Hercules

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Tyler

Big surprise, Brett Ratner made a really boring Hercules film. This is a debugging-the-myth telling, so no awesome creatures, no gods, none of the actual myths. None of the actual fun stuff. No, this is the "truth behind the legend" and if it really was the truth no one would be talking about Hercules today because it's actually just a really average sword and sandles battle movie only there's The Rock in the middle of it.

He's got his group of stock characters, and they follow the usual call to arms, training montages, fighting action sequences and double crossings. He's got your basic tortured backstory and gets his revenge and frees the land. It's all really obviously laid out and at no point did I care about any of it.

And somehow, despite all the sets and action and costumes and the fun cast that have nothing to work with, it all felt really cheap. Using the standard Herculean font for their supers seems really tacky, I wonder if they were trying to be funny?

I didn't actually know that Ratner directed this going in but I was surprised it wasn't getting much of an advertising push. But seeing his name at the end, it suddenly made sense why it was all such mediocre fluff. These poor actors struggle to stay afloat in this one. Probably won't be seeing this again.