Don Hulbert

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that this remake wasn't wonderful, the original was fairly cheesy. The 1981 version was carried by its tongue-in-cheek rendering, though. The 2010 remake tries hard to generate tension and excitement with spurious cliff-hangers. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I hadn't thought it possible for the mythic source material to be mangled more thoroughly, but the makers managed to do it. The visual effects are quite good, but a less-convoluted storyline hewing more closely to the original might have been more convincing overall.