The Legend of Hercules

Let me start off by saying I am a huge fantasy fan. I can usually enjoy any swords and sorcery type film and find something good about it. Now let me say Wow this movie was bad. I mean I thought this kind of clumsy, lowest common denominator filmmaking died in the 80's. It is bad when I asked the organizer to give me a refund on a free prescreening.

Where to begin? I don't expect much in this type of movie in terms of plot or characterization. In action "porn" like this, the plot is usually just barely coherent enough to move from one action sequence to the next and the characters are as black and white as a chessboard. This movie somehow delivers LESS than that.

It is staggering to me that with a mythology as rich and engaging to draw from, they choose a tired rehashing of Gladiator as the main focus of the film. No doubt holding the more interesting material back for future sequels. The laughable love story is unengaging, poorly scripted and given far too much screen time.

What really disappoints is the action sequences. Hercules is supposed to be a demigod that achieves the impossible; the movie portrays none of this. It wastes a good deal of time with a clumsy mix of fighting scenes in which Hercules is repeatedly captured and/or defeated. WTF? It is only towards the end that an attempt is made to show Hercules as he should be seen, but I had tuned out long before then.

Oddly enough, the blood and gore in this film is kept to a minimum, probably to keep it at PG-13 in hopes of duping the largest possible audience to drop money on it. It would have really benefited from a Conan-esque level of violence to give the movie more weight and better directed action sequences. The dramatic pause in the middle of the action (made famous in the movie 300) is in every single action sequence.

I really don't know what I recommend from this film. Everything in the movie has been done better in other films. I hope this film tanks but I doubt it. It will make a profit and encourage more of the same I'm sure.

The Legend of Hercules is one of two Hercules movies in 2014, the other one is set for release in July starring Dwayne Johnson and Directed by Brett Ratner. And I gotta say, after seeing this movie, I'm really looking forward to the Brett Ratner version, and that's saying something.

Where do I begin? The acting is hilariously awful (Kellan Lutz and the villains especially). The romance is laughable. The fight scenes are a total rip off of 300 and Gladiator, with obnoxious slow-mo being used every 10 seconds. And for a movie with a budget of $70 million, it looks cheap.

The Legend of Hercules has some of the worst production values I've ever seen in a film. The costumes look noticeably cheap, The props are low rent, The green screen effects are amateurish. The 3D conversion is even worse. And the CGI looks worse than an Asylum movie.

Final Verdict: Unless you're watching for a cheap laugh, you should avoid this stinker like the plague.

Absolutely Average and Below in Every Way, this by the Numbers Filmmaking from a Very Inconsistent Director is so Unremarkable that it Barely Exists and is in Danger of Fading from Memory So Fast that the Mythology of Hercules is Safe.

This is Not Awful, Not Good, Not Much of Anything. It just Sort of Lies there with Nothing to Say, Attract Attention or be Concerned About. The Acting is Across the Board Boring. The Story is Unfaithful to its Source Material and the Story being Told is so Familiar and Stale that even Youngsters will be Disappointed.

It is Disposable and Dull with that Old PG-13 Curse of Banality and Yawn Inducing Action Scenes (that are worse when dealing with swords, spears, and Gladiator type mayhem) that the Battles are Rendered War Weary from the Outset.

Overall, Not the Worst Thing ever, but if You are Going to Watch it, do it Soon before it Ceases to Exist like the Pools of Sweat from a Strenuous Workout.

It is absolutely shocking that this movie came out in today's market. The dialog was horrible: cliché and predictable. The entire film was, in fact, predictable. We saw the previews, we went to the film, and about ten minutes in we knew it was bad. We gave it a chance, hoping it would get better, that it would redeem itself in some way. It did not. It got worse. If you are just looking for an entertaining film, this is a major disappointment, to say the least. Obvious special effects, slow motion for every other move in every fight scene, and terrible, I mean tragic, dialog. If you are a fan of Greek mythology, it's downright offensive. Don't waste your time or your money.

Not the worst of anything to do with the Hercules legend, there are a few obscure low budget animated adaptations (not feature length) that are marginally worse. When it comes to feature length films, it would be very difficult to think of a worse depiction of Hercules than 'The Legend of Hercules'.

The sole saving grace is Liam McIntyre. He is the only actor who tries and the only one to feel right for his character and within the tone of the story. However the rest of the acting was just diabolical. Kellan Lutz has to be one of the most charisma-free and can't-act-his-way-out-a-paper-bag actors working today, he brings none of the heroism and conflict of this great charismatic hero and spends all his screen time looking blank and wooden and uttering his admittedly terrible lines with the flattest and most awkward line delivery imaginable.

Can't say anything better about the ladies either, who also show their acting limitations, especially the portrayal of Hebe who is in dire need of an acting coach. The obligatory villain acting is so pantomimic and overdone that one's surprised at how there was any scenery left from all the chewing, and it is so cartoonish that it veers on at times unintentionally comical rather than menacing.

Blame cannot be entirely laid at their door though. 'The Legend of Hercules' is very incompetently directed by a director that in the film's worst parts even makes Uwe Ball look good. Even worse is the script, which is extremely flabby and heavy in banality and melodrama. The characters are genre stereotypes basically and have the development of a thin piece of cardboard. The story, what there is of it (for the running time this is often wafer-thin and threadbare storytelling) rushes from one scene and plot point to another, and jumps around constantly that following what's going on is not always easy. But because the writing and characterisation has so little to them and that thrills, emotional engagement and such are next to none the film feels interminably dull and lifeless often.

Some bad fantasy-action-adventure films have the credit of looking good. That cannot be said at all for 'The Legend of Hercules' that looks like direct to video fodder from SyFy or The Asylum. The photography is unfocused and editing choppy, with an irritating over-reliance of slow motion and impregnated pauses that come over often as gimmicky, excessive and unnecessary. The sets and costumes look recycled, and to say that the special effects are dodgy is not just an understatement but actually pretty insulting, some of the worst effects of any film seen in recent years.

What little there is of the action is at best uninspired choreographically, an eyesore visually and in terms of peril they're somewhat tame. The music score is lifeless and forgettable, very generic genre scoring actually. The 50s and 60s Hercules films may have been cheap and cheesy, but at least they knew what their goals were, who they were aiming at and what tone to take. 'The Legend of Hercules' fails at all three of those things, often it was difficult to work out what it was trying to be or what tone it was aiming for as it tries to be light-hearted fun and also take it seriously and fails abysmally at both.

To summarise, very bad film. How it made it to theatres/cinemas and not straight to DVD is honestly a complete enigma to me, and this is coming from a very subjective person when expressing opinions. 2/10 Bethany Cox