Second, Hercules’s most famous adventure is his twelve labours. As it stands, the moral of the film is, “Your father will love you more if you’re a success.” He’d be acting selflessly for the sake of righteousness. He wouldn’t be striving to be a hero just to impress his almighty father. Had Hercules been one of the hundreds of Zeus’s progeny, he would see the futility in his endeavors. Disney disavows every one of Hercules’s stepsiblings, insisting he was Zeus’s only child. To put it gently, he romanced a number of women, both goddess and human. ![]() Elements that radically alter the story’s connection to Greek mythology, affecting the film for the worse.įirst, Zeus has a reputation in Greek Mythology as an insatiable philanderer. There are four dramatic alterations of the Hercules/Heracles/Herakles myth that cannot be ignored. Since this story is set in Greece, he should rightfully be called “Heracles” or “Herakles.”īut we must address some important changes. There’s not even time to explain how “Hercules” is the characters name in Roman mythology. There’s no time to mention how Pegasus was born not from puffy clouds, but from the blood of the slain Medusa. There’s no time to point out how there were nine Muses, not five. There’s no time to bring up how the Fates have been conflated with the Graeae. There’s no time to discuss how Philoctetes isn’t supposed to be a satyr. Everything is different, and we don’t have time to talk about every little detail. To say Disney altered the Hercules myth is an understatement. One with no resemblance to the original myth except for character names and a setting on the Aegean. ![]() If you’ve been given implicit permission to change one aspect, what stops you from changing two? If two are acceptable, why can’t you change four? If you’re changing four things, why not change eight? Pretty soon you’ve created an entirely unique story. Adapting a Greek myth accurately would result in a hard R-rating, minimum.Įvery adaptation sanitizes things. Humans and immortals are subjected to cruelty, devastation, scorn, bodily violation, and fates worse than death. They only make sequels on rare occasions, and it would be presumptuous (and fiscally risky) to anticipate a sequel before the first script is written.Ī primary issue is, Greek mythology, despite its immortal appeal, is not suitable for children. Hercules would need to contain anything an audience would ever want from a movie based on Greek mythology.ĭisney Animation doesn’t make franchises Disney Animation is the franchise. Now they were telling one story from Greek mythology, a library larger than any yet covered. They couldn’t recycle the same characters.ĭisney made one movie about Arthurian legend. Disney couldn’t keep revisiting the same setting. The only question is, which one? They couldn’t make multiple films about Greek myths. It stands to reason Disney would, sooner or later, choose to adapt a story from Greek mythology. Their characters, creatures, and legends live immortally. The epic works of Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod, and others have survived thousands of years. ![]() In the world of storytelling, there’s no greater success than the works of Greek mythology.
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