When I was a little kid I had issues learning my ABC's. I don't know if it was because I was a slow learner, bored, or just simply lazy. But I do recall my inability to learn the alphabet caused my parents a lot of frustration. For some reason I would always get stuck on T and I remember my dad standing in the living room with a dry erase bored and that letter on it yelling IT'S A T!!! Don't worry this wasn't child abuse. My mom on the other hand resorted to bribery. She bought a copy of the Disney "Hercules" and put it on top of the fridge telling me that if I learned my alphabet I could have the movie. Long story short I learned the hell out of that alphabet. I have long waited for an adult live action version of one of my favorite heroes so needless to say I was pretty excited for "The Legend of Hercules."
"The Legend of Hercules" centers around the Greek hero Hercules, a half man half god who is on a quest to take back his kingdom and the women he loves after her is betrayed and sold into slavery by his evil stepfather. Stepping out of this movie my first reaction was what a mess! My only explanation for this movie was that the studio was planning a movie about Hercules only to hear that Paramount also had a Hercules movie in the works starring the Rock, causing them to panic and fast track whatever script they had in the works.
In Greek myth Hercules is famous for the 12 labors of Hercules, where in the myth after he is driven mad by his evil step mother Hera he commits an unspeakable act and to redeem himself must set out across Greece to do a series of incredible tasks. My only question is why not just adapt the myth into a film? This movie decided instead that it would be better to ripoff "Gladiator." That is basically what this movie was, a "Gladiator" remake in ancient Greece starring Hercules. Really the story isn't very good, it came off as something that I could see on T.V. and probably when it's all said and done I'd choose to watch "Breaking Bad" over it.
Kellan Lutz stars as Hercules and stands out as the best person in the film. I don't know if that's saying much? Lutz was made famous for his supporting role in the "Twilight" saga. Now lets imagine that tomorrow Warner Brothers announced that instead of Henry Cavill playing Superman in the upcoming "Batman vs Superman" movie, Ryan Gosling would be recast as the man of steel. People would flip out right? Don't get me wrong Ryan Gosling is a great actor but he is a bad fit for Superman. If he got cast in a role like that it would be to capitalize on his likable pretty person image. Hercules is like the Superman of Greece. I'm sure if you asked a Greek if they were happy that the most popular hero in their ancient folk tales was to be played by the 8th leading actor in the "Twilight" movies they would probably look at you with a mixture of disbelief and discuss. My point is Lutz was just a bad choice for Hercules.The rest of the cast we won't even talk about because there's nobody really worth mentioning.
The one thing that might keep you in this movie is the action scenes. The fight sequences were fun even though the director employed the cliche slow motion fight scene effects a bit. You could tell the director must have watched "300" before he prepared these sequences.
To sum everything up this movie had decent action scenes, poor acting, and a poor story. Nobody would blame you if you saw this movie at the cheap theater, waited to rent it on DVD, or just simply skipped it all together. Poor Hercules! I guess we'll just have to wait for the Rock's version of the character to see if the Greek legend can rise again!
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