‘Immortals’ Cheesy Ancient Action Fun with Modern Subtext

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Tarsem Singh’s $75 million sword-and-sandal action flick “Immortals” opened with an overwhelming number one box office position on November 11th, fell quickly to third place when the “Twilight” and “Happy Feet” sequels opened the following week, and over Thanksgiving weekend it was pushed down to seventh place with a somewhat slower drop off in attendance. Originally titled “War of Gods,” the film was loosely (very loosely) inspired by ancient Greek mythology, and despite some unexpected implicit social commentary, looks more like a big-screen video game than any sort of in-depth narrative story about characters the audience can become involved with.

Greek mythology was always somewhat flexible, even in ancient times, depending on what poet, playwright, or regional tradition was relating a particular story. The film “Immortals”, while it uses a few familiar mythological elements (a war between gods and “titans,” a labyrinth and a Minotaur, a hero named Theseus, a tradition of Sibylline prophecies), bears next to no resemblance whatsoever to any known stories of the characters who bear the same names in the Greek myths. If anything, perhaps it might inspire a few people to read up on some of the actual mythology (which might have made a more interesting but likely far more disturbing film).

In this story, Theseus (Henry Cavill), instead of being the son of the king of Athens and a Troezen princess, is a handsome peasant youth being trained in martial arts and moral guidance by the god Zeus (Luke Evans) in disguise as an old man (John Hurt). Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) here is a renegade king out to conquer Greece, by releasing the Titans, dreaded immortal rivals to the Olympian gods (instead of being himself a Titan, the son of Heaven and Earth and the father of the sun and the moon, as in Greek mythology). Meanwhile, a prophetic priestess named Phaedra (Freida Pinto) apparently knows the secret hiding place of the magical “Bow of Epirus”. This Hyperion is after in his bid to destroy the gods and dominate the world, while the head of the Athenian city council hopes to negotiate a just peace with Hyperion and avoid war.

All in all, it’s a reasonably entertaining comic-book fantasy of warriors and supernatural beings set in ancient times. There are some impressive visual effects and striking scenery (the vertiginous cliffside scenes are especially enhanced by the simulated 3-D created for the 3-D version). The script and acting are both on a par with the cheesy old Italian sand-and-sandal action movies from the 1960s, but the action is on a much more spectacular scale (from the producers of the equally fictionalized movie version of the Battle of Thermopylae, “300”). A number of fight sequences really have the feeling of modern video games, suddenly going into slow-motion each time a character’s head explodes in all its three-dimensional glory, and with fast-moving camera shots similar to someone controlling a game stick. Fans of that sort of thing should find “Immortals” just the sort of action-heavy CGI-laden experience they’re looking for.

There’s actually a bit more going on in “Immortals,” however, with some metaphoric implications that are a far more interesting commentary on the world in the 21st century A.D. than in the 13th century B.C. In this free improvisation on ancient Greece, the greatest conflict is between devout people of faith and disbelievers. The atheists and agnostics of the story have either been disappointed by prayers not answered and thus reject the existence of gods, or have come to see the stories of gods as amusing metaphors for life and nature, but certainly unworthy of being taken seriously. Yet the film shows the audience that the gods exist and care for humans, giving them free will and refusing to intervene in human affairs unless absolutely necessary in the fight against evil.

The film dramatizes the conversion of various skeptics to the belief in divine power, and explicitly depicts the utter futility of any hopes for reasonable negotiation with ruthless tyrants bent on expanding their power. While somewhat obscured by all the action, and carefully enshrouded in ancient mythological and polytheistic trappings to avoid obvious and heavy-handed modern religious and political overtones, the pervading concepts driving its characters all reflect present-day concerns.

“Immortals” gives its ancient characters (both the human and the divine) philosophies that are far more Christian than pagan, and far more attuned to post-World War II broadly liberal concepts of democracy and human rights than to those of ancient Greece. At the same time it presents a distinctly militaristic and staunchly conservative view of a necessity for war under circumstances that would otherwise destroy those human rights.

Most of this underlying sociopolitical statement, however, is likely to be missed or ignored by the crowds the movie appears to be targeted for and those who like it the most. Those who revel in over-the-top action between forces for good against forces for evil, loaded with plenty of bloody violence and just a bit of tasteful sex and nudity, unencumbered by any sort of memorable acting performances, aren’t likely to be looking for any philosophical subtext.

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