Let's just jump right into it. To start off, Hercules is having a weird dream where there's snow everywhere, and then a woman, dressed in a cloak made of what appears to be bubble wrap, walks up. Apparently this is someone he cares about, since he is upset when she is turned to ice and then explodes.
The next day, Herc goes on an adventure to vanquish a witch. Tagging along is a wuss-townie, who lo and behold, *is* the witch, and has had the forethought to remove his heart in order to be invincible. Unfortunately, this forethought didn't involve not leaving said heart sitting out in the open in a glass jar. Once Hercules realizes what's going on, he mooshes the heart into a sticky paste. Before leaving, he takes some liquid from the witch's potion-fondue-fountain, and leaves with a rescued damsel in tow.
The potion is for Herc's faun/satyr buddy, Chiron, who has a nasty cut on his side. Because the wound was caused by an immortal, it will last forever... and I mean literally, forever, because Chiron is immortal. Hercules suggests that he try "this one last" potion, and it works!... for about thirty seconds before the gash opens up again. He thanks Hercules for his help, and then goes to play with his human wife and children.
Then, fires start to go out. Everywhere. The only fire left in the village is in a temple built for Hera. Naturally, this doens't sit too kindly with our hero, so he goes to check it out. When he arrives, he finds a woman who is trying to negotiate with the priests to have them share the fire. They say no, and Herc gets impatient, starts breaking shit and eventually gets the torch. Then it blows out, a big "fuck you" from Hera. To top things off, the woman starts giving Hercules a hard time for always using his strength. He gets defensive, and before you know it, he has a new travelling buddy who is just enough of a smart-ass and a know-it-all to give Hercules "I-am-the-strongest-man-alive-but-this-woman-has-inner-strength-I've-never-seen-plus-her-boobs-keep-spilling-out-over-her-corset" naughty feelings to go with his irritation.
Oh, and by the way, this woman's name is Deianeira. Does that sound familiar at all? It should, because that was the name of Renee O'Connor's character in the last movie. Y'know, the other Hercules movie where he has a female travelling companion. We're three movies in and already we're recycling characters' names. I can understand why we wanted to use the name for the character in "Circle Of Fire," particularly because of all of the sexy tension (Deianeira was the name of one of Hercules' wives, according to Greek myth [and Wikipedia]), but isn't that something that we could have planned in the first place? Didn't Kevin Sorbo ever look at his script and way, "I thought I'd said this name that I would have no reason to have ever said before, before"? It's not like it's that hard to come up with a Greek-sounding name. Let's say... Odelphia. There, that took like four seconds. So why do we need to have the tweener fangirl trying to jump Herc's bones and another character who he will eventually boink share the exact same multi-syllabic name in two movies that were only aired three months apart? Wow, I'm out of breath...
They decide to figure out what's going on, and their first stop is to go see Prometheus. At no point is anyone ever shown doing something like, I dunno, rubbing some sticks together. As it turns out, Prometheus, the alleged "god of fire," has been frozen into a block of ice. Now, Herc and Deianeira need to seek out Prometheus' torch in order to return fire to the world.
The whole time Zeus keeps popping up, discouraging Hercules, telling him that he needs to just "let this one go." "This one" referring to the removal of a primal element from the earth. "This one" likely meaning the extinction of human life. Zeus brushes this off by saying "I love people, but I love you more." Aw, isn't that sweet? I don't know if I could ever look my father in the eye again if he told me that he would be willing to sacrifice the rest of humanity to save my life. There's affection, and then there's delusion. Not to mention, after a few weeks, with no one else around, we'd probably run out of stuff to talk about and ultimately regret the decision anyway. Anywho, Hercules finds the torch, surrounded by a circle of fire (hence the title) which "kills immortality," whatever that means.
For the record, it's never really made clear why Hera has stolen "fire" in the first place. Not since "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" have we seen such an expansive, improbable caper. Although, to give her the benefit of the doubt, she is a goddess. A bitch, but a goddess, nonetheless.
So, we've got this circle, and Herc's like "screw it" and jumps in, but it hurts him. So Zeus kicks in and is like "Hey Hera, cut this shit out, or I'm going in there with him." So, the bad fire all but disappears and Hercules throws the good torch back into its place with Prometheus, literally. Like over a freaking mountain and it lands back in its holder. I think this is one of those times where the makers of the show were trying to say "oh, look how clever and camp we can be" and we chuckle because we're supposed to. The last thing Hercules does is to light a torch with the "immortal killing fire" and carries it back to the village we started out at.
There, he gets Chiron to stand in the middle of a circle of hay (which was already just sitting on the ground, by the way) and lights that mother up. Here, I've got three beefs. 1) Hercules doesn't even consult with Chiron before doing this. I don't think that it's enough to take somebody's off-the-cuff comment that they think they'd be happy to grow old and die with their family as permission to strip them of their immortality. The least you can do is give the guy a heads up before you take away the vast majority of his life expectancy. 2) "Killing immortality" doesn't say anything about transmutation of their physical form. Nonetheless, instead of simply getting an expiry date, Chiron also gets a neat pair of human legs. Because being different is weird. 3) If you get cut as an immortal, and that shit doesn't heal, does it really make sense that when you become a fragile, human being that the wound is just going to close up and be hunky-dory? If anything, I'd expect that all of the wear-and-tear that you had put yourself through over the centuries (not to mention the cavernous gulch in your side) would catch up mightily quickly. But no, that would get in the way of the happy ending. The happy ending of a very dump movie.
Rating: 1.5 stars
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