Sword and sandal epics are all the rage once more; we’ve had 300: Rise of an Empire, Noah, and The Legend of Hercules in 2014 alone. Now, Dwayne Johnson enters the fray as the title character in Brett Ratner’s Hercules, coming to theatres this summer. We’ve already seen trailers and clips from the film, and today we have yet another TV spot featuring CGI animals and Johnson’s biceps.
The film picks up following Hercules’s famous twelve labors, as the Greek hero wanders the world as a sword-for-hire. He’s picked up by the King of Thrace (John Hurt), who wants Hercules’s help in defeating a tyrannical overlord. I’m sure that Hercules’s decision is helped by the presence of the King’s daughter, but this is a manly epic about manly men being manly. And so, Herc and some compatriots set out to train the Thracian army to be a bunch of bloodthirsty warriors, just like them.
The latest TV spot gives us some new footage and dialogue from the film, including a crowd chanting Hercules’s name. Beyond that, it contains the usual “man behind the legend” motif that seems to characterize a lot of epic filmmaking nowadays. Johnson looks suitably ripped as the strong warrior, but aside from some screaming and waving of swords, we have yet to see anything that would set this film apart from 300 and its ilk. I would hope for Hercules to be something like a latter day Conan the Barbarian, to which it bears more than a passing resemblance, but I fear there’s just going to be a lot of blood and carnage and not much camp. It’s a shame too – Dwayne Johnson is a charming screen presence capable of great humor as well as great feats.
We’ll have to wait and see what comes of Hercules when it hits theatres on July 25. It certainly can’t be any worse than The Legend of Hercules…can it?
