The Three Musketeers

Ludicrous! Inconceivable! This dramatically expands the former limits of "over-the-top." And yet, it was hugely entertaining. The Three Musketeers  opens with a heist in Venice. Athos (Matthew Macfadyen) arrives at the location underwater, wearing some sort of scuba suit. While still submerged, he dispatches a guard by throwing a knife! As he emerges, he draws a pair of multiple shot crossbows (without the bow) and mows down more guards. Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich) is waiting for him with one of the three keys they need. Meanwhile, Aramis (Luke Evans) leaps from a bridge to land on gondola, dispatching several guards before acquiring the second key. Porthos (Ray Stevenson) is chained in a dungeon when he is confronted by Cagliostro (Til Schweiger), the man holding the third key. Through a burst of Herculean strength, Porthos breaks his bonds, subdues all the guards, and takes the key from Cagliostro. The quartet convenes at DaVinci's Vault and enters thanks to the three keys. A ridiculous trap similar to the hall of darts in Raiders of the Lost Ark confronts them but Milady de Winter dashes and dodges her way through. The heroes have found the plans for DaVinci's war machine but are now cornered by a small army near the entrance. What to do? Time for some explosives. Yes, they blast a hole in the roof of the vault and the Grand Canal comes crashing down to sweep away Cagliostro's troops and our heroes emerge from the whirlpool into the canal. Huzzah!

That is only a teaser of what is to come. There is an air battle between two airships - standard galleon's that just happen to have a big blimp-like airbag to hold them aloft - where they fire broadsides at one another. One is armed with what might best be called a Gatlin cannon. Oh, and there's a flamethrower! Clearly, we are in an alternate reality of the 17th Century. On the comic side, the French king has a constant duel of fashion with the more fashionable Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). It is also quite funny when the king `punishes' the musketeers - who had just trounced Cardinal Richelieu's (Christoph Waltz) guards - by buying them a new wardrobe.

The movie ends with a promise of a sequel. The Duke of Buckingham is sailing to France with a huge fleet. As the camera pans back, we see he has an equally large fleet of airships!

Yes, it is completely silly and campy but it embraces that in such a way that even I, a history stickler, am willing to forgive the anachronisms.

 

Sadly, the sequel never came. The movie bombed at the box office, barely bringing in a quarter of its production costs.  Though I didn't mention it in this review, Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) played D'Artagnan while Mads Mikkelsen was his doomed sparring opponent, Rochefort.  Director Paul W. S. Anderson is probably best known for the Resident Evil movies (which surely explains the casting of Milla Jovovich).  I found this fun because it was SO extreme though many might have found that off-putting.

 

The ultimate Three Musketeers is the 1973 version with Oliver Reed, Michael York, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, and Raquel Welch.  Though played for comedy, it stays true to the story and confines itself to the technology of the period.

Immortals

Long ago, two bands of Immortals did battle and discovered that they could be killed by one another. The victors of this battle, led by Zeus, declared themselves gods. The losers, named titans, were imprisoned in Mount Tartarus. Now that they are gods, Zeus declared that they would take no direct role in the world of humans on penalty of death. Many years later, the gods are viewed as little more than superstition by a large portion of the population. Angry that the gods did not spare his family from death, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) wants to abolish the gods by unleashing the titans. His army is marching across Greece.

Theseus (Henry Cavill) is a capable youth in a cliff side village though he is of low status because his mother, Aethra, was raped to beget him. His mother is a devout worshipper of the gods though Theseus is a non-believer. He has been taught to fight by a kindly old man (John Hurt). It turns out that the old man is really Zeus (Luke Evans) in disguise.

The village is attacked and Theseus leaps into action to save his mother's life. He kills a number of King Hyperion's men before he is brought down in a net. Hyperion steps forward and slits Aethra's throat and sentences Theseus to slavery. He is taken to the temple where the Phaedra (Frieda Pinto) the Oracle is held. As chance would have it, Phaedra beholds a vision when she briefly brushes against the near catatonic Thesues. She plans an escape, enlisting the aid of Stavros the Thief (Stephen Dorff).

Hyperion's interest in the Oracle was to locate the Epirus Bow, a powerful weapon lost during the battle between god and titan. He needs it to unleash the titans. Her escape proves a nuisance. He dispatches the Beast, a huge man who wears a bull's head made out of barbed wire. While in the labyrinthine temple near his village, Theseus is attacked by the Beast mere moments after discovering the Epirus Bow. It comes as no surprise that he kills the Minotaur.

Armed with this weapon of power, Theseus stumbles into an obvious trap and loses it. Before Hyperion's men can kill him, Ares in a ludicrous spiky headdress (it doesn't qualify as a helmet) comes down from Mount Olympus and slaughters them with his war hammer. No sooner has he saved the day than Zeus appears and kills him. Yes, Zeus kills Ares. Don't recall that from Greek mythology.

Zeus tells Theseus that he has faith in humanity to avert the evil of Hyperion. So it is that Theseus travels to Mount Tartarus to lead the defenders in protecting the prison of the Titans. The effort fails. Hyperion succeeds in blasting open the Titans' prison with the bow and the gods come down from Mount Olympus to face them. Led by Zeus, there is Athena, Heracles, Poseidon, and Apollo. The Titans - all unnamed - have speckled gray skin and snarls. The hard to follow battle shows the gods wreaking havoc at super-speed. You know the type: you knock a guy off his feet and while he is falling, you kill a couple guys, then come back to hammer the falling guy into the ground. And yet there are always more Titans to kill. It's like their prison was a clown car spilling more and more clowns to do battle. In the end, only Zeus is standing and the remaining titans are closing in. Samson-like, he pulls Mount Tartarus down upon them.

Meanwhile, Theseus is in an epic battle with Hyperion. One wonders what the point is. He's already unleashed the titans. So the two pummel one another for what seems an eternity. Finally, Theseus wins but apparently dies in the process. However, he is transported to Olympus, presumably to take his place among them.
The movie concludes with Phaedra living in Theseus' village by the sea, raising their son, Acamas. While looking upon the statue erected in his father's honor, Acamas meets the Old Man (Zeus in disguise). Ah, the circle continues.

The movie has a very peculiar look. The director (Tarsem Singh) wanted to make an action film with the look of Renaissance painting. All too often, the movie is dark. It is amazing how often stuff was done at night or in dimly-lit rooms. Some of the outfits are goofy, notably the headgear of the gods or the silly helmet of Hyperion.

The Epirus Bow is straight out of the Dungeons &Dragons cartoon. You pull on the string and a magical glowing arrow appears. The arrow is amazingly powerful, able to blast a 6 foot diameter hole in a fortified gate. It is based on nothing, as there is no basis for it in Greek Myth. Sure, there are famous archers - Heracles, Apollo, Artemis - but no magical bows. The closest I recall would be the bow of Heracles that was, after his death, used to slay Paris of Troy during the Trojan War.

This is an artistic rewrite of the tale of Theseus. Theseus, son of Poseidon by Aethra, is most noteworthy for having slain the Minotaur in the labyrinth of King Minos. He had escaped from the Labyrinth thanks to the intervention of Minos' daughter, Ariadne. She had fallen in love with him but he spurned her once the Minotaur was dead. While adventuring in the Amazon lands, Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, fell in love with him. They had a child, a son named Hippolytus. Phaedra was his second wife who, oddly enough, fell in love with Hippolytus! Unpopular in Athens, Theseus fled to Skyros. Lycomedes, king in Skyros, feared that Theseus would depose him so he pushed the great hero off a cliff. Though he killed a variety of villains in his mythic career, the film reflects almost none of it.

I'm not clear on why the story bothers with Greek myth since it is almost unrecognizable except for the names. The Olympians were not a `hands off' bunch of deities. During the Trojan War – Theseus' son, Acamas, is one of the soldiers in the Trojan Horse, while the Gods are on the battlefield and sending down aid from the heavens. They are intimately involved. Odysseus was lost at sea for 10 years because Poseidon was angry with him. Hera constantly tried to kill Heracles (Hercules), starting with a pair of snakes in his crib! They are only too happy to mettle in the affairs of men.

It has its moments but is generally a weak film.