Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Hercules and the Elusive Accurate Adaptation


If I were more attuned to Greek mythology when this movie came out, I might have become very angry. Disney's Hercules is one of those movies that were good movies on their own but were terrible adaptations. Here are some corrections:


  1. This movie neglects the fact that Zeus has fathered plenty of children, including Hercules's ancestor Perseus and most of the other Olympians. In Greek myth, Hera was the villain in Hercules's life because she is jealous of his human mother.
  2. Hades' real name is Dis; Hades is the name of the Underworld. Hades the god is also not an evil figure; rather, he is a neutral figure who just happens to be the Lord of the Dead.
  3. Philoctetes was neither a satyr nor a "trainer" of Hercules. He was actually a PUPIL of Hercules who later fights in the Trojan War.
  4. I like the movie's treatment of Meg, but in the myths, Megara was the Princess of Thebes and the wife of Hercules. Under Hera's spell, Hercules slaughtered Megara and their three children. Hercules's subsequent adventures were for him to atone for this crime.
  5. The Titans weren't monsters that produced chaos. In Greek myth, chaos was already there before the world was created. The Titans were merely Elder Gods that were later overthrown by the younger gods, the Olympians. Some of the Olympians were the Titans' offsprings.
Despite all of this, Disney's Hercules manages to be a great film. Maybe it should have deviated from the Hercules story altogether and made an original story set in Classical Greece, which is what it really is. Here we have a guy who is shunned by society because he is different; he becomes larger than life when he discovers his divinity and makes the most of it. We have a great villain who wants to stop him, and a henchwoman who unwittingly falls in love with our hero. She is a great character on her own as well, and a better role model than many other Disney Princesses, for various reasons.

Aside from the 90s TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journey, no other adaptation comes very close to the Hercules narrative. I heard The Legend of Hercules was terrible. I hope the one with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson might actually be faithful to the source material, but the cheesy, Beowulf-inspired trailer makes me suspicious.


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