Calls His Character Stavros The Han Solo To Cavill’s Luke Skywalker
His role in Sofia Coppola‘s “Somewhere” has been described a Mickey Rourke-esque revitalization, but one of the first tests Stephen Dorff‘s star power and quality faces will be his role in Tarsem‘s swords and sandals epic “Immortals” alongside the likes of Henry Cavill, Freida Pinto and Rourke himself. And, from the sounds of it, Dorff has a fairly meaty and potentially scene-stealing role.
“Henry Cavill’s younger than me, so he plays, like, the Luke Skywalker,” Dorff told Vulture. “Freida Pinto plays the oracle who becomes the love interest to Henry. I play the Han Solo of the movie, this slave who hooks up with them, and then we all go against Mickey Rourke, who’s the bad guy. I’m a little older than Henry and I’m flirting with Freida, and I’ve got all the good lines in the movie.”
Described as Caravaggio meets “Romeo+Juliet,” “Oldboy” and “Fight Club,” the film centers on Cavill’s Theseus, a warrior prince who leads men and gods alike into battle against titans in order to save mankind with Dorff playing his sidekick Stavros, Pinto as a priestess, Rourke as King Hyperion, Kellan Lutz as Poseidon, Luke Evans as Zeus, John Hurt as Old Zeus and Isabel Lucas as Athena. Here’s the full synopsis:
Eons after the Gods won their mythic struggle against the Titans, a new evil threatens the land. Mad with power, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) has declared war against humanity. Amassing a bloodthirsty army of soldiers disfigured by his own hand, Hyperion has scorched Greece in search of the legendary Epirus Bow, a weapon of unimaginable power forged in the heavens by Ares.
Only he who possesses this bow can unleash the Titans, who have been imprisoned deep within the walls of Mount Tartaros since the dawn of time and thirst for revenge. In the king’s hands, the bow would rain destruction upon mankind and annihilate the Gods. But ancient law dictates the Gods must not intervene in man’s conflict. They remain powerless to stop Hyperion…until a peasant named Theseus (Henry Cavill) comes forth as their only hope.
Secretly chosen by Zeus, Theseus must save his people from Hyperion and his hordes. Rallying a band of fellow outsiders–including visionary priestess Phaedra (Pinto) and cunning slave Stavros (Dorff) — one hero will lead the uprising, or watch his homeland fall into ruin and his Gods vanish into legend.
After failing to hit the big time with “The Cell” and “The Fall,” it’s almost Tarsem’s last chance to live up to the hype behind his beautiful, expansive cinematography — a fact reiterated, with brutal honesty, by Dorff himself. “The guy’s a visual master, and if you look at his reel, it’s like, ‘Wow, he’s unreal.’ I think this is his big shot, because he hasn’t made a movie in a while since ‘The Fall,’ which he paid for himself — beautiful movie, didn’t totally make a lot of sense, [but] gorgeous to look at. This one, I think, is hopefully going to deliver something that we don’t normally see from the sword-and-sandal picture, whether it be ‘Troy‘ or ‘Clash of the Titans.'” Amen to that.
With this cast and epic tale, we definitely have high hopes (definitely higher than we should) for “Immortals,” which hits theaters on November 11th next year — or, as every poster will have inscribed in big, bold writing: 11/11/11.
