Big budget fantasy has always proven to be incredibly hit-or-miss, but at the very least you’d expect some stunning visuals to try and compensate for any notable storytelling deficiencies. Tarsem Singh’s Immortals is pretty much the genre’s dictionary definition of style over substance, but it’s become lost to the sands of cinematic time in the 11 years since it was released.
In all honesty, that’s not exactly unsurprising when critics and audiences are in total agreement that its a below average slice of fantastical escapism – based on the identical Rotten Tomatoes scores of 49 percent, anyway. A $226 million haul at the box office on a $75 million budget ensured it was a decent-sized hit, though, but it quickly faded from memory.
That being said, Immortals has been drumming up plenty of support after being dragged kicking and screaming into the light of renewed relevancy, with an outpouring of adulation being heaped on the expensive epic that time forgot.
You’d have thought an early action hero role for a pre-Man of Steel Henry Cavill would be more than enough to keep Immortals in the limelight, but even the actor’s enduring popularity hasn’t been enough to keep the movie’s head above pop culture waters. The story is admittedly lacking, but the visuals are undeniably jaw-dropping, with some expertly-choreographed action sequences arriving to shake off the stupor of a subpar narrative.
We’re not trying to say that Immortals is an unfairly overlooked classic that deserves to be put back onto a godly pedestal, but it’s definitely a blockbuster historical fantasy that deserves to be spoken about more often for no other reason than it’s exceptionally well-crafted.
