I have been busy, my friends. This has been a week of weeks and I am very glad it is over. I am especially looking forward to Thanksgiving break in a week. I will enjoy it and then I will enjoy having only two weeks before winter break even more!

Ravi Mangla asked me some questions about reading for his Recommended Reading blog. I have a thing (that being the technical term) in Red Lightbulbs. I wrote an essay about Troy Davis and personhood and the glut of information we face and staving off numbness for The Rumpus and then I wrote another vocabulary primer, also for The Rumpus to clarify the difference between sex scandal and sexual violence scandal.

Late this afternoon, after work, I went to the movie theatre and saw something that could technically be called a movie because I paid money for a ticket in a building generally known as a theatre and then I sat in a seat with 3D glasses on and watched a series of images displayed across the screen for approximately two hours. Other than that, any resemblance to a movie and the…appalling trash I saw are nonexistent.

I’ve ranted about 3D before so I won’t belabor my points too much. They can be summarized thusly: 3D is stupid. 3D is also the ultimate cockblocker. You’re already aggravated before the movie starts because you have a required accessory and who wants to deal with that? You’re also paying a premium for the 3D shittiness. The third dimension is salt in the wound. At the theatre I go to, 3D is $3 extra or one dollar for each shitty dimension. Because it’s Friday, I paid $11.50 for my ticket when normally I pay $4 so I was, as you might imagine, mildly traumatized and resentful. Before I tell you which movie I saw, let me tell you that there was no third dimension in this movie. Nothing flew out from the screen awkwardly like, say, the shark in Shark Night that flew into the tree (LOLOLOLOMGWHUT). It was literally like… Dianetics–all bullshit. It was fake 3D. Offensively fake.

This was the first movie I’ve seen in a while where people walked out after like fifteen minutes. There was one scene, toward the end of the movie, that was so obscenely horrifying, gratuitous, and gross, that I, myself, almost walked out and that is… saying something. I’ve seen Shark Night.

The movie: Immortals. Now, my original plan was to see J. Edgar today but I decided to save that for tomorrow because I wanted a good laugh and thought, yes, let me go see a movie I know nothing about because the man on that poster is super hot. Sometimes, that is all it takes.

This movie has about half a thing going for it–lots of men in ye olde time skirts and they had amazing thighs. I love a thick, muscular thigh so in that regard, I was very happy. In every other regard I was either bemused, offended, horrified, or fucking disgusted.

It’s time for a Come to Jesus meeting with Hollywood. Really, enough is enough. I’m all for stupid movies and bad movies and absurd movies but there is a line between ha ha Hollywood is terrible and OMFG HOLLYWOOD IS A NIGHTMARE and we are now, officially, past that line.

I get most of my education on Greek mythology from the movies so I don’t know what parts were true and what weren’t. I know there was a Greek god named Zeus and he was powerful but he’s so different in every movie. Zeus in Percy Jackson, for example, was quite different from Zeus in Clash of the Titans. Zeus in this movie is… well, pretty uninteresting as the God of Gods. Also, he wears a cape, so there’s that.

Things happen in this movie but there’s not really a plot. The thinking seemed to be that working, vaguely, within Greek mythology would suffice.

When the movie opens, Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire Lady), sits up, gasping. The poor lass has had a bad dream and we see that dream–an apocalyptic vision involving King Hyperion freeing the Titans, a dream so muddled it is rendered incoherent and because this is how the movie begins, we have no context for making sense of it. Then, the camera pans out a bit and we see that there are four women of color, laying on a round bed.  Four magical negroes (euphemistically), for the price of one! They are virgin oracles. They speak some weird language at times with subtitles and other times they speak English which begs the question, why not just speak one language? This question will drive me fucking crazy for the next two hours.

As that scene fades, the camera zooms over a body of water and we get a brief history lesson that I tuned out because if you need to give me about three minutes of talkity talk to catch me up on what’s going on in the movie before the movie even starts, your script sucks.

Then the camera pans to some random place and there’s an old guy (John Hurt) and a hot guy (Henry Cavill) and the hot guy is hitting a piece of wood with something but he’s not cutting the wood. He doesn’t seem to be trying to break the wood. Later, there will be a Karate Kid moment where he reminisces learning to sword fight by hitting a bare tree with a stick. In this scene, he is just hitting the wood and having a life lesson chat with the old guy. The old guy urges him to be willing to fight for his people and the young guy, his name is Theseus, says, “I fight for that which I love,” or something like that and the old guy nods and smiles wryly and looks aged and then the old guy basically says, “When are you going to settle down and give your mother grandchildren?” That’s what life really comes down to, isn’t it? Whether we’re talking about the Ancient Greeks or citizens of today’s world, what matters most is progeny and pressure from parental figures to procreate and give them grandbabies, not that I am sensitive on this point or anything. Well, Theseus is not at all interested. He’s basically all, GET OFF MY BACK I DONT WANT A WIFE OR BABY! He just wants to be gorgeous and thickly muscled and he wants to hit wood.

Let a man live the dream.

Let me watch that man living his dream.

Elsewhere in mythology, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke being very, very Mickey Rourke) is taking over this temple because he wants to find the virgin oracle and get a magic bow called the Epirus Bow. He is a very angry king who wants to destroy everything because his wife and children were taken by some plague and if the people he loves are dead, no one gets to love. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Rourke imitates, in every way, the Germanic leader in King Arthur, down to the strange grunt talk, hair style, and wardrobe.

Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:

There is a lot of magic in this movie. We don’t really know why this bow is so special but Hyperion wants it and, apparently, what Hyperion wants, Hyperion gets. There are monks but they won’t divulge the location of the oracle(s). Hyperion mad! Hyperion make threat! Hyperion destroy!

As Theseus and the old guy head back to their village they chat amicably. Suddenly an older woman appears. She’ll say about oh, seven lines. She’s Theseus’s mother and she seems sickly but that is never articulated so then you just assume she’s… ragged because it’s the olden times and life was harsher then. She’s coming out of a temple with a guy with a funny candle hat on.

A note about the headware, fine, the haberdashery, and costumery in this movie: someone was smoking a liberal quantity of crack. Period. Take the costumes from Alexander and 300 and ruin them in every way possible and you’ll be close to what was going on in Immortals.

Theseus makes a crack about the funny candle hat. The mother says something “profound” about faith and gives him some wisdom about settling down and he essentially says, I’m a fighter not a lover. He just wants to be left alone with his sword so he can hit wood. I would like to help him hit his wood. Ahem. Their home is a TERRIBLE set that looks like a trailer, BC style, but not a good trailer–a creepy one where bad things happen. The rest of the village is about oh, fifteen feet of space. The pan shot makes it seem like the village is built into the hills but all we ever see are about three homes and the fifteen feet of space, and then a steep cliff. It’s amazingly, amazingly terrible and bad.

Suddenly, there’s a ringing at the “edge” of the village, or fourteen feet away, and then there are soldiers and Theseus gets aggro but it’s just some Hellenic soldiers, there to evacuate the village. Okay, things get inexplicable from this point forward, I mean, more than before. One of the soldiers, Lysander, for reasons that are never explained, really doesn’t like Theseus. As Theseus and his mother prepare to follow everyone out of town to “the wall” for safety, Lysander stops him and says they have to leave the next day, without a military escort because they are peasants. The disgust in his voice when Lysander spits out the word peasant is epic. It’s like they have a disease called “the poors,” and he does not want to catch it. His commander intervenes after Lysander calls Theseus’s mother a whore (somehow Lysander knows there’s no baby daddy in the picture) and Theseus gets all up in that mofo’s face and the commander assures Theseus they will have an escort the next day and Theseus wraps his arms around his mother and leads her back to their trailer like a good son. He’s a total mama’s boy.

When they’re out of sight, the commander fires Lysander and takes his spear and shield (like oooh that’s so terrible?!), and Lysander huffs off, his skirts swishing around his spindly thighs. Later that night, he goes to the edge of town near the warning gong and two soldiers are chilling, chatting, and acting horrendously. One of them says, “I thought you were fired,” and Lysander says, “I was,” and then, OUT OF NOWHERE, he kills them dead and disappears into the night.

The old man is walking through the courtyard and he says, “Show yourself,” because he senses something. We can clearly see a woman, painted like the wall, against the wall but I guess we’re supposed to pretend we can’t see her? I’m not sure. The old man says, “Show yourself!” again, and she does and she does a bit of a twirl and she’s suddenly golden and shiny and it’s Athena. The old man does a twirl of his cape and suddenly he is young and fit and not altogether hideous and it is Zeus and they chat and head up to Mount Olympus or God Heaven (they never quite say) even though they are needed on earth. There’s a bit of exposition about how law dictates that they cannot intervene in the matters of men unless the Titans are unleashed. Zeus has done all he can by trying to influence, as a man, young Theseus to take up the causes of his people.

Throughout the movie we’ll see scenes with the gods, laying about God Heaven rather listlessly. They are so damn emo, BC style, lamenting Hyerpion’s unwillingness to play fair at war and wanting to do something and Zeus being a total prick, reminding his underlings of the stupid law. They lay around just, sad sad sad. It’s so rough being beautiful, buff, and immortal. It really is.

Their haberdashery truly is outstandingly terrible. One god had like a gold metal mohawk. He’s mad he has to wear this helmet thing:

Another had a series of gold metal… shapes on his head in a weird pattern attached to some Princess Leia cinnamon buns.

I’m not making this up:

I am pretty sure this guy is in those Twilight movies. He does the same face acting there and that’s how I knew it was the same guy: Look at me. I am so pretty and I have cheekbones and no matter what movie I’m in, I am immortal.

I laughed openly throughout Immortals because it was too much. It was just too much. Also, I have never seen more man nipple in my life. There is so much man nipple it becomes a distraction. What I mean to say is that man nipples were flagrantly displayed. There was also a bizarre absence of most of the men. Did they get some kind of group waxing discount? Inquiring minds…

Meanwhile, Lysander skulks off to the temple where Hyperion is hiding out and at this point, the movie becomes gratuitously, shamefully, unimaginably grotesque. There is no purpose or artistry to it. The grotesqueness of this movie makes Hostel and the Saw franchise seem tasteful and nuanced. A guard leads that little bitch Lysander through some kind of courtyard in front of a huge concrete building. As with any movie set before like 1300 AD, there are wooden ladders propped up against stone buildings and clay pots and the sound of clanking and the vibe of oppression and such. Think about it. Any movie like Apocalypto, the Ten Commandments, 10,000 BC and every movie EVER made about primitive cultures, you see the same features whether we’re talking about ancient Greece or ancient Mexico or ancient Egypt or imaginary places.

(Real talk: from this point forward, you will see such movies and feel what I am saying here.)

As they walk through a courtyard, we see a huge metal bull under which a fire burns. This is going to nag at you for a really long time because it’s like, why is there a fire under the bull? Is it a false idol? Didn’t God tell us about this? Every now and then, you’ll see smoke come out of the bull’s nostrils, and this bull will appear about three more times and each time you’ll think, there’s a reason why I’m being shown this but I’m not sure what that reason is. When you figure out the reason, I assure you, there may be vomit. I have never been so scandalized at a movie.

Yes, now I’m just being a bit of a tease but don’t worry. We’ll get there.

In a chamber, Hyperion seems to be sitting on the toilet, SWEAR TO GOD, even though, back then, people kind of just shit in the street while they were walking. His legs are bare. We see the disembodied legs of a female but never see her face. He’s eating some kind of fruit and does so loudly and grossly and every now and again, throws the leftovers in some kind of bowl of liquid and his dietary offal. The guard proceeds to move Lysander through the room, shoving him to his knees every now and again, like the dude is a chess piece. There is no… method to this madness so it’s weird. Lysander says, “I am here to serve you, my King,” and Hyperion is all, “I’m not your king, bitch!” Lysander doesn’t care though–he is no stranger to the charms of debasement. He says, “I want you to be my king, sire,” then tells Hyperion about his village where there are lots of women to rape and weapons and men for slaves. Good times!

Hyperion is a baller. He says, “I’ve got all that, thanks.”

Then one of the monks is brought in. He’s looking pretty tore up and Hyperion says, “You’re going to tell me where the virgin oracle is.” The monk, look, this guy is RIDE OR DIE. I want this dude at my side in a fight, for real. Should end times come, I am going to this guy’s temple. He grabs the guard’s knife and clutches it to his chest and Hyperion is all calm, just shakes his head kind of sadly and tells us that this order of monks won’t kill others and they won’t kill themselves so basically, HA HA! You’re just holding onto a knife. Ride or Die gives a little shrug as if to say, eh, you’re right and then, HE SLICES OFF HIS OWN TONGUE. Gangsta. The only thing that would have made this scene more horribly awesome would have been if Ride or Die had taken the sliced off tongue and thrown it at Hyperion’s feet while mouthing, “Take that, motherfucker.”

Hyperion is undeterred. He nods to the guard, a very huge man wearing a beast head helmet, and says, “We can make you talk without a tongue,” and it is all very ominous and we don’t know what’s going to happen to Ride or Die but it won’t be good. When I finally figured it out, I was mildly devastated.

Hyperion returns his attention to Lysander who is pissing himself at this point. Earlier, Hyperion, had said, “You’re a traitor which means you’re a coward and I have no need for cowards.” Lysander totes prostrated himself before Hyperion and still begged to serve him. There’s no sense to his behavior so it’s uncomfortable to watch. Hyperion agrees to let Lysander serve him but there are some conditions.  Hyperion starts doing this crazy man talk about how his face will be seen all over the world throughout time, demonstrating some real confidence in his semen. He says that because Lysander is a traitorous coward, he doesn’t get that right–his name will die with him. The beast guy, who has returned, takes this claw weapon and slices it across Lysander’s face because all of Hyperion’s people have horribly scarred faces. Then, ugh, the beast guy takes a huge, and I do mean HUGE, hammer, kicks Lysander’s legs apart, swings mightily, and basically breaks the guy’s penis and testicles. It’s… so… excessive. As you might imagine, Lysander loses his shit but he also becomes Hyperion’s (dis)loyal slave as if that makes perfect sense.

This was when people started walking out and frankly, they were not without ample reason.

Back in the fifteen foot village, Theseus is gallivanting about and on his way back he sees that Hyperion and his men are raping and pillaging. He seems his mom being attacked and springs into action. One man, like fifty soldiers, no prob. He starts running through the place slicing and dicing like a Greek Ginsu Knife but eventually he is subdued. Hyperion grab’s Theseus’s mother and shoves her to her knees and whips out his knife and he has his men force Theseus to watch and then he slits the woman’s throat and says, in a creepy hoarse voice, “Now you know hell.” He’ll regret that, I assure you.

Men are slogging through… a place, carrying big pieces of wood. They are in chains. This means they are slaves. They are taken to a place where there is a pool of water and a tower and in the tower are the oracles. They are being guarded. The oracles come out for a sip of water while the men get some water. Theseus has lost his will to live so he doesn’t bother wetting his lips. He just slumps against the wall looking dirty sexy, the kind of dirty sexy that makes you conflicted–do I wash him first or have my way with him first?

The answer is simple: shower sex.

At the pool, Freida Pinto notices a brand on Stephen Dorff’s hand. With little introduction, he is thusly brought into the movie as a major character. OF COURSE! She says, “You’re a thief,” and he’s pretty proud of that fact. He says, “Yes, I am.” She tells him to be prepared to steal away in the middle of the night and to make sure to get the sad sack against the wall looking pretty and he’s all, “that dumbass doesn’t want to live,” and she says, “Just do as I say,.” As she walks away, she stops, touches Theseus, and spits all the water from her mouth into his. She tells him to fight to live.

I hope to never be so thirsty as to accept water from another human being’s mouth.

Inside her tower with the other oracles, or as I started to call them in my head, the Divine Ya-Ya Sisterhood, they blah blah blah and act terribly and overcome their guards and it turns out only one of them is the real oracle. It’s not hard to figure out. She’s the actress you actually recognize instead of Black Girl #1 next to her.

 

YA YA! By the end of the The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, I was ready to banish the letters “y” and “a” from the alphabet.

The oracle and the thief and Theseus and the Ride or Die monk steal away in the middle of the night and go to this port. They see a boat making its way toward them and decide to steal it but when they try to board there are a bunch of soldiers who were hiding in the hull. A defiant Poseidon decides to fly down from God Heaven and create a huge wave that kills everyone but this little group and then everything’s covered in oil (????) and the oracle has a vision and demands that Theseus return to his village to properly bury his mother. He does as he’s told because she’s hot and he buries his mother and in a shocking coincidence, uncovers the magic bow. Before he can leave the crypt, the beast guy from Hyperion’s realm appears and they tussle and Theseus wins because he’s the hero and that’s what heroes do. He emerges triumphantly with the beast’s head in one hand and the bow in the other but he’s sickly because the beast’s blade was poisoned. He sees his friends being held captive by Hyperion’s men so he uses the bow to save them. Turns out, when you pull it back, an electrified arrow appears! OMGSOMAGICK!

BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!!!

When Theseus wakes up (wait, what???), he’s in a room and Freida is there looking fly and you can practically hear the boom chicka wow wow. They start to kiss and then she stands and walks away and Theseus is laying on his cot with an expression on his face that says, “Fucking virgins, man.” But wait! There’s a twist! Freida slips out of her robe and is stark naked and slips back into bed and under Theseus, and can you blame her? No. Even though she will lose her magic powers when her hymen is pierced, she wants to do it. She says, “I want to see with my own eyes and feel with my own skin and love with my own heart,” or something like that and Theseus, bastard, is all, NO PROBLEM and he totally pops her cherry. True love, apparently does not wait. It’s so… fucked up when you think about it. Her hymen basically has magical powers and then there are overtones of virginity as a curse and it’s a hot muddled mess.

In the morning, when they walk outside, Stephen Dorff can totally tell they boned and he makes a nice little crass comment. I cannot express enough how well he is aging and how tasty he is. HIs chest muscles are exquisite. Mmm. Yes.

The other oracles are taken to Hyperion and they’re completely beat to hell and he reprimands his men for hurting them but they won’t disclose the location of the fourth oracle, what with their duty being to protect her at all costs, so he says, ominously, “You will know a pain like no other.” I’m paraphrasing, of course.

The small group heads to the temple where they think Hyperion is only to find it abandoned. All of a sudden, we see the bull and there’s smoke coming out of its nostrils and Ride or Die monk freaks the fuck out and everyone’s staring at him like, what is that dude’s problem, like, other than not having a tongue? He runs over to the bull and starts trying to push it over but he’s just one man and he can’t talk so he just continues losing it and finally, the gang gets a clue and they help him and after a lot of effort, they push the bull over and it opens and turns out, YOU CAN STORE PEOPLE IN THERE. When the bull fell over, and the casing opened, the three oracles were in there, their skin bubbly and burnt and they were still alive but clearly in agony.

At this moment, all the horrifying pieces started to fall together, how the director obsessively showed us this bull and how Ride or Die had some pretty bad burns and why he freaked out so much. It was just too much. Cooking people as torture? Really? This is where I reached my limit.

As they try to make sense of the horror, and Freida tries to minister to her boiled friends, they are suddenly surrounded by soldiers and it is clear there is no hope but the Gods intervene and Athena and Ares shoot down to earth and kill the bad guys and then Zeus shows up and he is fucking pissed.

DO NOT DISOBEY ZEUS!

He breaks out his whip and strikes Ares down.

Then he glares at Athena, gives her a stern look that says, “Daddy is displeased,” then he points up to the heavens and says, “GO TO YOUR ROOM!”

The survivors go to this wall and it’s twelve feet thick and it’s pretty safe behind it. This wall is pretty much The Black Gate from Lord of the Rings.

There, Theseus runs into the Commander who was nice to him back in his village and the guy takes Theseus to see the Hellenic leader and the leader’s a total snob and wants to negotiate, kind of like in Braveheart, another movie where men wear skirts, when the Scottish Royals were trying to negotiate for more lands with Longshanks. Theseus is NOT HAVING it so he stomps off petulantly. There are, perhaps, 200 or so soldiers behind the wall. On the other side? Hyperion and about 20,000 soldiers. No problem. this is the movies.

After a failed negotiation where Hyperion tries to get Theseus to stand by him, Theseus tries to motivate the 200 soldiers and starts babbling about the same shit movie heroes always say. He looked like this, but in Greek wear.

He gets the men all riled up which is something because they were totes ready to surrender, had already thrown down their shields like a bunch of wimps. I’m pretty sure those amazing thighs had something to do with it.

Hyperion has the magic bow now and he unleashes the Titans so now the Gods swoop in and save the day and Hyperion dies by Theseus’s hand and Theseus dies but he leaves behind a son, borne unto him by the deflowered virgin oracle and the ending that follows is too ridiculous for me to tell you about. It’s an embarrassment to the idea of a movie.

Also, there’s this:

See what I mean about the haberdashery? His hat is trying to eat his face. This movie will eat your soul. Do not eat before you go see it. That doesn’t end well, I assure you. In the meanwhile, Hollywood, I am very disappointed in you. Go to your room and think about what you have done.