Given that 300 launched to huge impact at Comic-Con a few years ago, it wasn’t really a surprise that the producers behind that film – Gianni Nunnari and Mark Canton would use the venue to bring fresh footage from their next tale of bronzed blokes battling beasts. And to promote Immortals, they brought director Tarsem Singh and stars Henry Cavill, Luke Evans, Kellan Lutz, Freida Pinto and Stephen Dorff.
Immortals finds Cavill as Theseus, chosen by the gods (including Evans’ Zeus and Lutz’ Poseidon) to take on the evil Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) when he threatens to locate and unleash a terrible weapon upon mankind. While Canton and Nunnari initially took pains to distance themselves from their big hit, there’s no denying that the movie definitely shares some visual DNA with Zack Snyder’s film. But Tarsem Singh’s love of visuals (at one point he admitted that he starts with a good visual before a good script and hopes the story fills it) means this one is, if it’s possible, amped up even further.
Singh was definitely the star of the show, bantering with his producers about his idea for young gods (“If you were an immortal god, wouldn’t you want to look young and not like Mark?”) and countering their claims that there’s nobody like him ("There are a billion of me in India.”)
The cast were definitely more of a mixed bag, with Evans on form, Cavill strangely subdued and Kellan Lutz frankly annoying. Asked what research he did for his character, he smugged that he watched The Little Mermaid. And the less said about his constant references to Poseidon as “the god of wetness,” the better…
While everyone largely dodged the question of their favourite Mickey Rourke story, there was still time for plenty of laughs, including Tarsem’s amusing story of his mother praying for him and his concern about arriving in heaven only to be told his mother had been the one responsible for his success.
Asked about playing Theseus, Cavill admitted he faced a challenge: "You don't want to make it sound stuffy, but at the same time stay loyal to the age of a character like Theseus. Try not to be too English about it and not too American either."
And Pinto? Her biggest challenge was a dialogue-free sex scene with Cavill, though one she didn’t mind, largely because of her co-star. She also enjoyed that the “good-looking” men walked around in few clothes while she was usually able to cover up.
Aside from an extended trailer, which Tarsem hoped would show off the fact that the movie is a fair bit darker than previous promos have made clear, there was a clip played featuring Evans and his fellow Gods taking on the newly-free Titans. It was a slow-mo-heavy affair, full of spurting blood shots and Zeus using lots of available weapons. It remains to be seen whether Immortals can win over audiences who flocked to both 300 and **Clash of the Titans **(at which there were more than a few digs, largely aimed at the dodgy 3D conversion job)…
We’ll find out when Immortals hits these shores on November 11.