This is a part of the Camp and Cult Blogathon. The mad genius behind this is Stacia over at She Blogged by Night.
One of the things I always loved when I was in grade school was the English sections on mythology. I was a monster kid, after all, and I read the two books my parents had provided me on mythology to tatters, looking for stories with monsters. I got quite the education in the bargain, even if the reason I loved Herakles above all the other Greek heroes was because he fought the most monsters. But I also responded to a good story, and one of the stories that royally hooked me was the one about Theseus and the Minotaur. The early parts of the Theseus myth are a kind of ur-E. C. Comics collection of stories, in which Theseus takes on various villains in poetically just ways (Procrustes, the stretcher, is my favorite: if guests in his house were too short for his bed, he'd stretch them. Theseus was too tall for it, so you can guess his intentions. Theseus turns the tables on him). But as I got to know the full myth in later English classes, I really began to appreciate the Greeks and their knack for creating heroes that were recognizably flawed. Theseus, it turns out, is a bit of an asshole. Flush with victory, he forgets to change the black sails on his ship to alert his father that he's successful and his dad flings himself into the sea. King Minos's daughter, Ariadne, helps him navigate the labyrinth only be marooned on an island with her kid sister for her troubles. There's a reason that Theseus isn't a major hero when it comes to movies based on the Greek myths. He's a right bastard. Which is why I was interested to see Tarsem Singh's Immortals (2011), in spite of all the horrifically bad reviews. It puts Theseus front and center. How, I wondered, were they going to pull that off. Certainly, Tarsem is an arty enough director to buck conventional wisdom and make the character heroic but unlikeable. Maybe having a prick for a hero is what garnered all the hate.
I should have known better.