In an Ancient World a Son of a God is Forced to Live Among Mortals as a Half-man, Half-god

Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today  I will show you an action, adventure, fantasy film from 2014, titled Hercules.  Spoilers ahead!

Watch out and take care. In 358 BC, on the Macedonian Coast in Northern  Greece, storyteller Iolaus of Athens has been captured by pirates and is trying to buy time by  telling them the legend of his uncle Hercules. His father was Zeus, king of the gods, but his  mother was Alcmene, a mortal woman.

Zeus' queen, Hera, saw the bastard these two had together as  an insult and tried to kill him, but Hercules took after his father and was almost unbeatable.  Once he reached manhood, the gods commanded him to perform Twelve Labours, and if he could complete  them all and survive, Hera would let him live in peace. He fought powerful monsters like the  hydra, the erymanthean boar, and the Nemean lion, whose hide was so tough no weapon could penetrate  it, so Hercules beat it with his bare hands.

The pirates aren't impressed by Iolaus'  story, not believing a word of what he says. But at that moment, Hercules arrives to rescue  him, wearing the lion's hide on his head. The pirates aren't scared because there are  forty of them, but numbers are pointless: Hercules can fight with multiple men at  the same time, and besides, he isn't alone: his team has come with him.

There's the seer  Amphiaraus of Argos, the thief Autolycus of Sparta, the feral warrior Tydeus of Thebes  and the Amazon archer Atalanta of Scythia. Together, this group of mercenaries easily  defeats the pirates and rescues Iolaus. After counting the heads for which they will be  paid, Autolycus tells Iolaus he must exaggerate the story of Hercules more so people will believe  it, while Amphiaraus receives a vision from the flames: they say a lion and a crow will form a  strange alliance and fight across a sea of bodies.

Sometime later, the party goes to a tavern  to celebrate their victory. Hercules tells Autolycus about wanting to leave for the lands  beyond the seas so he can finally find peace, taking Tydeus with him because he is the only one  that can control his rage. Suddenly, the tavern falls silent when a group of soldiers enter the  place and bring with them Princess Ergenia of Thrace, who asks Hercules and his team to join  her at the palace to hear her father's proposal, promising a hefty payment in gold.

Iolaus  notices the guards' shields have a raven on them, and since Hercules' symbol is a lion, this would  match Amphiaraus' prophecy. When they arrive at the palace, Hercules can't help seeing a  large group of refugees behind the walls. They're welcomed by General Sitacles, leader of  the Thracian army, who doesn't look very happy about Hercules' presence, and Ergenia's son Arius,  who is a big fan of him and knows all his stories.

As they climb the stairs on their way inside,  Hercules remembers an incident three years ago, when he killed a Hydra, which was just a  bunch of men wearing lizard-like helmets, for King Eurystheus of Athens, who declares him a  hero in front of a huge crowd chanting his name. The memory suddenly turns sour when it flashes  images of his wife and kids getting murdered, and Hercules tries his best to ignore  it and concentrate on the present. The party meets with Lord Cotys, king of Thrace,  who teases Amphiaraus for not being able to see much of the future except his own death and judges  Atalanta's skills based on her gender, but she proves him wrong pretty quickly by shooting the  helmets off the guards' hands.

He invites them to have dinner with them and explains their troubles:  the country is in the middle of a civil war with a bloodthirsty warlord called Rhesus, who is  believed to have an army of centaurs. Cotys shows Hercules all the refugees that arrive every day  after Rhesus burns their villages, and comments on the fact he's lost most of his soldiers and  his current army is formed by farmers. Between him and his daughter, they give Hercules a speech  about bringing peace to the country that helps convince him to accept the job.

The following  day, Hercules and his team begin training the farmers-turned-soldiers, starting by testing  their shield wall, which doesn't hold well. Some hours later, Hercules meets with Cotys again,  who has information about Rhesus thanks to one of his scouts, Phineas. The tyrant will be attacking  the Bessi tribe in Central Thrace within six days, and Cotys wants to take the chance to march  and stop him there before he goes any farther.

Hercules disapproves of the idea, pointing  out the army needs more time to train, but Cotys doesn't listen and tells him to get  ready because they'll be marching the next day. Later in the evening, after helping Atalanta  get rid of Sitacles' unwanted attention, Hercules notices Arius sneaking around to see  Tydeus sleeping chained to a chariot and almost hurting him when he comes closer. Hercules  takes the kid out of there and explains that Tydeus was born in war and when he found him,  he was more animal than human.

He saw something that traumatized him so deeply that he now never  speaks at all and relives his trauma every night, but Hercules still considers him his most  loyal warrior. Afterward, he takes the Arius back to Ergenia, who is working at the hospice  - after they lost so many physicians, she taught herself the art of healing to be able to help in  some way. Before leaving, Hercules gifts Arius the Nemean lion's tooth, implying it should've  been a gift for his own children.

The next day, the army gets ready to march, and Hercules  finds Iolaus hidden among the soldiers, intending to fight too. He reminds him he's a  storyteller and not a warrior before sending him to the chariot with Cotys, and together, they all  leave for Bessi. When they make it to the village however, they discover it is too late: Rhesus  had already been there and destroyed it all, and the sea of bodies matches Amphiaraus' vision. 

Something is strange though: while some of the bodies have been clearly rotting for days, there  are others on the ground that are still fresh. These bodies are the ones that suddenly wake up  and attack them because this has been a trap all along. Thinking the Bessi tribe is under the  control of Rhesus, Hercules calls for a shield wall to form around Cotys while he and his team  fight.

The tribe leader wants to challenge him directly, so to create an illusion Iolaus can  take advantage of with his storytelling, Hercules smoothly breaks the tip of one of Atalanta's  arrows, and when the tribe leader comes closer, he stabs him on the forehead with it, making  it seem as if he had killed him with just a punch - the army finds this incredibly inspiring  and makes them believe the gods are on their side. The real battle begins then. Hercules' team kills  as many tribesmen as possible, but there are too many of them and they soon breach the shield  wall.

They come up with a simple plan: Hercules and Amphiaraus retrieve their chariots and start  driving them in circles around the shield wall, pushing and killing the tribesmen out of the way.  The remaining soldiers use this chance to charge, but the tribesmen recognize a defeat when they  see it and run away. Rhesus is nowhere in sight, although a strangely shaped figure can be seen  watching from afar.

Hercules tells Cotys that losing half his army is as much his fault as it is  Rhesus' because he did warn him about the farmers not being ready to right yet, and Cotys accepts  giving him more time to spend training. Meanwhile, General Sitacles wants to kill Phineas for having  guided them into a trap, but Autolycus stops him and announces he'll be in charge of scouts from  now on, although he does threaten Phineas and warns him not to make another mistake. Moments  later, Princess Ergenia arrives with the healers, and she's taken to Hercules' private tent so  nobody can see he's bleeding like a mere mortal from an injury he got during battle.

After  she leaves him to rest, Hercules dreams of an old memory: it shows the bodies of his wife  and children, his hands covered with blood, and King Eurystheus exiling him out of the  country instead of executing him so he can forever live with the guilt of having killed  his family. He wakes up from this nightmare when he hears some children giggling, and when  he enters the forest to investigate, he finds his dead family among the bodies of the tribesmen.  Eating them is a three-headed dog, Cerberus, and Hercules gets ready to fight it, but Tydeus  appears behind him and brings him back to reality, making him realize he's been imagining things.

In  the morning, Amphiaraus immediately knows what's happened to him because it's not the first time,  and he advises Hercules he needs to finish this final labor and confront the beast to find peace.  But Hercules thinks he's just going mad. While the two men are busy talking by themselves, Princess  Ergenia approaches the rest of the team to get the truth behind the rumors.

They explain to her  that nobody knows the truth, they found Hercules one day alone with the bodies of his family  surrounding him, but he remembers nothing. In each of his adventures, he would find one of the  members of his team and show compassion for them, earning their loyalty. He was so good at what  he did, nobody could believe he could be mortal, and the team simply decided to play along the  stories to help them get jobs.

They think that what happened to him was probably the Blood Rage,  a common affliction that clouds the minds of warriors. From then on, Hercules and the team put  Cotys' army under a very strict training routine. They're given armor and weapons that copy  Hercules' and taught the arts of the lance, bow and arrow, sword, hand to hand combat, and  eventually, they manage to form a shield wall that Tydeus can't break.

All the while, Iolaus watches  from a hidden spot, training along in secret. One day, Phineas comes back with new intel: Rhesus  is near Mount Asticus with an army of centaurs, and Hercules wants to fight him there before  he advances farther into their territory. It may be dangerous because the forest can  slow down the chariots, but he has a plan.

Amphiaraus sadly can't help by telling them  if they win or not since he can't see that, but he does know he's going to die in a week.  Some days later, once the army is ready to fight, they arrive at Mount Asticus yet find no  enemy camp. The enemy is there though, Rhesus' army appears on the horizon and as they  come closer, they discover they aren't centaurs, just a group of men on horses creating an optical  illusion by staying against the sun.

Rhesus comes to talk to Cotys with Phineas by his side, who  has actually been working for the enemy all along. Cotys is asked to surrender but he refuses,  and both sides get ready to engage in battle. Cotys' army puts up the shield wall and releases  the flanks, but the first ones to attack are actually Atalanta and her archers, who suddenly  appear on chariots from the forest, ambushing the enemy when they almost reach their side.

When  arrows on fire are shot, Amphiaraus opens his arms, ready to accept his fate, but somehow not  a single one manages to hit him. The battle is long and arduous - Rhesus' army may be bigger,  but Hercules' soldiers have a better formation, and soon they are overpowering the enemy. Rhesus'  soldiers begin running away but he decides to stay and challenge Hercules directly, which proves  to be a bad idea: Hercules easily grabs his horse and throws both of them to the floor with  one swift movement.

Sometime later, when they return to the palace with Rhesus in chains, Cotys  begins humiliating him in front of his people, but Hercules takes pity on him and helps him keep  going. As they walk together, Rhesus tries to explain to him that Cotys is actually a tyrant and  it wasn't his men who burned all those villages, it was Cotys. During the celebratory banquet,  Rhesus is chained to two columns to be displayed as a trophy, and Princess Eregenia tries to  bring him water, but Cotys won't allow it.

Then it's time for his coronation, because now  that Thrace isn't divided anymore, Cotys is the king of it all. When Princess Ergenia leaves the  room after Rhesus calls out Cotys again, Hercules gets suspicious and follows her, demanding her to  share what she knows. She admits Rhesus is saying the truth, it was Cotys who started this war  after he poisoned her husband, the actual king, to take his place.

However, she didn't play along  because she approves of her father's actions, she did it because Cotys threatened to  kill her child if she tried to rebel. Ergenia tries to convince Hercules to take Arius  with him when they leave, but Hercules refuses right before they're found by General Sitacles,  who tells him Cotys is looking for him. Hercules goes to confront Cotys, calling him out for  betraying him, but Cotys finds it laughable that mercenaries that will do anything for gold have  suddenly grown a conscience.

He admits wanting to have his own empire and invites Hercules to lead  his army, but since he turns the offer down, he pays him and his team what they agreed on before  kicking them out. When they reach their chariots, Hercules gives his money to Autolycus because he  wants to stay and save Thrace. He doesn't expect the team to stay with him and allows them all  to leave with their reward and have a good life, but Atalanta reminds him they don't follow  him because they feel they owe him anything, they follow him because they are a family.

The  whole team decides to stay and fight except for Autolycus, who leaves with all the gold after  calling them crazy. The party easily sneaks back into the palace, but General Sitacles is waiting  for them and surrounds them with his soldiers. After making them drop their weapons, he also  tells Cotys that he's heard Ergenia conspiring with Hercules to take Arius away from him.

Cotys  takes the kid from Ergenia as she is captured by the soldiers, and Arius tries to go to Hercules  for help, secretly giving him back the lion's tooth before Cotys drags him back by the hair.  Hercules is knocked unconscious while trying to save the child and he wakes a few hours later,  chained to a wall and seeing Cerberus in front of him. As his vision slowly clears, he realizes  it's actually three wolves, and they look familiar to him.

They belong to King Eurystheus, who is  now entering the area together with Cotys because they've been working together all this time to  rule the entirety of Greece together. After seeing all his friends locked in cages around him,  Hercules slowly recovers his memory: Cerberus has always been an illusion of his mind, what he  saw that night three years ago were the wolves, who attacked his family after Eurystheus put a  sedative in his drink so he couldn't do anything. Eurystheus admits this is true, and he did it  because he hadn't liked the way his people had called out Hercules' name louder than his as if he  was some sort of god - this could be a threat to his power, and he had to be eliminated.

A man with  ambition can be bought, but someone like Hercules, who wants nothing, is too dangerous. Cotys makes  his soldiers take Ergenia out of her cage to be executed, and Hercules feels useless for only  being able to watch. However, when Amphiaraus reminds him they all believe in him and he should  believe in himself too, Hercules remembers who he is and summons all his strength to rip off  the chains from the wall and go save Ergenia.

Cotys and the others rush out of the room and  let the wolves take care of him while Ergenia uses the ax she was about to be executed with  to open the doors to the cages. The wolves give Hercules quite a fight, biting him and wounding  him on various parts of his body, but one by one, Hercules manages to overpower them and throw them  away, stabbing the last one with the lion's tooth. His final labor is finally complete.

Ergenia  frees the whole party and they grab some weapons the soldiers left behind while Hercules shows his  strength again by lifting a metal door that allows them to escape the dungeon. As they make their  way upstairs, soldiers keep trying to stop them, but they have no issues fighting back and making  their way through. When a lance on fire is thrown at them, Amphiaraus once again thinks his time  has come and opens his arms to receive his fate, but Hercules grabs it and kills a soldier with it,  saving his old friend.

While the party takes care of the remaining soldiers, Hercules goes after  Eurystheus, who starts making a bunch of excuses for what happened to Hercules' family, like saying  he had been controlled by Cotys. He also tries to order him around as a king and even offers him  money, but Hercules doesn't care about any of that: he grabs Eurystheus by his neck, throws him  on the throne, and stabs him with his own dagger, finally getting revenge for his family. Now he  can move on and find peace after all this is over.

His thoughts are suddenly interrupted by  a whip around his neck: it's Sitacles, who throws Hercules on the floor and gets ready  to kill him only for him to end up stabbed instead when Iolaus catches by surprise from behind.  After finally calling his nephew a warrior, the two of them rejoin the party, which has  rescued Rhesus, and together they leave the palace, freezing as soon as they see Cotys waiting  for them with his army. Arius is being held by a soldier as a hostage, and Cotys threatens  to kill him if Hercules doesn't surrender.

All of the sudden, the soldier falls  dead because of a knife thrown at him: it's Autolycus, who has come back to help. Now  free, Arius runs towards his mother as another battle begins, and Tydeus jumps in to protect him  from the incoming arrows. Arius safely joins them, and Tydeus manages to kill most of the archers  but also is hit with a bunch of arrows in return.

While the others knock over the braziers to create  a wall of fire between them and Cotys' army, Hercules picks up Tydeus and watches him die  after he says the only word he's ever spoken in his life: Hercules' name. Cotys' army starts  charging after most of the flames have died down, and Hercules sees only one way to stop him:  using his extraordinary strength once again, he pushes a giant statue of Hera off its base,  which breaks into hundreds of pieces that proceed to crush many soldiers and push Cotys into the  abyss. With their king dead, one by one the soldiers begin kneeling for Hercules and chanting  his name, accepting him as their new leader.