Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Season 0
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Before making it a regular weekly show they did several TV movies the year before. For simplicity in wiki I'm collectively giving them this Season 0 page.
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
001: Hercules and the Amazon Women 1994 May 5
(First watched 2024-12-14) So there was a "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" intro and everything. I wonder if this was a later addition, or whether even in this TV movie period they already had the overarching title?
Incredibly chauvinist at the beginning, though that is clearly to help make the point of what the titular Amazon Women were fighting against.
Zeus is... weird. King of the gods, incredibly powerful, but he just pops in and out to talk to Hercules and not do much of anything, like a Navi in Ocarina of Time. Looking forward I see he is in the rest of these movies, but not continuing on to the series. I wonder how they write that in? I mean, Zeus is still around, right?
So Lucy Lawless was in this as a non-Xena character. I wondered if she just impressed them so much they decided they needed to find a bigger use for her, but it seems that's not the case. They just... didn't care that they were reusing an actor.
So when Hercules's buddy Iolaus died I knew there had to be some kind of reversal since I know he continues to be a major character, but I was definitely not expecting essentially a time travel solution where Hercules wipes 80% of the movie's events from existence, and decides to just solve things by giving a short pep talk to the guy who came asking for help.
CG was... very much low budget 1990s TV CG. Serves its purpose, extremely obvious.
So Hercules fought a hydra. Chop one head off, two grow back. OK, still seems like this is a winning strategy? You make a hydra with one body and 20 heads, it's going to be so damn imbalanced. Good luck making any movements without wrapping one of your necks around another, dumbass!
OK, so Hercules avoided going to the village and doing things the way he did before because he knows it ends with people, including his love, dead. But... couldn't he wait for his alternate solution to work, then go there? Unless he thinks Hera will screw things up regardless of when/how he meets her, in which case enjoy having a life of never getting close to anyone, Hercules.
002: Hercules and the Lost Kingdom 1994 May 12
(First watched 2024-12-18 & 19) I enjoy how humanist Hercules is. Clearly in this setting he has to acknowledge the reality of the gods, but when he gets a chance he basically says "The gods suck, don't sacrifice things to them, fix problems with human ingenuity!"
The city of Troy seemed... kind of dinkier than I expected for something so legendary. Is it the "Alamo" of lost cities?
This movie had something most shows can't pull off: a comic relief slave.
The way Hercules was sucked away into the air and then crashed down to Earth at the end kind of reminded me of cannon travel in the Mana games.
003: Hercules and the Circle of Fire 1994 November 11
004: Hercules in the Underworld 1994 November 18
005: Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur 1994 November 24