Movies

The big problem with Immortals is that it never bothers explaining why you should care about anything going on in it. There's plenty of big-budget action scenes and eye-popping scenery, but the overwhelming emotion it all arouses is: "So what?"

This is the fault of the plot, a mash-up of ancient Greek myths that leaps from one scene to the next, seemingly at random. It's like the movie is fast-forwarding through its exposition, character-building and all that boring stuff that might give audiences a reason to invest in what they're watching.

The story focuses on Theseus (the next Superman, Henry Cavill), a muscly mummy's boy dragged into a war on the gods waged by Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), a king trying to find a legendary bow so he can destroy Mount Olympus. Or something. Theseus is super-important to this war, though it's never really clear why.

Even Theseus himself doesn't seem to care much about the war, but a drop-dead gorgeous oracle called
Phaedra (Freida Pinto) convinces him to find the bow so he can ... do something with it? Again, it's not really clear.

All this nonsense is watched over by the gods themselves, including Zeus (Luke Evans), Athena (Isabel Lucas) and Poseidon (Kellan Lutz), who don't do much except stand around Mount Olympus wearing silly outfits and bickering with each other.

There's never any momentum to the story, or any feeling that Theseus's adventures matter. There aren't even many light moments, so it's humourless as well as boring, and the cast all seem wooden as they struggle to work with the script.

On the bright side, Immortals is visually fantastic. The scenery looks incredible — so does the frequently half-naked cast — and there are some impressive fight scenes, though it's a shame most of them are too gratuitously violent.