The adventures of Hercules were so numerous and far-ranging that it took the greatest poets of Greece and Rome to tell them properly—much as how, in 2014, it will take both Brett Ratner and Renny Harlin. As previously reported, Brett Ratner is due to have the muse of the Hercules: The Thracian War graphic novel sing through him, telling a tale of Dwayne Johnson in a loincloth in time for an August 8, 2014 release. And now Ratner will face off against Renny Harlin and his Hercules 3-D, which, in a repeat of last year’s Snow White showdown, aims to beat Ratner’s Hercules into theaters by five months, effectively dampening the already-modest enthusiasm for any new Hercules movie.
This attack of mutually assured destruction—perhaps the most effective action sequence Harlin has engineered in over a decade—will directly pit Ratner’s comics-inspired take against Harlin’s more grounded approach to demigods who battle monsters, with Harlin saying, “It's not a comic book, cartoony fantasy thing. It's closer to Gladiator than flying horses.” (Indeed: Who would want fantasy or flying horses in their 3-D Greek myth movie?) Anyway, this is just like how Homer’s epic tales of kings were contrasted by Hesiod’s compositions about the common man. Also just like Homer and Hesiod, neither of these guys has made anything good in ages.