… and the stages of shirtless Kellan Lutz.
A little while back, I stumbled into watching the 2014 The Legend of Hercules for the, omigod, second time. Starring an immensely muscled Kellan Lutz as the great hero of myth, embedded in a famous stinker of a movie whose faults are at least in part linguistic. Though it does offer tons of glistening male flesh for aficionados.
(#1) Exhibit #1: Lutz as Hercules
On the movie, from Wikipedia:
The Legend of Hercules is a 2014 American 3D action fantasy film directed by Renny Harlin, written by Daniel Giat and Sean Hood, and starring Kellan Lutz, Gaia Weiss, Scott Adkins, Roxanne McKee and Liam Garrigan. It was one of two Hollywood-studio Hercules films released in 2014, alongside Paramount Pictures’ and MGM’s co-production Hercules… [Legend was released on January 10, 2014; Hercules was released on July 25, 2014.]. It was a box-office bomb and gained extremely negative reviews, unlike the latter film which was a modest box-office success and opened to far stronger reviews
For all the major characters (there are, of course, also peasants and other ordinary folk), the dialogue is stilted, with a diction elevated from ordinary conversational speech style, often seen to be appropriate for serious characters in mythological, biblical, gladiatorial, or historical epics: no casual-speech forms, vocabulary from a high regiser, declaimed rather than merely spoken. Strikingly different from the conversational style used by Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules in the tv Hercules: The Legendary Journey (and other characters in that show and in Xena: Warrior Princess).
Even worse, in the (many) scenes where Lutz’s Hercules is displaying his heroic physical powers, he’s been directed to bellow his lines through clenched teeth.
So it’s ridiculous. Lutz can do a creditable job of acting, but you’d never guess that from this movie.
Back one stage in Lutz’s career of shirtlessness, a cock tease photo from his days in the Twilight movies:
(#2) Exhibit #2: lust-object ripped Lutz
On his way to Hercules, Lutz put on about 40 pounds of solid muscle, largely in his upper body. Oh those pecs and biceps. There’s a remarkably unconvincing video that claims to show the workouts that brought him his Hercules body, but you have to think the transformation depended crucially on Hollywood-grade steroids.
On this blog, a 7/1/13 posting “Shirtless on the Great Plains” on Lutz’s career in modeling and then acting, where I wrote that Lutz was
famous for being handsomely shirtless, especially in well-filled Calvins.
Back one stage more, to Lutz as a male model with a nice, fit body and excellent abs:
(#3) Exhibit #3: Lutz playing basketball in 2010
So much for Lutz. But The Legend of Hercules has some other hunky male actors enmired in it — Scott Adkins and Liam McIntyre, in particular.
From Wikipedia on Adkins:
(#4) Martial Adkins
Scott Edward Adkins (born 17 June 1976) is an English actor and martial artist who is best known for playing Russian prison fighter Yuri Boyka in the 2006 film Undisputed II: Last Man Standing and its two sequels: Undisputed III: Redemption (2010) and Boyka: Undisputed (2016) and Casey Bowman in the 2009 film Ninja and its 2013 sequel Ninja: Shadow of a Tear. He has also appeared in Doctor Strange, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Expendables 2 and Zero Dark Thirty. Adkins has also appeared in Holby City, EastEnders, Hollyoaks, Doctors and many direct-to-video films.
From Wikipedia on McIntyre:
(#5) McIntyre in Legend
Liam James McIntyre (born 8 February 1982) is an Australian actor best known for playing the lead role in the Starz television series Spartacus: Vengeance and Spartacus: War of the Damned. He has also appeared The Legend of Hercules, The Flash, and Gears of War 4, amongst other roles. He currently stars as Dr. Eli Nader on Pulse.