These labours are referenced to throughout the film, for example the battle with the Hydra (2nd Labour). To atone for his sins, Heracles undertook the 12 labours. Heracles was driven mad by Hera and consequently killed his sons and wife (sorry Megara). The most prominent of the Herculean myths is the Labours of Heracles. Hera hated all of Zeus’ illegitimate offspring and made it her mission to ruin Heracles’ life. Zeus was a notorious womaniser and had a child with the mortal Alcmene (who appears as Herc’s foster mother in the film). For one thing, Heracles wasn’t Hera’s son. The most striking difference is Hades being cast as the villain of the story and Hera being the lovely, doting mother. It’s like Cinderella without her stepsisters or Snow White with no evil queen. Disney do have the power to take liberties with their stories but this adaption bares no resemblance to the original. If you know the myth of Heracles, you’ll know that the Disney story has nothing to do with the original myths. I’m not too sure about the christian gospel style music though… So it makes sense that they would be the ones to help the actual narrator tell the story. Most works of epic poetry from the time would start with an invocation to the muses for inspiration and guidance. Tangentially, I do love the inclusion of the muses as the narrators. But still, I can’t help but feel bad for Euterpe, Erato, Polyhymnia and Urania who didn’t make the cut. It makes it easier to focus on developing the characters and makes it easier to choreography the muses dance routines. I can see why they trimmed down the numbers. Disney only utilised five out of the nine muses (Calliope- epic poetry, Clio- history, Melpomene- tragedy, Terpsichore- dance, and Thalia- comedy). The next mistake comes in the opening series. Similarly, whenever numbers are used, they appear in the form of Roman numerals ( “Call IX I I !”), despite the fact that the ancient Greek versions of the numbers would be alpha, beta, gamma and so forth. Now, this would be fine if the movie was portraying the Roman version of the myth but all other characters have their Greek names and the film is very clearly set in ancient Greece. ‘Hercules’ the characters Roman name while his Greek name is Heracles (after Zeus’s wife, Hera). The first mistake in Disney’s adaption is the name of our protagonist. Which is why, as a classics nerd, I both hate and love Disney’s adaption of Hercules. Due to the nature of their source material, Disney has a lot of creative control when it comes to their stories, but I do believe that there should be some aspects which they should strive to depict accurately, the top of this list being religions (and yes, ancient religions still count).
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