More movie trailer madness, my lovelies! This time around, we see the return of Hercules to the silver screen in Hercules: The Legend Begins, directed by Die Hard 2 director Renny Harlin. I say Die Hard 2, because, well, that is the most memorable film in his entire résumé. So you can take that however you want, and keep it for yourself. Take a look at this trailer, and let’s sit down in our thinking chair and think. (That’s a Blues Clues reference for all you kiddies out there.)
The weirdest thing about the trailer is how expensively cheap this looks. You can see that the production value of this trailer is rather large, yet in the beginning I thought I was watching a video game. It’s like they were going for a discount Zack Snyder look, where the color palette is hyper-stylized. We see these epic sets and battles that seem to be on a pretty large scale, yet the special effects on them are shockingly amateurish, particularly the part where he calls upon his lightning powers. That part looks like it was done in Microsoft Paint. Also, the thing that bothered me the most was the lack of blood. In a movie about the son of Zeus, who is a demi-god with super strength that participates in brutal Gladiator-esque battles, you would want to see him rip people in half.
In terms of the direction, it just seems all too generic for me, to a laughable degree. It feels like this is a producer’s project rather than a director’s project. The producers probably have seen films like 300 and Gladiator, and decided to pull certain elements from them and bland them in (pun) to this film. 300 especially, because I want you to look me straight in the eyes, and tell me that their armor with the red capes doesn’t remind you of Spartans. For that task, they needed a director who will take a project because hey, you gotta eat right? When I mentioned that it was done by ‘Die Hard 2 director Renny Harlin’, it says a lot about his résumé. The only other film that I remember him doing was Deep Blue Sea, and I only remember it because of a great moment Samuel L. Jackson had, involving a shark interrupting his monologue. If your most memorable film, was a forgettable sequel made 23 years ago, doesn’t sound too promising.
As for the main actor playing good ole Herc, I’m not completely sold. Kellan Lutz has been around for a while on TV and other films, but his claim to fame (not really) was his role in Twilight, where he played a member of the Cullen family. If the twist in this film is that Hercules is a vampire… that would really suck (BREAKING NEWS: Brian Salisbury beats intern to a bloody pulp for atrocious humor). In all seriousness, he doesn’t seem like a leading man to me. There is also another Hercules that is coming out entitled Hercules: The Thracian Wars staring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, directed by Brett Ratner. Dwayne seems like an awesome choice because he just has a lot of charisma, and I could see him play a demi-god because yeah, he’s freakin’ huge. That being said, I saw Kellan play an actual god, Poseidon, in the film Immortals, and admittedly, even though the film itself was alright, he was pretty badass in it. So he may not be as awesome of a choice as the Rock, but he might be good enough just to get the job done, and that’s what the producers need.
So fellow OOU.Netties! Who would you want to cast as Hercules? Are you going to see this film? Whatever it is, comment below, and let One of Us know!
