For all the criticism this film gets, it's not as bad as say, the animated version made a few years ago which only ran for an hour and was 10 times more ridiculous then this one is. I think some people have sour grapes that there is indeed a remake of it, yes there are some problems, but no, I don't think it should retract from the enjoyment of the movie. It flows quite nicely, and it has some great suspense. I really liked how they fleshed out the Masala's character, whose contempt of Ben-Hur was fuzzy in all the versions I've seen. There's also less focus on religion, which, in your point of view could be good or bad, but to me it's just fine, as I think it takes away from the main story (some people would disagree, as you could say this is almost a dual story, the life story of Ben-Hur and Jesus). The acting is fine too, Joseph Morgan is quite good as Ben-Hur, well, smoking is more like it haha, and he has a great supporting cast. I wasn't disappointed in this at all.
Review of Episode #1.1
