The Legend of Hercules

There are typically two kinds of movies that are released during the early weeks of January.  The first are the high profile December releases that are slowly expanding out of limited release.  Such recent films include Lone Survivor and Her.  The other kind are ones that the studio already knows are massive duds, and hope to sweep under the rug without anyone noticing.  I probably don't have to tell you which category The Legend of Hercules falls under.

This is a drab and witless movie that doesn't even have the decency to be so bad it's good.  It casts Hercules (played here by Kellan Lutz from the Twilight films), not as an awesome hero, but as a personality-deprived twerp who wins battles in a matter of seconds, and makes dreamy looks at his lady love.  Director and co-writer Renny Harlin (who once made movies like Die Hard 2, and is now stuck doing movies like this) flat out steals his images from other movies, perhaps in the hopes that his will be mistaken for a better one.  Some scenes look like they've come from 300, others look borrowed from Gladiator, and the whole movie pretty much resembles any sword and sandal epic you've ever seen.  If the movie at least seemed like it was having fun with itself, I could forgive this, but no.  I'm afraid the filmmakers thought they were making a real movie here.

As the film opens, Hercules' mother, Queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee), has had enough of her brutish, war-obsessed husband, King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins), and decides to literally give her body to the gods.  While the Queen is lying in bed that night, the lightning cracks outside her open window, and an invisible man appears in her bed, throws off the sheets, and begins having its way with her.  This is supposed to represent Zeus impregnating her with her future half-god son.  The King walks in on this happening, and is so upset, he runs outside into a pouring rainstorm, throws his hands up to the heavens, and screams in rage.  Flash forward 20 years later, and the now young-adult Hercules spends his days diving off of cliffs in his underwear, and frolicking in the water with the woman he loves, Hebe (Gaia Weiss).  As the two embrace one another under a waterfall, Hercules' older brother, Iphicles (Liam Garrigan), watches with envy.  Watching this scene, I couldn't tell if it was because Iphicles was in love with Hebe as well, or if he was jealous that Hercules got all the good looks in the family, while he kind of looks like the tragic love child of Mr. Bean and Moe Howard from The Three Stooges.

This love triangle drives the plot, as Hercules is sent off by the King to war, with the intent that he will not return, so that Iphicles can marry Hebe and be the future ruler of the kingdom.  Hercules and a small army of men head off to Egypt, where they are captured, sold into slavery, and Hercules becomes renown for his incredible strength in battle.  Why, he can even battle six of Greece's mightiest champions single handed, and do so in about 45 seconds, which kind of lessens the tension of what is supposed to be a major action sequence.  Eventually, Hercules wins his freedom, makes his way back home, and leads a rebellion against his tyrannical King and brother.  All of this is told and performed with as little passion as possible.  While I'm sure that Kellan Lutz in the title role will make the teen girls in the audience swoon with the way he fills out that armor, he doesn't bring much to his performance.

The Legend of Hercules is a plodding little epic that bizarrely decides to ignore most of the hero's greatest feats.  Instead of witnessing him do battle with the massive hydra, we instead get to see him wrestle with a fake-looking CG lion that looks so bad, it would have been right at home in After Earth.  Speaking of the battles, a lot of the major ones are shot either in almost total darkness, or at night, so we get to see as little as possible.  Oh, and to make sure the movie got a child-friendly PG-13 rating, all of the action has been rendered completely bloodless.  People are stabbed with various weapons, yet curiously never bleed at all.  And in one of the film's more mystifying moments, the lovely Hebe is stabbed through the heart with her own dagger, and appears to be on the verge of death.  And yet, the very next scene, there she is lying in bed with Hercules, perfectly fine and without a scratch or scar. 

Look, I knew walking in that this was going to be a dumb movie.  I just didn't expect it to be so dull.  There's one more odd thing I should point out about this film - In a lot of the action sequences, we see a group of 7 or 8 enemy soldiers rushing at Hercules to attack.  And yet, in the very next shot, the soldiers are approaching him one-by-one, so that he can pick them off easier.  How kind of them.  They must of read the script in advance, and knew that he was supposed to win.

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