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The Immortals

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th3ranger

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Ok, this is a really good movie. Any Objectivist would like this movie a lot. I really have no idea how it was made in this age!

-It glorifies the human body in a way unlike any movie I've ever seen.

Examples: (without giving anything away)

Classical style statues are shown throughout, in a serious manner

In the Titans' prison, the entire giant room is held up by four giant human bodies (male) with interlocking arms. Human statues depicted as strength incarnate are housing a prison for titans.

-Fairly decent ethics message:

The hero exemplifies pride and integrity, not sacrificing himself, sole goal is revenge.

The villain is depicted as dirty, ugly, he kills his own men for little reason. His explicit goal is to destroy humanity.

The gods (great costumes btw) love humanity and want to save it, but chose not to interfere.

Great things are achievable in this movie, as are morals in general.

Quote at the beginning and end: "All souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal AND divine." (emphasis theirs) This is narrated in front of a Greek classical style mural.

This is a really good movie. It is worth watching, in my opinion, unlike any movie in years. It's a serious romantic (like how Rand meant it) movie.

Link to trailer:

(which I admit doesn't show much of what I'm talking about, but you have to imagine, it was marketed to the 99.999% non-Objectivist world, and as a result shows almost nothing but brief (in the movie) action scenes) On that topic if it was marketed to Objectivists, it would be a completely different trailer.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1360370713/

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Oh forgot two juicy details that you all would like:

At one point a leader tries to negotiate with evil, and is killed immediately by that evil, who had open about his intentions.

Have any of you read about the crazy details of the Parthenon back in its full glory? The giant statue of a man, the general glorification of knowledge and the human form? The unbelievable precision accomplished so far in the past? All that? This movie, at times, gave me the same feeling.

Edited by th3ranger
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It was directed by the some of the same people as 300, but no, i was not talking about 300. What was your point? Were you trying to be funny? It's not quite as gratuitously violent as 300, So if you liked that movie except for the over the top violence, you'd like this one more.

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It looks like the same exact stuff 300 did. I liked 300, but I hate seeing carbon copy films

I've seen, and liked, both movies. Immortals may be in the same style as 300, but it is absolutely a distinct movie.

Things I liked about Immortals (vagueness due to me being unsure how to use the spoiler function on an iPad):

- While the hero is the son of a god, he is the hero because of his virtues and the choices he makes

- The hero is not a glory-seeker (like the tragic Achilles); instead he is motivated by justice

- A certain character breaks the law and is punished for it (as opposed to the typical pragmatic compromise of values to be seen in most movies when characters put feeings before reason or law)

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I saw Immortals and actually thought it was one of the worst movies I have seen in a long while

I get some people here seem to like the movie because they feel the hero exemplifies x, y, z good virtures, but I don't think that makes up for juts generally poor filmmaking.

I just found myself being incredibly bored throughout the whole thing, all I could think was "ok so they titans are relased in 15 minutes?, nope half and hour of random stuff" and then once the titans do get released despite the fact that their described as being just as powerful as the other gods, just on the losing side of a past conflict, instead of doing that weird warping teleport thing that the gods used to get to the titans prison, they choose to crawl around on the floor like spiders, you'd think that if you were an all powerful god imprisoned for 10000 years who had just escaped you would find something better to do than crawl around on the floor and wait for someone to kill you.

Lets not forget the costume design, especially for the gods, oh my god, the hats, the hats, they were the most ridiculous costumes I had seen in a long time, don't know how anyone could be able to keep a straight face while listing to those gods talk back in forth with their divine combination of a salad strainer and ceiling fat strapped to their heads.

Beyond that I thought the characterizations were very poor and shallow with Mickey Rourke's character being almost comically evil, its like the writers were just sitting around brainstorming ways they could get the audience to not like this guy, but instead of picking one to establish the character they picked 12 so he never develops beyond that, "ok so first he kills a puppy, so the audience knows he's a bad guy, then he goes on to kill a baby, then he defaces public property with an elderly woman being forced to watch as he draws graphic depictions of genitals".

Say what you want about the protagonist but as far as I'm concerned he was just a dime a dozen generic good looking action movie hero whose job was simply to look pretty and punch things

Above all else this movie just felt like a bunch of producers with no creativity wanting to recreate the success of 300 by randomly flipping through a book of Greek history / myths and selecting a random page and whatever story they land on trying to shoehorn it into the framework of the modern action movie.

I was not impressed.

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Just wanting to discuss the movie, not really argue, fyi, so take this post as good natured, not trying to character assassinate or anything!

Just an attempt at humor . It looks like the same exact stuff 300 did. I liked 300, but I hate seeing carbon copy films

It was made by some of the same people, so I'd kind of expect it to look similar. It's not a carbon copy; like that one year 4 or 5 "thingy from space is going to hit the earth" movies came out all from different studios? It's more like Sin City and the Spirit. Both by Frank Miller. One is not an imitation of the other.

I get some people here seem to like the movie because they feel the hero exemplifies x, y, z good virtures, but I don't think that makes up for juts generally poor filmmaking.

[...][a]

you'd think that if you were an all powerful god imprisoned for 10000 years who had just escaped you would find something better to do than crawl around on the floor and wait for someone to kill you.

Lets not forget the costume design, especially for the gods, oh my god, the hats, the hats, they were the most ridiculous costumes I had seen in a long time [...]

[c]

Beyond that I thought the characterizations were very poor and shallow with Mickey Rourke's character being almost comically evil [...]

Say what you want about the protagonist but as far as I'm concerned he was just a dime a dozen generic good looking action movie hero whose job was simply to look pretty and punch things

[d]

Above all else this movie just felt like a bunch of producers with no creativity wanting to recreate the success of 300 by randomly flipping through a book of Greek history / myths and selecting a random page and whatever story they land on trying to shoehorn it into the framework of the modern action movie.

[e]

I was not impressed.

a. I know we all expect about 7 plot twists per every half hour of movie like a Twilight Zone episode on steroids, but this movie told a solid story. That for once! Didn't try to attract viewers based on special effects (transformers) or extreme gore (any new movie basically), or sexual content. I mean, I was stunned that for once the sex scene was fairly tasteful! (they didn't show anything pointlessly it seemed like to me)

b. Yeah... I don't know what was up with that. There was definitely an unequal level of power there that was not explained. There also seemed to me more titans than were actually in the cage... (I guess there was a reason why they lost before the story began? lol)

c. How else would you know which gods they were? There would be almost no way to know unless they acted really stereotypically like in Xena or something, but I'm pretty sure that would not be an improvement over golden symbolic hats...

d. I think also they were trying to make him seem unpredictable, seeing as how they had to change the whole story of Perseus so you couldn't guess the end. If King Hyperion seems like an unpredictable mad man...

e. It was the same producers. It’s not like you can make 301... they kind of all died. This movie has modern special effects but things that happen in the movie and the character's motivations are very.... not modern in character (modern in the negative sense ha ha) in a way that is very pleasing to see on the big screen. I mentioned earlier they had to change the story of Perseus so it wouldn't be predictable, but still easily understandable. Therefore, King Hyperion! (Btw, I just did some IMDB surfing and there is going to be a 300 sequel... "300: Battle of Artemisia" (The Battle of Salamis I'm guessing))

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I liked it a lot. Visually it was stunning.

Only thing I didn't like was the appeals to faith. And the Greek king, who explicitly stated he was a man of reason and logic and skepticism, how he was so inept. Like they were saying, "Look how pathetic reason is when compared to faith".

But I could just be over-analyzing. :P

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-Fairly decent ethics message:

The hero exemplifies pride and integrity, not sacrificing himself, sole goal is revenge.

The villain is depicted as dirty, ugly, he kills his own men for little reason. His explicit goal is to destroy humanity.

The gods (great costumes btw) love humanity and want to save it, but chose not to interfere.

Great things are achievable in this movie, as are morals in general.

Quote at the beginning and end: "All souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal AND divine." (emphasis theirs) This is narrated in front of a Greek classical style mural.

Sounds pretty superficial. Overt mysticism turns me off.

The line from 300 says it all: "Immortal? We'll put that to the test."

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I liked it a lot. Visually it was stunning.

Only thing I didn't like was the appeals to faith. And the Greek king, who explicitly stated he was a man of reason and logic and skepticism, how he was so inept. Like they were saying, "Look how pathetic reason is when compared to faith".

But I could just be over-analyzing. :P

I thought his mistakes were not taking Hyperion seriously, and negotiating with a man who states that he wants to destroy humanity. I'd have to rewatch to be sure, I was mainly examing Perseus and his choices.

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