Immortals/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Broken Aesop: Let's run through a short list, shall we?
    • Theseus is told repeatedly to have faith in the gods. However, they are forbidden to help him and when they do break the rules they get fire-whipped to death.
    • Athena tells Zeus not to lose faith in humans. However, Theseus could have just twirled in place making airplane noises the whole movie and things would have played out exactly the same. He doesn't do jack to help with the Titans so why should Zeus have any faith in him?
    • Hyperion is obsessed with creating a legacy for himself through procreation. Theseus berates him saying that it's deeds, not flesh, that is immortal. HOWEVER, the movie ends with Hyperion getting a nice big place on a monument and Theseus' own fleshy legacy looking to become the next big hero.
  • Cliché Storm: Big Bad with his unstoppable army raping and pillaging the civilized world while searching for the one artifact that will release an ancient evil, with only a single chosen hero to stop him. Said hero is mentored by an aging wiseman who is not who he appears to be. Hero declares revenge on Big Bad after having his loved ones and home village destroyed, and himself enslaved. He joins up with a lovable rogue, a mute priest, and a prophetic priestess overcoming challenges until they finally find the artifact only for the Big Bad to take it and release the ancient evil. Our hero then makes a last stand, triumphs over evil, and ascends to a higher state.
  • Complete Monster: Hyperion is an extremely brutal and terrifying villain. Having been presumably devout and good enough a king to inspire fanatical loyalty in his men prior to the death of his family during a plague he blames the gods for doesn't mitigate this fact nearly enough seeing how much he's willing to risk the destruction of the human race in his selfish Rage Against the Heavens. In his first scene, he and his soldiers raid a monastery to obtain the location of the Epirus Bow from the priest there. When the priest doesn't talk, he douses him with oil and burns him alive. When the keepers of the oracle refuse to tell him as well, he executes them using the Bronze Bull, a torture device specifically designed to put people through as much pain as possible as it roasts them alive. He only gets worse. He marches his army through Greece, raping and pillaging across the land and brutally slaughtering everything in his way. One scene in particular that stands out is his raid of Theseus' home village; after his army destroys all resistance, they start carrying off the woman as slaves. When Theseus runs to his mother's aid, slaying a few soldiers, Hyperion, for no reason other than to be evil, slits Theseus mother's throat. And what is his motivation for all this? He wants to use the Epirus Bow to release the Titans, specifically for the purpose of killing the gods, all of which (aside from maybe Zeus) are portrayed sympathetically, while at the same time raping all women he comes across to leave a legacy of children across Greece. All this, combined with his love of others' pain and casual disregard for the lives of his own men (who he regularly kills for various reasons), makes it impossible for the audience not to cheer when Theseus finally kills him by pressing a knife into his throat, the same knife Hyperion had previously used to slit Thesus's mother's throat.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: It's a movie about Greek gods and Badass Normal mortals battling against various things. Of course there'll be awesome moments.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: A subtle, hard to spot one. In the battle scene between the Greeks and Hyperion's Cretian army, the two forces are charging at each other. When they make contact, one of Hyperion's mooks drop kicks one of the Greek soldiers in the face. What makes it hilarious is that he just does it out of nowhere, and it hardly has any effect on the soldier he kicked, who just gets annoyed and starts wildly stabbing at the mook while he is on the ground. About three other Greeks join in.
    • The Archon of the Greeks trying to negotiate with Hyperion; Hyperion walks up to the temple, the Archon engages conversation, and literally right in the middle of his speech, Hyperion casually walks by, holds out his sword, and cuts his head off without even looking the other way.
    • In a bit of black comedy, Hyperion checking to see if he got any blood on his nails after killing Thesus's mom in front of him. While Thesus is still restrained and screaming in anger in the background.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Even if he doesn't lose time showing he's a Complete Monster, you may hold a little sympathy for Hyperion for a while, knowing his past - a man of humble origins who became a powerful leader, yet lost his entire family to illness... You think life has driven him over the edge. Then you see the death he reserved to the three girls and understand he's beyond any redemption.
    • He Crossed it back when he killed Theseus' mother and unlike Sebastian Shaw with Erik's mother, didn't even give Theseus a chance to save her.
  • Narm: The various articles of headgear; Poseidon's and Ares's being top of the list.
  • Nightmare Fuel: The Bronze Bull. It appears to be a normal statue of a bull making odd noises when heated up. It's not until later that we find out that people are locked inside it, and then broiled alive, with a series of pipes and tubes making their screams sound like bull grunts. The worst part? This thing really existed, and was really used.
    • The nightmare fuel comes early when you realize exactly what it is from the start.
  • Special Effects Failure: In one scene late in the film, Theseus takes off the armor he was wearing. It bounces and wobbles as it hits the ground, as if made of rubber, yet should be stiff.
  • Spiritual Successor: Trailers for Immortals state "From the Producers of 300."
  • Squick: The torture scenes. Especially the bronze bull and the castration scene.
  • They Just Didn't Care: Mixing up Heracles with Hephaistos, among so many other things.
    • According to the myths, Heracles DID get to ascend to a higher plane of existence.
    • The movie tries to make Zeus out to be NICE GUY. No research books were consulted in the scripting of this movie.
    • The minotaur being a guy with a wire-mesh bull mask instead of a half-human/half-bull, Theseus being a mortal instead the son of Zeus, Hyperion being a evil king instead of the Titan of Light... the list just goes on.