Welcome to the Myth Movie and Book reviews page, where we grade Mythology-based movies and books for accuracy on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being lowest and 5 being highest. First Movie:
Disney's Hercules
Rating: 0
This was not only a REALLY BAD MOVIE, but it was almost completely inaccurate. Yes, there did exist a hero named Hercules (I'll have a page on him soon) but he was nothing like the one presented in the movie. We can identify five major inaccuracies for this failure of a movie.
1. Hercules was not the son of Hera and Zeus. Hera was his enemy, not his mother. His mother was actually a mortal woman named Alcmena or Alcmene, the wife of King Amphitryon of Troezen. Hercules was the son of Zeus (what Greek hero isn't?) and Almene (whose husband was not terribly happy about this,) and even as a babe he demonstrated incredible strength and strangled two snakes who had been sent to kill him in his cradle by Hera.
2. Hera, not Hades, was consistently trying to kill Hercules. Also, Hades was not involved int his story at all. Also, Hades is NOT EVIL, he just got stuck with a bad job when Zeus took over the universe. And there were no two goon followers of Hades following Hercules around.
3. There are actually nine muses, not three, and none of them have weight issues, thank you very much.
4. Megara was not Hades's pawn (see 2) and she had nothing to do with the greatness of Hercules, except that, when Hera causes Hercules to go temporarily insane, HE KILLED HER ALONG WITH THEIR KIDS. This is why he had to do twelve labors for his uncle-- to make up for knocking her off.
5. Also, the twelve labors. Forget a LITTLE something, Disney?
6. Also, Hercules was not welcomed onto Olympus because he rescued Megara and showed his greatness. Noooo-- he killed her, remember? The only reason they let him up there was 1) his 2nd wife got jealous and accidentally put poison on his shirt, having been convinced by a centaur that it would show whether he loved her still and 2) that he was needed to save Olympus from another one of Gaea's awful children. He sat upon his lion skin and burned himself on a funeral pyre, and then rose and knocked off the threatening monster. This is why Hera finally became reconciled to him, NOT because she was his mother or because of anything to do with Megara.
7. Hercules's depicted search for his true identity was not fact-- that would be more like the son of Helios, Phaethon, who came to a somewhat, er, anstier end.
At any rate, this movie not only stank, but was flagrantly inaccurate. Don't study for any mythology tests by watching it!
