"Immortal" reminded me of the George Lucas overhaul of "THX-1138", a film with depth and poetry somewhat disrupted by CGI action. Audiences took it all in stride, so if you've got your suspension-of-disbelief primed, you should have a good time. After all, I'm a big fan of the original Star Trek series where we get dramatic scenes of Kirk and Spock talking, then jumping to a plastic model on a string. I agree with what one reviewer said about how the effects range from highly impressive to a simplistic video game, and I think that is the film's weakness: *not* the overall quality of CGI but the way it jumps from great quality to not-so-great quality. But then we jump to the opposite extreme with scenes of pure CGI action and digital characters, and the contrast can be very disrupting. Of the 3 competing CGI films, "Immortal" struck me as the most intimate and poetic. And anyone who enjoyed Enki's earlier film "Tykho Moon" would be pleased as well. These quiet, poetic moments are what made the movie for me. Another beautifully poetic scene happens when the main character Jill visits the Human Museum and, with childlike wonder, stares at holograms of old silent films projected before her. My favorite scenes were the quieter, less-action-oriented shots using live actors and mostly real props for example I loved the scenes in the hotel bathroom, an eery, dirty green room whose antique look contrasted with the hi-tech world outside. The rest of the film uses similar extreme jumps between live and CG. If you can flow with that transition then you're good to go. It begins very subtle with mostly real actors and props inside a transport craft, then we get more CGI in a scene with a live actor having a dialogue with a CG character (I actually didn't realize it for a minute or two), and then it quickly jumps to 100% CGI when we enter the pyramid of the Egyptian gods, done completely in the computer. Enki's approach to CGI is the most extreme and probably the hardest to digest of the 3 competing films (or any CGI-live action film I've seen). Just fyi, on the DVD extras writer/illustrator/director Enki Bilal doesn't seem to have any problem with his work being called comic strips, so he gets bonus points there. But anything that has characters talking out of comic bubbles should be fairly called a "comic book", shouldn't it?). "Alice in Wonderland", illustrated by John Tenniel, was a graphic novel. "Dante's Inferno", illustrated by Gustave Doré, was a graphic novel. All three were stylish action films based on comic books (and I deliberately use the term "comic book" to poke at the snobby artistes who insist on differentiating themselves by using the phrase "graphic novel". According to IMDb release dates, "Immortal" was first by 6 months (premiering Mar 24, 2004), followed by "Sky Captain" (Sep 17, 2004) and last, but best in my opinion, "Sin City" (Apr 1, 2005). The three films were "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", "Sin City" and "Immortal". In 2004, three studios were racing to complete the first major film to be shot entirely on green screen with Computer Generated Imagery added in post. And lastly there's a cool detective character who's trying to make sense of it all. Shadowing them is the all-powerful Eugenics corporation which doesn't particularly want any of them to succeed. Meanwhile there's Jill, a strange blue alien who is guided by a mysterious figure in a black shroud who gives her pills to make her erase her past. To accomplish his purpose he needs a host body which he finds in Nikopol, an escaped revolutionary who himself is waking up after a long hibernation. He has a specific purpose which doesn't reveal itself until later. In the year 2095, in a futuristic NYC that looks like "Metropolis" in serious need of an urban restoration program, an Egyptian god returns to the world he created for exactly 7 days.
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