2005.08.27
Immortal
ImmortalQuite a while back I came across a reference to a French science fiction movie being produced called Immortel (imdb). It looked really good and I posted it to OOKEE.com. That was a long time ago and while the film had been released in Europe it didn’t look like it was ever going to be seen here. Time went on and I forgot all about it.
Then a few weeks ago Jon E. asked me about it. I don’t know what got him thinking about it, but I looked it up and sure enough, it was available on DVD. Excellent! I ordered it post haste and waited for an appropriate Geek Night to show it. As the DVD title is officially called Immortal and not Immortel I’ll use the English spelling. Weirdly, though the film is French the language used is English for almost all dialogue.
Immortal and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow both have something in common; they both claim to be the first films in which every background and interior -and in the case of Immortal many people and props- are completely computer generated while the actors are real. Very ambitious and very difficult to pull off. Immortal did a fairly good job creating interesting and moody environments but most of it felt too artificial. They used real actors in motion capture suits to create CGI characters. The movement of some of these characters was very natural, but the faces still felt plastic. This is a problem with any CGI and which WETA worked so hard on for the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.
The interest, success and failure of the technical aspects of the film can be forgiven, however, if the movie has a good story to tell. This is where Immortal has its Achilles Heel. Perhaps a better analogy would be to say this is where it has its hemorrhaging wound from being shot repeatedly at close range by a shotgun. Horus (yes, the god) is condemned by his fellows to death, but before that happens they allow him to come to Earth. Why? We don’t know. Horus decides he wants to procreate and this is only possible for him with a very special and rare type of creature. Earth happens to have one. This I understand; I think I wouldn’t mind having a romp one last time before death.
Then things get confusing. Horus is a god, right? So why does he go around searching for a human host? Possibly because he has no corporeal form, but he does. It’s odd. Why did they choose the previous leader of a rebellion for Horus to possess? No idea, and almost unimportant since the rebellion and his place in it bears almost no impact on the story line.
There is more I could say, but I won’t because I don’t want to give up spoilers. I just found much of what happened confusing. Characters seemed to be introduced with no purpose and their individual story lines are never completed. To me the story was terribly hacked together and sloppy. I can see where a potentially great story lies hidden within. I wish they’d worked more on it.
My biggest gripe, though, is that there was no humor in the whole film. There was some ironic smiling at times by the characters, but there was no laughter. It’s almost like they were trying to be too cool for something as basic as humor. It was very missed. I won’t say the movie is not watchable because I sat through the whole thing, but unless you are very interested in special effects, enjoy difficult to discern plots, can’t wait to see Linda Hardy naked or are a hard core science fiction fan you might want to pass on this one.
Categorized: movies
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3 Responses to “Immortal”
- Mookee says (August 28th, 2005 at 02:23:54 )
A much better analysis would be, “This movie sucked, leave it at that.” It deserves no more type than that.
- odd says (August 30th, 2005 at 01:59:45 )
Only MST3King the film let me get through this one. It’s got some great visuals, but the story bites too much to make it worth watching seriously.
- dugh says (August 30th, 2005 at 05:01:47 )
Somehow…
We all managed to get through it without excess talk or falling asleep. I mean it does have great FX, I just wish it had great story, too.
