Review HERCULES by Disney
Reviewing the full-length animated Disney features in order, we are nearing the end of the Disney Renaissance. This current film and the next enjoy well-earned iconic fame.
Disney often alternates releases of stories of princesses, meant to appeal to girls, with stories of heroes, meant to appeal to boys, and so has a habit of following Norse mermaid with Arabic streetrat with Powatan princess with Parisian hunchback. In this case, it is the boy’s turn, and the Hellenic hero of heroes is our star.
HERCULES (1997) tells the story of the ancient Greek demigod as a modern athletic superstar, complete with merchandize, sports shoes and energy drinks, attempting to regain his lost godhood by learning to be a true hero. Along the way he finds unexpected love, and, in truly heroic fashion, sacrifices everything he thought he desired to achieve it.
The theme of playfully modernizing the ancient myth is made obvious in the opening minute of the film: a grave and somber voiceover by Charleton Heston is interrupted and replaced by a joyful and upbeat gospel number by Motown Muses. In this version, nine Greek goddesses are five sassy Negro spiritual singers.
The basic plot is established in a quick musical prologue: Zeus overcame and imprisoned the titans in Tartarus, and retired to the glories of Olympos. In this version, the titans are not his father and uncles, but monstrous dim-witted manifestations of natural disasters: flood, glacier, quake, volcano, tornado.
Hercules is born in Olympos as a gold-glowing god baby, beloved of Zeus and Hera. In this version, the child is legitimate, and Hera bears him no ill will.
Hades is introduced as a fast-talking, sly, and sarcastic trickster, by turns flattering and bullying. In this version, he is not the solemn classical god of the funeral rite, but the devilish god of the evil, exiled to the underworld. He conspires to release the titans and overthrow Olympos.
Hades learns from the three Fates (who, in his version, are conflated with the Graeae, the Gray Sisters from Perseus, in that they share a single eyeball between them) that Hercules alone, once grown, will prevent his victory.
In short order, Hades sends his two comically incompetent lackeys, Pain and Panic (who, in this version, are not the sons of Ares) to kidnap the child and feed him a poison that will rob him of his godliness. Through mischance, he does not drink the last drop, and so retains his godlike strength: even as a baby, he is able to strangle the two serpents sent to kill him.
Human foster parents find the babe and raise him from boyhood to early manhood, but he is unable to control his godlike strength, so that, when visiting the local village, Hercules accidently wreaks comical destruction across the whole scene, toppling colonnades, uprooting trees, smashing rooftops, shattering crockery. Jeers drive him away.
Hercules, crestfallen and friendless, bemoans that he belongs nowhere. Now his foster father reveals to Hercules that he is a foundling, and in a soaring song number reflecting his hopes and resolve, the youth travels to the temple of Zeus to discover his heritage.
Hercules is tasked with becoming a true hero in order to regain his proper place on Olympus. To aid him, Zeus grants him Pegasus (in this version, the childhood friend of Hercules, not the steed of Bellerophon) and directs him to Philoctetes, the trainer of heroes.
In this version, Philoctetes is a satyr, a cynic, a skirt-chaser and an athletic trainer, and not the offensively ill-smelling companion-in-arms of Hercules who was marooned on an island during the Trojan war.
Philoctetes is disappointed and disgusted with the tragic endings of all the previous heroes he had trained, Phil (as he is called) at first is unable to believe Heracles is the son of Zeus, and is unwilling to train him.
One lightningbolt later, we get a rousing song number expressing Phil’s hopes to train a true hero and be remembered, meanwhile an impossible training regimen of the demigod passes in quick montage. By the end of the song the awkward boy is an athletic man of heroic build and stature, but, alas, still boyish, naïve, untested. He lacks accomplishments needed to impress the skeptical crowd of Thebes, “The Big Olive” where his hunt for fame begins.
On his way to Thebes, Hercules, still a fumbling rookie, enters his first fight with a monster to rescue a damsel in distress, Megara.
She is truly one of Disney’s more memorable princesses, because she is cast against type: instead of being sweet and maidenly, she is sarcastic and witty big-city gal with more than a touch of the femme fatale.
In this version, she is not wife of Hercules whose children are murdered by him when he goes mad (which might not be allowed in a G rated family film). This version of Megara is conflated with the myth of Alcestis, whom the Fates allowed to die in the place of her husband, Admetus, but is rescued out of the underworld by Hercules. In the Disney version, her faithfulness is repaid her husband goes off with “some babe,” leaving her cynical and betrayed, a slave to Hades.
Another rousing song number plays over the montage of the Twelve Labors, which, in this version, is Hades sending monsters to destroy Hercules. The conceit of the film is that the monster battles are athletic contests, complete with stands for spectators, cheerleaders, vendors, and all the hoopla and hype that surrounds athletic stars, including shoe endorsements. Hades fails in every attempt.
But Hercules does not succeed in becoming a true hero, not yet. More than worldly fame is needed.
Finally, Hades sends Megara as a femme fatale to seduce Hercules, and learn his weaknesses. She is trapped by her own attempt, and so falls in love herself, leading to a witty song of double meaning, where the Muses challenge Meg to admit her true feelings, and she won’t.
When she reports to Hades that Hercules has no weaknesses, he cruelly replies that he does: Hades will now threaten Megara to blackmail Hercules into forswearing his godlike power for a day, which, of course, is the crucial day when the titans break free.
There is, however, a loophole in the wording of the oath, which allows Meg, but sacrificing her life, to return the godlike strength of Hercules to him, and prevent the otherwise inevitable victory of the titans over Olympos. But Hercules then descends into the underworld to rescue her, sacrificing his life in turn.
Even as the Fates lift up his thread of life to cut it, however, this sacrifice, making him a true hero, restores godhood and immortality to him.
Hades is cast down, tormented by the very souls he had been tormenting. Since this story need not follow the Greek myths, there is no need to assume Hades will ever escape.
And, at the end, Hercules must decide whether to return to Olympos, his birthright as a god, or to forswear godhood and live as a man on Earth with his true love, Megara.
A rousing final song ‘A star is born’ is sung by the Muses as Zeus, the proud father of the victorious Hercules, places his constellation in the heavens.
The answer to what makes a true hero is true and satisfying, simple enough to children to grasp.
Disney accomplishes a difficult feat of characterization in this film. Stories starring someone stronger, handsomer, better, and luckier than the audience, may have trouble engendering sympathy, unless some disadvantage equally momentous is against him. So if he is stronger, he cannot also be luckier, but should be cursed. If rich, let him have a tragic past. If more virtuous, let him live in poverty. And so on.
The difficulty of making an invulnerable superhuman both endearing and funny is adroitly handled here. The audience pities young Hercules, despite his terrifying super-strength, because his teen awkwardness causes comical disasters when no one is hurt — except Hercules has his feelings trampled.
The filmmaker must keep the scene quick and slapstick, so that the audience has no time to realize that a boy who can uproot trees and topple buildings would be glorified immediately by the grateful villagers, put in armor and shoved into the nearest trireme before sunset, clumsy or not, in order to stave off (or commit) any acts of piracy with neighboring Aegean islands, not to mention the abundant wandering monsters of myth. Everyone’s reaction would have been the same as Phil when he sees boy Hercules throw a statue over the horizon, and is dumbstruck: “Holy…Hera…”
Ponder also the cleverness in maintaining a note of comedy in the training sequence for Hercules when he first meets the irascible Phil. The comical tone is consistent through this montage sequence, even though his performance flips from total failure to total perfection when we reach the last stanza.
At first, Hercules flunks each trial with comically exaggerated slapstick fumbling; but we cut the end, when he overcomes each challenge with exaggerated ease and nonchalance. In comedy, not merely subhuman incompetence is funny, but also superhuman competence.
But the heroic Hercules, when grown and trained, is so earnest, naïve, and goodhearted that he wins our affection nonetheless.
But, then, of course, the second montage sequence where he wins all battles handily, and is mobbed by fans, showered with fame, Hercules is shown disappointed and downcast we he discovers this does not make him a true hero, does not restore his lost home to him, and does not bring him to the place where he belongs — as the song established was his true motive. It is easy to cheer for a protagonist who is rich or famous, let us say, for example, Bruce Wayne or Don Diego de la Vega, if we know neither riches nor fame is his goal.
So, here. Teen Hercules is voiced by Josh Keaton and grown Hercules by Tate Donovan, who capture the sense of lonely clumsiness nicely, as well as the awkwardness of falling in love. The character is simply likeable, and the voice actors perform well.
Megara is Susan Egan, who brings the heavy-lidded, sultry, world-weary accent to life in sensuous purrs, rare to find in a Disney princesses. (Yes, I list Megara as a princess, for the same reason I list Eilonwy of Llyr: because the source material says so. The original character is either a princess either of Thebes, or of Iolcus).
Hades is voiced by James Wood, who does a brilliant job of making this amusingly despicable villain one of the most outrageous, funny, and memorable villain of any Disney film.
Hades is shown with hair on fire, or, rather, as being fire. The Disney animators make the technically difficult feat of making the hue and motion of the flame seem natural look effortless: like all true art, it is almost not noticeable.
Sniveling and comedically disloyal wretches Pain and Panic are voiced by Matt Frewer and Bobcat Goldthwait, who are given some of the more quotable lines in the film, or, at least, quoted by me. (Often at the Wright Household, when comical disaster strikes, I will exclaim, “Call eye ex eye eye!”)
Danny DeVito’s performance in voicing Phil the gruff and grumpy satyr coach is perfect, a role he was born to play. He also has many memorable lines, and the most satisfying character arc: his life goal is achieved when the constellation Hercules rises in the sky, and the selfsame mockers who belittled him before speak his praise.
The jovial version of Jove is boisterously voiced by Rip Torn, and the hip version of Hermes by jazz musician Paul Shaffer. Both bring charm to the characters.
The setting of the film reminds one of the Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony sequence in FANTASIA, in capturing, at least, the look and theme of the classical myths, while leaving the tragedy and pagan fatalism behind.
This was the last Disney Renaissance film for which Alan Menken composed music. Please note how often, above, I call a song rousing or memorable or witty. There are Disney films with as many memorable numbers, but not so very many. This is one of the better soundtracks, and all the songs are used exactly where the plot needs a climax or a montage.
Stylistically, Disney here attempts a bit of an experiment, mimicking the stiffness of Greek vase painting and mosaic images in their characters and backgrounds to capture an antique Hellenic feel, and using computer graphics rather than hand-drawn animation in one or two sequences.
The color palate was used adroitly to set the mood and theme of each scene, complete with glowing outlines for every godlike being, or when Hercules gains and foreswears his godhood.
To me, the computer graphic were always jarring, since this was an unperfected technology of the time. When used for clouds or chariots, perhaps less so, but the Hydra images did not quite match the style and background of the rest of the film.
Often when I review a Disney film, I take a moment to remind the reader that every Disney cartoon is someone’s favorite childhood memory, even the films that to grown up eyes seem clearly inferior to one or more Disney classics. Here I have the opposite problem: my memory of the film underestimates and undersells it.
For we have now reached a period in our walk down memory lane when I was old enough to see films in their first release in the theater, and as an adult, so the type of thing that would not and should not bother a youth or a child could bother me.
I confess that the first time I saw this film, I found the comical anachronisms and the deviations from the source material annoying rather than charming, and the animation style, mimicking the stiff postures and faces of Greek vase drawings, more than a little distracting.
Rewatching it as a venerable graybeard, I scoff at my previous reservations about this film. What was I thinking? The Disney would have Hercules hated by Hera, go mad, kill his first wife, be betrayed by his second wife, and die of poison? As well complain about the anachronisms in an episode of THE FLINTSTONES. Adherence to the source material has never tempted Disney.
Seeing it again, and knowing what to expect, not only do these things not irk me, they are now coated with the fairy glamor of nostalgia, made all the more glamorous by contrast with the increasingly declining quality of the next decade and more of films to come.
I can give HERCULES a very high and heartfelt recommendation. This is one of Disney’s triumphs, and well worth seeing.
Or, as Hades would say, two thumbs way up!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
