There’s a new Hercules movie coming out this weekend, and it looks really bad. What’s worse, it looks like it’s going to be really bad in the same way a lot of bad fantasy/sci-fi movies are these days, where they take themselves so seriously that even the color has been washed out of the film. It’s a moody teenager’s conception of myth, where the heroes are constantly scowling and it’s always raining because being happy is lame and for lame babies. So surely, a movie that takes the opposite approach and goes wall-to-wall goofy with everything should be 100 percent better, right? Not really, and that’s why I’m talking about the 1983 Golan-Globus version of “Hercules” starring the only non-CGI Incredible Hulk.

“Hercules” is what happens when you try to make a movie without any faith in your own concept. Rather than taking a look at what has made Hercules one of the most enduring myths of the western world and the subject of dozens of movies already, the filmmakers looked at the box office receipts of the previous summers and asked, “How can we make this more like those?” Continue reading →