The Legend of Hercules
![Watch film The Legend of Hercules — THE LEGEND OF HERCULES - Official Trailer [HD] - 2014](https://www.acmodasi.in/amdb/images/posters/8/w/the-legend-of-hercules-2014-oXkXM.jpg)
Short description
In ancient Greece around 1200 B.C., Queen Alcmene bears a son fathered by Zeus, a child foretold to end a tyrant's rule and bring peace to a suffering land. Named Hercules, the prince grows up unaware of his divine parentage or his purpose. What consumes him instead is Hebe, the princess of Crete, who has been promised in marriage to his brother Iphicles. When Hercules finally learns of the destiny laid out for him, he faces a choice between fleeing with the woman he loves and accepting the role of hero he was born to fill.
Renny Harlin directed and co-wrote the film with Sean Hood and Daniel Giat, and produced it with Boaz Davidson and Les Weldon. It is the eighteenth of the twenty-eight features Harlin has directed, arriving between The Dyatlov Pass Incident and Skiptrace. Kellan Lutz plays Hercules, with Gaia Weiss as Hebe, Scott Adkins as King Amphitryon, Roxanne McKee as Queen Alcmene, Liam McIntyre as Sotiris and Liam Garrigan as Iphicles. The production, mounted in Bulgaria and the United States, drew on a budget of 70 million dollars and returned about 61 million dollars worldwide.
Audiences rated the film 4.3 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 58,000 votes, and 4.8 out of 10 on TMDB from around 1,400 votes. A critics' rating of 2.6 out of 10, based on 80 reviews, places professional assessment below even those modest audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- When Kellan Lutz got the role, he wanted to gain a lot of muscle mass to portray Hercules. But director Renny Harlin told him to simply make his abs more defined.
- Kellan Lutz said that because he filmed shirtless for most of the movie, it allowed him to do push-ups and ab exercises during breaks between takes. He didn’t have to worry about sweating or getting his costume dirty. In one shooting day, Lutz did over 1000 push-ups and crunches. According to him, this is why his character looks so muscular.
- Roxanne McKee, who plays Kellan Lutz's mother, is only 5 years older than him.
- Scott Adkins’ character, King Amphitryon, is shown in the film as both young and older, and Adkins played Amphitryon differently at different ages. The actor always trained diligently for the filming, but while filming his younger self, he adhered to a strict diet, whereas during the filming of the older Amphitryon, he ate whatever he wanted, as perfect musculature was no longer required.
- Because the film was shot with stereoscopic cameras in “3D”, director and screenwriter Renny Harlin demanded that all male actors shave their legs and torsos.
- Jonathan Shea spent a long time carefully preparing for the role of Tarakan and was very upset that throughout the entire film, his character was shown exclusively in armor and never shirtless.
- Kellan Lutz has repeatedly been praised for how well he prepared and got into excellent physical shape, and people were curious about how long it took him. In fact, Lutz was cast as Hercules just a couple of weeks before filming began, so it would be incorrect to attribute the actor's excellent physique solely to preparation with Renny Harlin. He himself suggested that he owes the role of Hercules to his active lifestyle, which allowed him to stay in good physical condition. Because of this, Lutz spent much less time preparing for the shoot than other actors would have.
- Kellan Lutz asked the more experienced Liam McIntyre to train him in sword fighting. In almost all fight scenes – with the exception of a few where stunt doubles were used – Lutz performed himself.
- Filming the final battle between the characters of Kellan Lutz and Scott Adkins took two days.
- The most difficult thing for Renny Harlin to shoot was the battle between the main character and the Nemean lion. The beast's head was controlled by two puppeteers, and the body was created using digital technology during post-production.
- The fight in the courtyard near the end of the film was originally written as quite ordinary in the script. The fantastical elements, such as the glowing sword, were decided to be added just a week before filming.
- Yukka Hildén, who played Creon, is a stuntman and member of the Finnish extreme show Dudesons, better known in Russia as "Hot Finnish Guys." Unfortunately, the actor's storyline did not make it into the final version of the film.
- Working titles for the film were: "Hercules 3D" and "Hercules: The Legend Begins."
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
