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.

Dark City? More Like Dark Shitty

A movie so dark it can barely show us its title.

I had read a lot of great things about Dark City. Apparently, it has garnered a cult following, and film critic Roger Ebert has a raging boner for it. But that’s the thing about cult movies. Usually, they aren’t popular for a reason. Sometimes they can turn out great, like Evil Dead. However, most of the time, they suck ass. Dark City is that kind of movie.

Watching it, you can tell that at one point the script was probably good. It tries to tell a complex tale of an amnesiac who suddenly gains telekinetic powers. There are some genuine high-concept ideas as the film poses questions about the nature of personality and memory. If your memories were given to someone else, would that person become you? Would they retain their original personality? What really defines us as individuals? It’s cool stuff, for sure, but it is handled the same way you would handle dogshit: grab it in a plastic bag and throw it away as fast as possible.