SAN FRANCISCO – It’s going to be hard to avoid comparing “Immortals” to “300.” The two films share similar producers, a similarly exhaustive use of green screen and at least a tangentially similar historical-cultural backdrop.
The teaser trailer for “Immortals” was screened on Saturday (April 2) for a packed Esplanade ballroom at San Francisco’s WonderCon, as the crowd became the first people to see any footage from director Tarsem Singh’s follow-up to 2006′s labor-of-love “The Fall.” And you can expect the comparisons to “300″ to only increase.
Having scene the footage, here’s how I can best explain the difference:
Zack Snyder isn’t a great storyteller, but he has an unfailing eye for things that look “cool.” Tarsem Singh — many light years better as a stylist than Snyder — isn’t a great storyteller, but he has an unfailing eye for things that look “beautiful.” I vividly remember the experience of watching the first “300″ footage at Comic-Con and being impressed by its coolness (which perhaps led directly to eventually being let down by its leaden sense of drama). Watching the tease for “Immortals,” its coolness didn’t overwhelm me, but I was amazed by the compositional beauty of every frame.
In the panel that was sandwiched between the two airings of the teaser — expertly moderated by HitFix’s Drew McWeeny — Singh repeatedly described “Immortals” as “Caravaggio meets ‘Fight Club’” and as bizarre as that amalgamation may sound, it actually made sense with the context of the clips.
[More on the "Immortals" teaser and the "Immortals" panel after the break...]
“You can never do anything from literature or mythology without pissing off a lot of people. You just have to decide how many you want to piss off,” Tarsem explained of the relationship between “Immortals” and Greek mythology. That’s a polite way of saying that if you were raised on Homer or Edith Hamilton, you’re not going to find all that much that makes sense.
Read the full article HERE
