans fighting each other, but it's a good scene.

Can I talk about the acting?? No, I couldn't see a lot of it so it wouldn't be fair, but Henry Cavill has good physical presence so he should be fine as the new Superman. And let me tell you, some of these costumes (mostly the hats) were utterly goofy.

Especially the one that Mickey Rourke's character wore. It had like an open crab claw on top and around and down the side of his head it had like these fucking fangs, it was the most hilariously absurd hat I've ever seen.

And I was supposed to take this character seriously when he was being threatening. That's not the only one, but he was the main offender. And another thing, this movie takes itself WAY too seriously.

I understand it's based on Greek myth, but when the movie is like this, as in not good at all, it's even more glaring. If at least the story was intriguing I wouldn't have had a problem. So really I did NOT like this movie at all.

Technically it was awful as I couldn't see a lot of the movie. The story is uninteresting and you'll pretty much have to force yourself to keep watching the movie, making it, the worst thing a movie can be, a chore.

The special effects and the action scenes are fine but it really can't save a movie that was already doomed. I didn't think it was terrible, but it's never as good as it should've been.