Hercules Comparison

The story of Hercules is always twisted by the words of men. Not to demote the status of a god, but to relate to mankind's sins and happiness. The story of Hercules is degraded as a tragedy in Euripides form, Heracles, only to evoke piety and fear from the audience and to put a man of power down to a man of no status. Disney’s pixar film, Hercules, has been uplifted from the dark truth to the innocents that will be shown in front of the youth. Both examples still hold the importance of Hercules and his story as a demigod.
In the play, Hercales, Euripides repeatedly shows the importance of friendship. As Hercales is in the underworld completing his last labour, his family in Thebes is being held hostage by a souless tyrant named Lycus. Lycus usurps the throne and plans to burn his family
alive. In this time, Heracles’ family is in deep sorrow because of the lack of friends they have around to call for help. Hercales resembles the friend in need for his family at this point in the play. When Heracles arrives and talks to Megera in a state of hopelessness she says to him “We had no friends. We heard that you were dead” as well as stating “In misfortune, what friends remains as a friend?” (pg80). Because of hercales’ absence he hope was lost. In Disney’s version of Heracles, Hercules, Hercules starts off with friends such as Pegasus and Phil. Both are by his side throughout the movie supporting him all the way. The difference between the movie and the play is that, friendship was never lost in the movie even with low and high points.
Another difference between the play and the movie is the enemy of Hercules.
In the play Heracles, Zeus cheated on his wife Hera and then was born Hercules. The snakes were sent by Hera and the madness to kill his whole family was sent by Hera. As well as Zeus not intervening in the saving the family of Hercales. In the pixar film, in order to meet the standards of little children, the story was completely changed to Hera and Zeus being the good people and made Hades the villain of the movie. In the movie, Hades planned to kill Hercales as a child by stealing him from the gods and making him mortal. After trying to kill the mortal god with snakes, which obviously failed. Unlike the movie the father of Hercules, Amphitryon, in the play curses Zeus for not intervening in a time of despair to help hercules’ family, “for nothing, then O Zeus, you shared my wife! In vain we called you partner in my sons! Your love is even less than you pretended; and I, mere man, am nobler than you, great god.” (pg72) Both the play and the movie shows some type of down fall of the hero, but the hero stays down and dishonored at the end of the play where the villain succeed and the hero has
failed.
In both versions of Hercules. They both shows the heroic tasks of the 12 labours. Both Euripides play and the disney’s movie slightly show the tasks Hercules have to do. But, the difference is both are the reasons behind the 12 labours. In the disney movie, the reason for the 12 labours is because of selfish reasons. As Hercules finds out that he is the son of zeus he is destined to become a hero and rejoin his father in the heavens. But in Euripides play, Heracles solely does the 12 labours to honor his father as the rightful king of Thebes, “Then my son left home, left Megara and kin, hoping to recover the plain of Argos.” (pg 61) Even though Hercules is known for heroic acts and his 12 labours. The movie and play have multiple differences.
With multiple differences comes a man’s one reason. To basically understand and evoke how to relate from gods to heros to ourselves