Here is what the people who made Immortals are counting on, I think: there is no movie so viciously unrestrained in its depiction of violent cruelty that someone won't label the person who calls it such a prude; there is no movie so sadistically stylized in its decapitations, impalements, eye gougings, and torture, that someone won't defend it on the grounds of being unrealistic and, hence, "just a movie"; there is no action so inherently revolting that it can't be accepted as entertainment if rendered in CGI; there is no violence that can be visited upon the human body in a military narrative that cannot be stripped of its ability to horrify by praising the warrior who risks enduring it so long as he mouths some politically cherished iconic word while doing so.

I am reasonably sure this film was pitched somewhere, in some room, as a cross between Clash of the Titans and 300. It has the former's mythological Greek setting and the latter's fetishistic sadism masquerading as a celebration of genuine military virtues. Mickey Rourke plays Hyperion, a hulk of a king who incessantly spits his food, chews with his mouth open, and slobbers over his beard. Rourke is a fine actor, but he is in a film where characters are given stock symbolic mannerisms to symbolize what the lack of a coherent plot cannot. He is pillaging towns trying to find and capture Phaedra, a "virgin oracle" who will have the ability to tell him where a supernaturally powerful bow has been hidden. He plans to use the bow to release the titans, a race of immortals imprisoned by the gods of Olympus after a war in heaven. Henry Cavill plays Theseus, a peasant that Zeus proclaims may be the only one who can stop Hyperion and of whom he paradoxically commands that no god must assist. The rationale? If the gods want the humans to have faith in them, they (the gods) must have faith in humans.

Henry Cavill as Theseus

Henry Cavill as Theseus

It would be simple enough after a brief plot description to go into full satirical mode, attempting to show how bad the film is by how easily it is mocked. It would be easier still, I suppose, to compose yet another jeremiad—a lament over the newest nadir in the history of vain attempts to quantify a film's offensiveness by dividing its potential artistic value by the extent of its gratuitous objectionable content. Such responses are themselves clichés, however, and I fear all they really do is provide the makers of a bad movie with an evasive scapegoat with which to drum up support through identity politics that can't be earned through artistic merit. Plus, I don't really think anyone who is likely to share my objections to the film on these terms needs me (or anyone, really) to tell them that it is cruelly, barbarously, savagely, callously, inhumanely, pitilessly (on both its characters and its audience) violent and hence likely to offend his or her sensibilities as such.

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There is plenty in the film to earn a bad judgment, but let me just mention in passing a subtler, more disappointing fault of the film that is about what is not in it: emotion. It is not merely that the violence desensitizes us, although it does. It is also that the lack of any semblance of humanity in those who wield it or those who suffer its effects renders the consequences of that violence devoid of any larger meaning or power.

Mickey Rourke as King Hyperion

Mickey Rourke as King Hyperion

The great literary critic Erich Auerbach made this point brilliantly in "Odysseus' Scar," the first chapter in his book Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. In it, he ponders why Old Testament narratives carry with them so much more emotional weight than do narratives in classical mythology. For Christians, the answer may seem obvious enough: the figures described in the narrative are actual people and not merely abstract representations of ideals. A lot of things happen to Odysseus, but he never changes. Like the modern comic book character he is frozen in time (think of the frescoes in Immortals' postscript), simply moving from battle to battle but never developing or changing as a result of them.

Freida Pinto as Phaedra

Freida Pinto as Phaedra

Our hero, Theseus, has all the flat, unchanging static-ness of a stock character. He sees his mother's throat cut before his eyes and he screams and promises (and eventually delivers) vengeance but it is a back story event, not a life-changing one. Other than when he says the words "witness hell" before slitting one character's throat, one sees no evidence that he ever thinks about this experience, much less that it alters him in any way. Compare the depiction of traumatic violence here to Braveheart or Rob Roy. Both of those films are action films, with no more pretensions toward realism (honesty) than Immortals, yet they recognize that the measure of violence's horrific essence lies its life-altering psychological impact even more so than the speed or creativity with which the body is dismembered.

Stephen Dorff as Stavros

Stephen Dorff as Stavros

When Phaedra witnesses the burnt skin of her sisters who have been boiled alive she screams, and screams, and screams. For a good ten seconds she screams. And then we move on to the next battle and the next depiction of horrific violence that will draw either momentary screams (if they are visited against the virtuous) or enthusiastic squeals of approval (if they are visited in vengeance upon the wicked), and, ultimately, a promise that if enough people pluck down fifteen dollars for 3D glasses we can do it again in two year's time with Theseus' son on deck to take dad's place in an eternal line of never-ending heroes upon whom the god's smile because they are much more skillful at delivering pain and death than those who do so only for their own (and our) entertainment.

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Talk About It

Discussion starters
  1. How does the film define divinity in the prologue and epilogue? What are the implications of defining divinity not as an innate quality but a characteristic that is achieved through action?
  2. What is Manichaeism? How does the film as a whole, and the film's epilogue in particular, express a Manichean worldview?
  3. Phaedra's ability to foretell the future is described as both a blessing and a curse. Does the film's perspective portray it as one more than the other? What is the difference, if any, between foretelling the future and the biblical conception of prophecy?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Immortals is rated R for extreme, pervasive violence, gore, brief nudity, and sexual situations. The violence is shown in graphic detail—decapitations, impalement, severed body parts, heads exploding upon impact with weapons—and includes depictions of battle violence and sustained, personal torture. A captured slave cuts his own tongue out. A woman has her throat cut in front of her son. A man's legs are spread and he is sledgehammered in his genitalia. A priest is doused in oil and burnt alive. Three priestesses are encased in a metal bull and placed over an open fire to be boiled alive. And on, and on, and on. There is one sex scene with brief nudity—Pinto's character is shown briefly from behind after dropping her robe and before climbing into bed with Theseus. A female character is called a "whore." The prologue asserts that the gods are designated as such because they are self-declared and not through any innate difference from the titans.

Immortals
Our Rating
1 Star - Weak
Average Rating
 
(7 user ratings)ADD YOURSHelp
Mpaa Rating
R (for extreme, pervasive violence, gore, brief nudity, and sexual situations)
Genre
Directed By
Tarsem Singh
Run Time
1 hour 50 minutes
Cast
Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, John Hurt
Theatre Release
November 11, 2011 by Relativity Media
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