oragex
There is nothing wrong with this movie. Not a remarkable flick, but far from the 1 star reviews. But there is a lot wrong with most of the reviews. It's more interesting to hear what really caused people to give it such low ratings, surely because of some hate for some reason. The movie deserves perhaps a 5 or a 6/10.No doubt, this is not an Oscar winner movie and not a summer blockbuster. But for the type of movie, it's a good enough one. Reviewers here say atrocious acting. Perhaps they need to open their eyes when watching a movie. Not the best acting for sure, but good enough for an unpretentious summer movie. Just know what you are going to watch.Atrocious? Unbelievably Awful? Worst Movie Of The Year? Worst movie ever? How a film this bad made it to theaters? These reviews are far more comical than the movie would ever be.Why this people want to compare this with the 300 or Gladiator? That is exactly the problem with all reviews. They were expecting another Gladiator and were totally deceived. If I was expecting to see Godzilla and I get T-Rex on the theater screen I would too be deceived.It is a decent pop corn movie for people WITHOUT expectations.
Eric Stevenson
I had heard bad things about this movie particularly with how it has a rating of only 3% on RottenTomatoes. Please look at this, Rifftrax! Anyway, this movie is mostly deserving of the massive amount of hatred. Everything is wrong in every way. It has virtually nothing to do with Hercules at all. A lot of the story takes place in gladiatorial games, except that those were Roman, not Greek. I thought that was common knowledge? Anyway, the CGI in this film is simply terrible, especially with the lion. It's really easy to notice that this was made in 3D. Everything so awkwardly tries to jump out at the audience.It's a pain to watch this on TV. While not as bad as "Jaws 3D" it's still rather noteworthy. I thought that was Chris Hemsworth in the lead role, but I knew he's too good of an actor for something this terrible. I guess there's a few good lines in there and that's it. Where in the legends does it say that Hercules wields an electrocuting whip? It's just so stupid. Having seen "Troy", I thought this would at least be a long epic story, but I'm certainly glad it wasn't! This is worse than any of the "Hercules" movies shown on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Every personality from the mythology is changed and I'm not even that familiar with it. *1/2
Jackson Booth-Millard
There were three films made about the famous Greek mythological hero with great strength in 2014, I'd heard about the Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson version, nothing about the John Morrison version, this was the first of the three to be released, directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea). Basically in Ancient Greece 1200 B.C., Queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee) succumbs to lust for Zeus, king of the gods, she bears a son that is prophesied to overthrow tyranny and restore peace. The son, Hercules (Kellan Lutz), has grown up as a prince, with no knowledge of his true identity or his destiny, his only desire is the love of Hebe, Princess of Crete (Gaia Weiss), who has been promised to his older brother Prince Iphicles (Spartacus' Liam Garrigan). Hercules does learn of his greater purpose and must decide between fleeing with his true love, or fulfilling his destiny and becoming the true hero of his time, he chooses the latter and endures gladiatorial arena death matches and harrowing battles, but in the end he does defeat King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins) and takes back his rightful kingdom. Also starring Liam McIntyre as Sotiris, Johnathon Schaech as Tarak, Rade erbedija as Chiron, Luke Newberry as Agamemnon and Kenneth Cranham as Lucius. Lutz may have the body for the leading role, but he is rather drab, and Garrigan and Adkins are okay as the villains, one of my beefs with this adaptation is that there is not enough mythological stuff, almost none of the Greek monsters and creatures we've come to expect, the special effects are fine and the fight scenes alright, it is mostly let down by predictable script, it verges on pantomime, and overall it is a boring action fantasy. Pretty poor!
Leofwine_draca
Finnish director Renny Harlin continues to disgrace himself with this ultra-cheesy version of the Greek story which is frankly an embarrassment and stain on the career of all involved. THE LEGEND OF HERCULES is one of three similarly-themed films that came out around the same time; one is a B-movie with Sean Astin and the other a Hollywood blockbuster with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The other two will need to be pretty bad to equal the poor quality of this one.THE LEGEND OF HERCULES feels and looks like a cheap cash-in copy of 300 for the most part. Scott Adkins, who plays the stock villain in the film, is even dressed up to look like King Leonidas in his early scenes. The hero is played by Kellan Lutz, who played in support in THE EXPENDABLES 3 but has no discernible talent for his leading role here. In fact, he's dreadful. He may have a huge, Schwarzenegger-style physique, but he makes Schwarzenegger's acting style look like Laurence Olivier's by comparison.It doesn't help that the below-par script was written by Sean Hood among others; Hood similarly fumbled the recent CONAN THE BARBARIAN remake, although that was better than this. There's little story and instead plenty of CGI-enhanced action including war scenes and fights with dodgy-looking lions. Some of the fight scenes aren't too bad, but they're overly stylised and feature silly scenes of characters doing superhuman jumps through the air and messing around instead of finishing off their opponents quickly.All that was left for me to do was to sit back and count the appearances by actors from no less than four TV shows. Gaia Weiss, from VIKINGS, is the love interest, and Roxanne McKee (GAME OF THRONES) plays Hercules's mum, although of course she's far too young for the part. Kenneth Cranham (ROME) shows up as a slave trader. Best of all is Liam McIntyre (SPARTACUS) playing Hercules's friend and ally. I was amused to see that McIntyre is given an ugly fringe haircut so that he doesn't distract from Lutz's appearance. Anyone who has watched and enjoyed SPARTACUS will know McIntyre would have been far better in the lead role.
AD
