Film Scenery Porn, Plot took at left at Thebes
Anyone familiar with Greek mythology will be thoroughly, thoroughly confused in this movie. Yes, you read that right. Despite ostensibly being based off the legend of Thesus, what you see on screen is unlikely to match what you know of the original myth. This is not always a bad thing; many worthy works are based off Alternate Character Interpretation or Alternate History. This film is not one of them.
Let us not beat around the bush shall we? This movie may be very pretty but it is also pretty awful. Thesus pretty much failed his way through this movie even when he had a powerful magic bow at his disposal. The Greek soldiers were pathetic and fought with the worst of Hollywood Tactics. The motives of the antagonist made almost no sense. The Greek pantheon were prevented from intervening by a Lawful Stupid Zeus which is about as far from his usual characterization as you could get. It gets to the point where Zeus is unwilling to bend his own laws to prevent a war in the heavens or even, you know, take custody of the Artifact Of Doom. Since these are his laws and there appears to be no higher power enforcing them, all you can conclude is that Zeus secretly hates his family and wishes for their death with every fibre of his being.
There is just so much in this movie that you are supposed to take on their word. Thesus is supposed to be a great person, a great warrior and a great hero. We actually do not see it all that much of this on screen. In fact if not for him, the Macguffin might have stayed safely hidden preventing the dire consequences that would befall the world if it were to fall into the wrong hands. He makes one rousing speech, fails to kill the Big Bad before he can enact his evil plan and then bam! Legendary hero.
Overall I just can't recommend this movie to anyone. If you want to see shirtless men with plenty of muscle, there are better venues. It’s not even So Bad Its Good and doing a Riff Trax of Immortals is just too easy. It is akin to celebrating enthusiastically when you win a foot race against a man in crutches. Art students may find it a good reference for the Scenery Porn alone but as a narrative there is really very little to worth to it.
Film Awful in almost all ways.
Well, almost all ways. The scenery was nice, the girl was pretty, and some effects was cool. However, that's pretty much it.
The story was nothing more than an Excuse Plot for the violence. The cosmology, theology, mythology, politics, psychology, social aspects, military strategy and so on was not even trying to make sense.
The violence was gruesome and disgusting in a way that would have fitted a serious drama about War Is Hell, but this movie seemed instead to aim for being cool and entertaining - to me, this felt like a truly awkward combination.
It was like if the producers couldn't make up their minds about what kind of movie they was trying to make. Did they even have a unified vision of what they was trying to create? If they wanted drama or tragedy, maybe they could have tried to be a bit coherent and believable? If they wanted comedy and light entertainment, maybe skip the tragedy and try to avoid coming across as if they're taking themselves seriously? If they wanted action, maybe include a bit more of glorious ass-kicking, instead of merely include a few glimmers of it in the huge pile of protagonists getting pounded on and suffer?
Again with the tragedy, it really doesn't work without well-developed characters. The main protagonist didn't even have a personality. Instead they had Zeus gushing about what a great guy the protagonist is. Ever heard about "Show, don't tell". Yet, basic storytelling seem to be lost to whoever wrote the script. If it even had an author, rather than being pieced together randomly.
Nevertheless, I had a good time watching this garbage. I had zero expectations going into the theater, and my expectations was fulfilled. I had hoped for a pleasant surprise, but I wasn't sad when it never came. Also, there was a lot of unintentional humor, like that awkward Rousing Speech the hero did, and how unprofessionally he and his fellow heroes handled the siege. Like "haha, wtf are those morons doing NOW?"
I had nice company, we got good seats, the 3D was good, and we had a good time laughing about how stupid the movie was. Also, I'm convinced that we selected the right movie, given the circumstances. We decided last minute to go to the cinema, didn't want to wait, and there's a lot of movies I have recently seen or plan to see with others soon.