The pretty =/= the good

[trinityvixen]

As jethrien and xannoside and glvalentine have all pointed out, Immortals is a mess. There are moments of brilliance and beauty floating through a sea of shit. The minotaur? Awesome concept, well executed design. The costumes? Superb, even if, as mithras03 pointed out, Theseus should not have been wearing pants. (I agreed with her, but for completely different reasons.) Of course, for every awesome costume, there was Poseidon's hat. Yeeaaaaaah...when your pantheon features extras from a gay German disco, maybe it's time to rethink.

I get why it's hard to re-write Greek myth. I do. The will/rule of the gods is capricious and confusing and movies require rules that are easier to understand. Even movies about tricksters have rules. (Rule #1: Satan is always going to fuck you. Do not make deals with Satan.) Greek myth has no binary moral code. Worse, the gods interfere with humans all the goddamned time, so it's hard to keep them from their deus ex machinations. Immortals tried to bench the supernatural A team. (That the B team--Hades, possibly Apollo, Hera--are never even in the movie is another issue.) It didn't work, but I understand why they tried.

But when you come right down to it, the movie made no sense, and what little sense it did make made me dangerously sympathetic to Mickey Rourke's character because because fuck the gods that's why. Little pricks who can't be arsed to do anything to spare human bloodshed until it looks like they might have to suffer a day in their life...

Comments

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

It shouldn't actually be that hard. Greek gods are soap opera in the sky. They make all kinds of mistakes and bicker all the time. There should be no trouble creating tension--the Greek myths are awesome. Heck, just film that.

This was a bad superhero movie with gold togas and a superfluous Judeo-Christian sensibility. And pretty visuals. Pretty, baffling, sometimes completely ridiculous visuals.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

What's fun to read about is harder to translate to film where, for better or worse, the conditions of audience expectation hamstring things a bit. I agree the myths are fun, but they're hard to work into a movie that will be similarly fun. Otherwise, one would have been made by now...

This was a bad superhero movie with gold togas and a superfluous Judeo-Christian sensibility. And pretty visuals. Pretty, baffling, sometimes completely ridiculous visuals.

This I agree with completely.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

I agree the myths are fun, but they're hard to work into a movie that will be similarly fun. Otherwise, one would have been made by now...

Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans (the original) are perfectly fun if not necessarily good. Heck, the new Clash could have been fun if the action setpieces hadn't looked like crap despite the $100M spent on them.

I grant some of the more esoteric myths are tough and would be difficult to bring to screen. Like Arachne, which is less Greek God-like and more a Project Runway episode where the bitchy contestant is a goddess with the power of life and death.... Ok, bad example.

They should just treat the gods like the whiny office manager in comedy films - they hold absolute power over the main character, they fuck people over at will, but every once in a while, someone gets to kick them in nads, either figuratively or literally.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Clash of the Titans is cheesy, old or new. Not entirely without fun moments, but not exactly something to revisit. And certainly nowhere near good.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

The first one is wonderfully campy and still fun years after I had first seen it. I don't know if that's what they were going for, true, but I don't care. It is fun.

The new one...was just kind of boring. It shouldn't have been. But everything just felt ho-hum and a waste of time, and I didn't even pay any money for it.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Up is pretty!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Are you going to act? No? Then I'm going to act twice as hard.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

for better or worse, the conditions of audience expectation hamstring things a bit.

This is the fundamental problem with modern cinema. Nobody's bothering to do anything interesting, they just want to serve up the same slop everyone paid for last month.