Immortals

Plot

When the Twelve Olympians imprisoned the traitorous Titans beneath Mount Tartarus, they lost the Epirus Bow. In 1228 BC, the genocidal king Hyperion searches for the bow to release the Titans; to this end, he captures the virgin oracle Phaedra, to use her dreams and visions to find it.

Theseus is a hoplite trained by the Old Man, who says Theseus has been chosen by the gods. He and his mother Aethra are outcasts due to Theseus being a bastard child. Hyperion attacks Theseus' village; Theseus kills many of his men before being captured, and is forced to watch as Hyperion murders Aethra.

The Olympians, especially Athena, are sympathetic to the humans suffering at Hyperion's hands, but are forbidden by Zeus from interfering in mortal affairs. Unless the Titans are released, they must have faith in mankind's free will to defeat Hyperion, though the other gods are skeptical as they noticed that mankind's strength of will is starting to fail. Zeus himself has trained Theseus in the guise of the Old Man, but reasons he has helped him as a human as opposed to a god.

Theseus is made a slave in a salt mine. Phaedra, held captive nearby, sees a vision of Theseus embracing Hyperion; she and her sisters then attack Hyperion's guards, provoking a riot. She uses the chaos to escape with Theseus and the other slaves. They pursue Hyperion, but are overwhelmed by his forces when trying to seize a boat. Poseidon, unseen by Zeus, dives from Olympus into the ocean, causing a tidal wave that wipes out Hyperion's men. Afterward, Phaedra sees a vision of Theseus standing near a shrouded body, which she takes to mean that Theseus must return home to bury Aethra.

As Theseus buries his mother in the village's sacred labyrinth, he discovers the Epirus Bow inside a rock. He frees it, but is attacked by Hyperion's henchman the Beast, whose armour resembles a Minotaur. Theseus kills him and uses the Bow to kill his allies' captors before collapsing from poisoned scratches inflicted by the Beast. Phaedra later tends to Theseus; having fallen in love with him, she begs him to take her virginity, stripping her of the visions she deems a curse, and they have sex.

They return to Phaedra's temple to kill Hyperion but are lured into an ambush, and the bow is seized by Hyperion's hyena. Ares directly intervenes to save Theseus, killing the attackers. Athena then provides them with horses to reach Mount Tartarus. Zeus suddenly descends and eliminates Ares for disobeying his law, while sparing Athena's life as she did not physically interfere like Ares did. Zeus tells Theseus that he and his allies will receive no more aid from the gods, as he must justify the faith that Zeus has in him alone.

Cast

Additional actors include Canadian wrestler Robert Maillet who plays the Beast, Kaniehtiio Horn, Ayisha Issa and Mercedes Leggett as Phaedra's oracle sisters, Corey Sevier as Apollo, Steve Byers as Heracles, Gage Munroe as Acamas and Mark Margolis in an uncredited role as the priest of Phaedra's temple.

Production

The film incorporated some elements from classical Greek myths. While it was initially intended to be filmed using 3D technology, cost considerations during filming resulted in a pivot to a strategy of filming in 2D and converting after the fact. It was filmed using the Panavision Genesis digital camera.

Director Tarsem Singh described the film as an action film using Renaissance painting styles during development. He described the film as "Basically, Caravaggio meets Fight Club. It's a really hardcore action film done in Renaissance painting style. I want to see how that goes; it's turned into something really cool. I'm going for a very contemporary look on top of that so I'm kind of going with, you know, Renaissance time with electricity. So it's a bit like Baz Luhrmann doing Romeo + Juliet in Mexico; it's just taking a particular Greek tale and half (make it contemporary) and telling it."

The film had a production budget of $80 million ($75 million after tax rebates) to $120 million and cost "at least" $35 million to market.

Soundtrack

The score for the film was composed and conducted by Trevor Morris and was released on November 8, 2011.

Release

The film premiered in Los Angeles on November 8, 2011, and was released on November 11, 2011, in the United States.

Home media

Immortals was released on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and Blu-ray 3D on March 5, 2012, in the United Kingdom and on March 6, 2012, in the United States and Canada. In its first week of release, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment sold more than 1.2 million units of the film making it the week's #1 film in Home Entertainment. It sold 648,947 DVD units for a total of $11,116,462 and 926,964 Blu-ray Disc units for a total of $21,310,902 for the week ending March 11, 2012. An additional 100,000 3D units sold totaling almost $40,000,000 in home entertainment sales in its first week of release in the United States.

Comic book

Archaia Press released a graphic novel tie-in titled Immortals: Gods and Heroes, the hardcover book featured new stories that expanded on the universe established in the film.

Reception

Box office

In North America, it was released on November 11, 2011. Immortals had a $1.4 million midnight showings and then grossed a total of $14.8 million on its opening day, topping the daily box office. It then finished the weekend of November 11–13, 2011 at #1 with $32.2 million, ranking as Relativity Media's biggest opening weekend to date, against newcomers J. Edgar and Jack and Jill. 3D showings accounted for a substantial 66% of the weekend gross. The film's audience was 60 percent male, 75 percent under the age of 35.

Outside North America, it earned $38 million overseas from 35 countries on its opening weekend. Its highest-grossing territories were Russia ($8.2 million), China ($5.7 million) and South Korea ($4.5 million). The film has earned $83,504,017 in the United States and Canada and $143,400,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $226,904,017.

Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 50% based on 139 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 46 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, rising to a "B+" among viewers under 25.

Contemporary critical reviews were mixed. Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, writing that "Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see," while The Guardian awarded it three stars out of five, describing it as a mythological story distinguished by director Tarsem Singh's visual style. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter was more critical, describing the film as "thuddingly ponderous" and "heavy-handed."

The film nevertheless appeared on several year-end lists. MTV gave it an honorable mention among its top films of 2011, while Guy Lodge included it among his top twenty films of the year for HitFix. It also appeared on TORO Magazine's Top Ten list and Glasgow To The Movies' Top Ten Films of 2011, while Marc Eastman of Are You Screening ranked it third among his films of 2011. The film also received several Saturn Award nominations, including Best Fantasy Film.

Retrospective critical reassessment

Although Immortals received mixed reviews upon its theatrical release in 2011, the film subsequently attracted more favorable critical attention, with retrospective assessments increasingly highlighting its distinctive visual style, elaborate action sequences, and unconventional interpretation of Greek mythology. Several publications have revisited the film as an underrated or underappreciated fantasy epic, with particular praise for director Tarsem Singh's visual approach and Henry Cavill's performance as Theseus.

Vocal Media included it among "5 Underappreciated Fantasy Films" in 2018, and Screen Rant subsequently named it one of the ten underrated fantasy films of the 2010s. On the film's tenth anniversary in 2021, Isaac Feldberg of Paste Magazine wrote that "a decade later, Immortals still feels sublime", describing its execution of Singh's visual approach as "something of a gold standard for other visual stylists." In 2023, critic Phillip Moyer called Immortals Henry Cavill's best non-Superman film and noted its renewed popularity on streaming services including Hulu and Max, where it reached as high as third place.

This retrospective attention continued in the mid-2020s. In 2025, Immortals was included in Collider's list of the "Best Greek Battles in Movies." Comic Book Resources described the film as "a very watchable and quite an underrated gem", while highlighting Cavill's performance as Theseus and describing the role as an important precursor to his later casting as Superman. That year, Collider also included the film in a feature on five Henry Cavill films it considered "amazing from start to finish", with writer David Caballero praising its visual style and calling it "arguably the last great movie based on Greek mythology." In a separate 2025 article, Collider writer Adam Blevins revisited the contrast between the film's initial reviews and its commercial performance. ScreenRant writer Tom Russell likewise highlighted the film's emphasis on visual spectacle and dramatic storytelling and praised Luke Evans's performance as Zeus.

The film has also continued to appear in retrospective recommendations of historical and sword-and-sandal films. In a Collider feature titled "20 Movies To Watch If You Love 'Gladiator'," Jeremy Urquhart included Immortals alongside films including Spartacus, 300 and Ben-Hur, citing its stylized action and Cavill's performance.