By Tim Clodfelter
JOURNAL REPORTER
It's hard to believe that the
highest-rated syndicated drama on TV began as an idea its producers
weren't too crazy about. A few years ago, cult-movie producers Robert
Tapert and Sam Raimi {Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Darkman) were
approached by MCA TV to do a series of movies about Hercules.
"We said Jeez, we'd really prefer to do Conan,' " Tapert said by
telephone from his office in Los Angeles. "They went, 'No, Conan's
rights are all tied up,' so we went and we watched all the Hercules
movies. As kids they were great to watch, but nowadays they just don't
hold up. So we kind of designed our own ancient world and infused modern
language into it, and made it so it was relevant and not stilted and as
accessible as possible."
The result was The Legendary Journeys of Hercules, a series of five
movies that were shown in MCA's Action Pack of syndicated TV-movies.
Tapert and Raimi's instincts in re-interpreting the character were right
on target, and the movies proved popular enough to be spun off into a
weekly series. As Hercules: The Legendary Journeys starts its third
season this week (6 p.m. Sunday on WGHP), it is firmly planted at the
top of the ratings for hourlong syndicated dramas. Its companion show,
Xena: Warrior Princess (which starts its second season at 5 p.m. Sunday)
generally comes in at number two, beating out such popular programs as
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Baywatch.
"The biggest problem I had with the old Hercules is that, the Hercules
character was good-looking but he really wasn't somebody you wanted to
invite into your house every week, where I think Kevin Sorbo kind of
embodies that," Tapert said.
Sorbo plays Hercules as a sort of nomadic Superman, traveling the
countryside of ancient Greece righting wrongs and helping the helpless.
The series relies on a mixture of wild stunts, state-of-the-art special
effects, fantastic physiques (both male and female) and tongue-in-cheek
humor, rarely taking it self too seriously.
The early success of Hercules made a spinoff inevitable, and a character
who was originally a villain became the star of that spinoff, Xena:
Warrior Princess.
"Xena was a way for us to try out some Hong Kong-style action and give
it to a woman character," Tapert said. "Myself and my partner, and
people working in the office, are big fans of a lot of the Hong Kong
movies. We see a lot of them. We wanted to make a powerful, evil
warrioress who Hercules has to come up against, and as soon as the
studio saw the first one, they said 'Can you spin her good, and we can
probably do a spinoff from that' and we went, 'Sure.' "
The third-season premiere of Hercules, "Mercenary," has a more intense
tone than fans of that series are used to.
"It's a slightly darker, more dramatic show than we had done this past
season," Tapert said.
In the premiere, Hercules is taking a mercenary back to Sparta to stand
trial for murder. The ship they are on crashes, and a wounded Hercules
has to join forces with the mercenary to survive on a desert island
swarming with nasty pirates and nastier monsters that live underneath
the sand, striking like sharks. Tapert describes it as Hell in the
Pacific meets Tremors.
In addition to the sand creatures in "Mercenary," computer-generated
effects have been used on Hercules and Xena to create such mythic
creatures as centaurs, dragons, snake demons and assassins made of water
and fire. Tapert speaks highly of the effects team, led by Kevin
O'Neill.
Tapert and Raimi's production company, Renaissance Pictures, is now
working on several other Hercules-related projects, both of which are
straight-to-video: Young Hercules, a series depicting the exploits of
teen-age Hercules (due out next spring), and an animated Hercules/Xena
movie (due later in 1997).
