Hollywood Gets a History Lesson: Disney's Hercules

Introduction

Disney's Hercules tells the story of the son of Zeus and Hera being turned mortal by Hades' minions, and the lengths to which Hercules has to go to become a god again. Hercules goes to be trained by the satyr Philocetes, Phil for short. On their way to Thebes, Phil, Hercules and Pegasus meet Meg and save her from the centaur Nessus. During all of his adventures, Hades is trying to kill him since a prophecy foretold that Hercules was the only thing standing in the way of Hades' plan of taking over Olympus with the help of the Titans. Though Hades had many plans to stop Hercules, they were all foiled and Hercules was able to stop the titans and Hades. At the end of the movie, Hercules saves Meg after she dies, which restores his god hood. He gives it up to be with Meg, and they all live happily ever after, the end. Wrong. Though there are some elements in the Disney movie that parallels the mythology, it is far from the original myths.

In the mythology surrounding Heracles, or Herakles, there are very few happy endings for the Greek hero. There were times of brief happiness, then tragedy would strike, most likely caused by Hera, who hated Heracles. Though Disney did get Zeus being Heracles' father right in the movie, in the mythology his mother is Alcmene, not Hera. In all of Heracles' exploits, if there was any negative divine intervention, it was from Hera, not Hades, as unlike his Disney counter part, was not interested in the take over of Mt. Olympus. He was quite content ruling the Underworld. As for all of the monster slaying Disney's Hercules did in and around Thebes, Heracles had fought monsters all over the Greek world, and beyond even travelling to Asia Minor.

When determining how accurately a time period, event or mythology is depicted in film, television or even a video game, it is important to look at important characters and how well they hold up to their real (or mythology) counterpart.For many of the main characters featuring in Hercules, they are very far from their counterparts in the mythology.The next few chapters  will have miniature biographies on some main and a few background from the movie and mythology and how they appear in the original Heracles myths, if they even appear at all.