Third time's the charm: "Immortals" trailer #3

It certainly took them long enough, but the marketing team for Tarsem Singh's Immortals has finally created a halfway decent trailer for the upcoming mythology epic. Many of the scenes and shots have been shown before, but there are just a few flashes of new footage that show the detail of Tarsem's vision. The massive CGI landscapes may be uninspiring, but the smaller sets and costume design are actually starting to pop out from all of the gold and brown flooded images. If I have to make one complaint, though, it's the accents. I know that the 'use British accents for everything foreign that isn't continental European' rule has been around for a long time, but having the ancient Greeks sounding like good old English lads is going to be a distraction. Granted, I doubt this will come close to topping the unbearable awkwardness of the British, Irish, and Russian (Transylvanian?) accents that pervaded Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004), but it's still something that could prove a distraction.

Trailer #2: "Immortals"

After a disappointing first trailer, Legendary Pictures has released a second full look at their upcoming stylized Greek mythology epic Immortals. Unfortunately, little has improved. To be fair, the scenes here do seem to have more visual variety, and that one bit of slow-down-speed-up action was admittedly well done. But my problem comes down to one simple factor: the color scheme. As I said after the first trailer, director Tarsem is at the very least a genius of visual design, and his imagination always includes a wide array of colors. Here, almost everything is trying to adhere to the 300 look: shades of beige, brown, and gold. The effect actually robs the film of any visual wow-factor. That Sistine Chapel-esque fight scene would look so much better if the color scheme actually made room for brighter colors, instead of smothering everything in the glow of the above-mentioned trio. Gold is a powerful, magnificent color, yet here it feels overused to the point of being mundane. Even other colors, like red, somehow seem to lack their usual fire. I'm not even going to touch on the acting, which seems either competent or bombastic. Unless the film turns out to be a surprisingly decent action/adventure flick, the most I can hope for is that it gives Tarsem some clout in Hollywood, allowing him to pursue more projects in the vein of The Fall.

Trailer for Tarsem Singh's "Immortals" (or should we just call it '300 Pt. 2'?)

Director Tarsem Singh is no stranger to making stunningly beautiful films on a small budget. Hell, he financed The Fall entirely on his own dime. So surely, if given a $100 million budget and a Greek mythology epic, he'd go all out, free to make his vision with infinitely more freedom, yes? Actually, the opposite appears to be true, and I'm not sure if blame should fall on Singh, or the film's producers.

It should be noted that the producers also worked on Zack Snyder's 300, which might be part of the problem. Immortals has been generating buzz for its scale and imagery ever since it debuted a trailer at WonderCon a few weeks ago. And, despite all of Tarsem's visual talents, there's something off here; not a single image or sequence left an impression. It all feels too busy, and yes, too much like a 300 rip-off, only on a bigger scale (with some Clash of the Titans thrown in). Say what you will about 300, I know plenty despise it, but when that trailer first hit, I was captivated by its style and imagery. The same goes for Singh's The Fall, easily one of the most beautiful films of the past 20 years. Unfortunately, the mix of the two that is Immortals feels visually limp by comparison. Save for a few flashes of red, the color pallette is nothing but shades of gold and brown. Take a minute to compare that to The Fall, and you'll see why Tarsem's latest feels so underwhelming: