The problem is that Lord Cotys is ruling over Thrace, a city torn by civil war and threatened by a tyrannical warlord Rhesus ( Tobias Santelmann), who apparently leads an army of centaurs and mind-controlled madmen. So when the lovely Ergenia ( Rebecca Ferguson) comes to Herc and friends on behalf of her father Lord Cotys ( John Hurt), who will pay their weight in gold for helping them, this seems like a dream come true. Since that ghastly night, he has been haunted by images of himself fighting Cerberus over the corpses of his family. His dark past revolves around the time he worked for King Eurystheus ( Joseph Fiennes) and when one horrible night he woke up to find out that he’d brutally murdered his wife and children. Hercules here is a mercenary and he and his pals are just trying to get enough gold together so that they can retire and live like kings, though Hercules just wants to find peace and quiet to hopefully forget his dark past. “ It totally had seven heads and I kicked its arse!” I am not a fan of the demystifying of fantasy stories I just don’t see the need to give us “realistic” versions of King Arthur or the Trojan Wars, it’s like being given a bag of Halloween candy and then being told that all the sugar and sweets have been removed, but that said this movie treats the myth of Hercules as an elaborate propaganda machine used to wage psychological warfare on his enemies, and I must say that is pretty damn clever. But what’s this? He was not alone, Hercules actually has a posse of heroes on his side and it is with their help that he has achieved so many of his heroic deeds. They, of course, laugh at his feeble attempt to scare them off but then, clad in the skin of the Nemean lion, Hercules arrives and slays the pirates. What we’ve been hearing is him telling these rogues the story of Hercules in the hopes that fear of this approaching demi-god would cause them to flee to parts unknown. The film then cuts to our narrator ( Reece Ritchie) hanging over a spike and being threatened by pirates. We then get a brief montage of Hercules fighting the hydra, slaying the Erymanthian Boar and killing the indestructible Nemean lion.

Apparently, Olympian paternity laws are really complex. The gods command Hercules to complete Twelve Labors of increasing danger and if he survives them Hera will finally allow him to live in peace. The movie begins with a narrator telling us how Hercules ( Dwayne Johnson), son of the god Zeus and a mortal woman, tries to stay alive while the goddess Hera wants her husband’s bastard dead. I’ve yet to see any version of Hercules come close to the mythology so I was not expecting much from the guy who kneecapped the X-Men franchise, so colour me surprised when this turned out to be quite entertaining. “Screw you, Renny Harlin!”īased on the graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars this version is helmed by director Brett Ratner who is most known for directing the Rush Hour movies and not epic heroic period pieces so I went into this with heavy trepidations. Because Hollywood apparently likes to do things in pairs we were treated to two Hercules films in 2014 as if the world was clamouring for another sword and sandal epic starring everyone’s favourite familicide, that’s the murdering of one’s family for those not in the know, and shockingly enough this version actually touches on that aspect of the myth, well kind of.

Half past dead full cast