It’s Heracles, Not Hercules

I swear to god, Hollywood is filled with dumb fucks. For as long as they’ve been making movies, they’ve been making Hercules movies. And for as long as they’ve been making Hercules movies, they’ve been calling him by his Roman name, and putting him in ancient Greece with the Greek gods. It’s a boneheaded move that makes zero sense. His Greek name is Heracles.

It can even create confusion. For example, this film stated the name “Hercules” is meant to be an appeasement to the Goddess Hera; he was named after her. Well, that only makes sense if you call him Heracles, not Hercules. If you are going to use the Roman Hercules, then the gods should be Jupiter, Minerva, Juno, etc. Since everything in this movie is based in Greek mythology, from this point forward, I am going to refer to him only as Heracles.

The movie begins with a five-minute recap of Heracles’ history. I knew I was in for a bad time when the story begins with two woeful CGI snakes that pop out of a statue’s head. After baby Heracles kills the two serpants, we smash-cut to an adult Heracles completing his famous 12 labors. He chops the head off the Hydra, he battles the Erymanthian Boar, and he kills the Namean Lion with his bare hands. This sequence features a barrage of shit-tier CGI. The Hydra looks passable because its in a fairly dark scene, but the Lion is dreadful. The CGI hairs looks like a bristle-brush. Aslan from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe looked more realistic, and that shit came out 10 years ago.

X-Men Trilogy

X-Men

We love to wear black leather.

The first X-Men film is often credited with starting the resurgence of the superhero film genre, that is to say, treating the source material with respect and still crafting a great movie. I’d say it was Blade, two years earlier, but apparently I’m the only person who saw that one. Looking back on the original X-Men, it hasn’t aged well. Sure, there are many good points about it, but overall it’s pretty damn weak. The cast is probably the strongest aspect: Patrick Stewart looks like he came right off the pages of the comic as Professor X, Hugh Jackman is pitch-perfect as Wolverine, and Ian McKellan has the right amount of charm and menace to pull off Magneto. The rest of the cast also turns in good performances, like Sookie Stackhouse playing Rogue and Famke Janssen as Jean Grey.

The problems of the movie come with the story. There is a ton of groundwork to be laid, introducing the audience to the intricacies of the X-Men universe. Mutants are explained, anti-mutant governmental factions are explained, Professor X’s school is explained, Magneto and Professor X’s rift is explained, hell, the entire movie is a huge chunk of exposition. The story is told to the audience through the eyes of two newcomers, Rogue and Wolverine. While this was good to explain things, they spend too much time explaining. By the time everything is explained, the movie is in the final act. It almost seems like the setup to the X-Men movie rather than the actual movie itself. The plot, with Magneto trying to convert every human to a mutant is a little ridiculous, and seemingly not something you’d expect the first time out. It seems like this should have been used in a later story (like a subsequent film); it feels intangibly out of place here.