Lorne von Asten
Mythology
Did Disney try when making Hercules? The movie follows much of the myth when it comes to characters and such, but there are also many inconsistencies. There is also a much less thought of comparison between you and the characters, did Disney make the characters relatable?
In Hercules the muses are portrayed as sassy black women who love singing all of Hercules's stories using gospel music. In reality, there were nine muses in total, and they tend to be a lot less friendly than as seen in the movie. They have blinded and maimed many people throughout the greek myths. Even though the muses were wrong, they did get the hydra correct in most every way. Cave dwelling, multiple heads, chopping off one results in two more, the best part was that Hercules actually fought a hydra in the myth. It was actually accurate in compared to the muses!
One major thing that was surprisingly wrong in the movie was that they used
Heracles’s roman name, Hercules, but kept the greek gods. That makes no sense and breaks almost all the rules of mythology. It is terribly wrong and I wonder how that ever got through the editing phase. At least they got the the snake strangling correct in the movie, although not necessarily the same circumstances, he still strangled snakes as a baby! So it looks like they did get some things correct!
In the movie Hercules he has to go to the underworld to complete a mission to help him reach his goal. A lot of greek myths have some sort of underworld mission, one of these being orpheus’s travel to get his wife. In the movie, it is very close to being
exactly that. Hercules has to get meg from the river styx essentially. He even ignores
Hades rules, except he does not face any of the consequences. Which, in turn, does not make sense.
The movie portrays Hades as one of the most evil and hated gods of the entirety of the gods. He is the most spiteful and angry, when in reality, he was willing to help, although always for a price. Many of our demigods from the myths would travel to the underworld and would need something from Hades, and he was willing to oblige to them. In the movie though, Hades was always angry and seemed to not want to help anyone but himself. This was a seriously wrong assumption that the movie took, setting a standard for hades always being the bad guy.
In the movie Hercules, I think I would mostly be relatable to Pain and Panic, yes, both of them. I have fun clumsy tendencies and tend to do the big things well but leave something behind, like them carrying Hercules, but leaving him and him being saved by the two farmers. I tend to do things as I’m told but somehow something ends up behind.
Although I am not the servant of anyone, especially not a god.
In the end, Hercules the movie did do quite a few things wrong, and the things that were wrong were pretty serious, but the main bulk of the movie had connectable, and more importantly, correct parts. I think that the characters were in their basic parts extremely connectable, this made for an all around enjoyable movie for anyone that is not picky about mythology.