Hercules (1997)

Em: 00:01:02

Hi everyone, I'm Em and welcome to verbal diorama, episode 288, Hercules.

This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't that can go the distance. As always, welcome to Verbal Diorama.

Whether you're a brand new listener, whether you're a regular returning listener, welcome back regular returning listeners. Thank you for being here. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast. I am so happy to have you here for the history and legacy of Hercules.

s podcast started in February: 2019

And every year I celebrate the birthday of this podcast during the annual animation season. And so every year I get to do a mini series on animated movies.

And it's brilliant fun for me because animated movies are one of my favorite things to talk about on this podcast. This time around I wanted to look at some of the more underrated Disney movies.

And last episode I looked at the pre Renaissance with the Great Mouse Detective. This episode I wanted to look specifically at the Renaissance period. Next episode we're going to be looking post Renaissance.

But this episode is very Renaissance focused.

the midst of animation season: 2025

This is the fifth annual animation season and it's just a celebration of all types of animation, whether that's stop motion, CGI, traditional 2D, hand drawn, a bit of both as what we get in Hercules.

And I've featured some of the greatest animation studios of all time on this podcast, including but not limited to Leica, Aardman, Disney, DreamWorks, Sony Animation, Pixar Studio, Ghibli, Cartoon Saloon, even the ones that are no longer with us, like Fox Animation, Blue sky and Don Bluth Studios. Animation is not just for children. Animation is not a genre. Animation is capable of depicting anyone anything.

It doesn't have the limitations of live action cinema. And this is one of the reasons why Animation Season is so important and remains such a pivotal point of this podcast.

I didn't mean to use all the P's and I hope my pop filter picks all that up. But I think the point is, is that so many people discount animated movies just because they're animated.

And there's some wonderful movies that just happen to be animated that are also just excellent movies. And that is what Animation Season is here to highlight.

Before we jump into Hercules, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who's listened and supported this podcast over the last six years.

It is a truly wonderful thing to be able to do this podcast and to have people supporting this podcast pretty much continuously for the last six years. I love doing this podcast. I love telling these stories, and it is not something that I'm planning to stop anytime soon.

But genuinely, whether you've been here for one episode or whether you've been here for 100 episodes, I'm so grateful to you for allowing me to tell these stories and for being here while I talk so incessantly into a microphone. It genuinely is one of the greatest joys of my life to have this podcast.

And the fact that it's six years old and that I've been doing this for six years kind of blows my tiny little mind. But birthday episodes are always special and this one is no different.

After the heavy heights of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King, and the serious drama of Pocahontas and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney wanted to emulate the comedic success of Aladdin. And so of course they brought in John Lusker and Ron Clements, who wanted to make their beloved Treasure Planet.

So a deal was made to make a Gerald Scarfe inspired screwball comedy based very, very, very, very loosely on the Greek myth of Heracles. It's the gospel truth. Sort of. Here's the trailer for Hercules.

Em: 00:07:44

Who put the glad and glady enter Hercules. Whose? Derek Deeds are great theater. I know they say theater in the song. Hercules Is he bold no one braver Is he sweet Our favorite flavor. Hercules.

I really want to sing the song, but I'm not going to. Bless my soul.

Herc was on a roll Undefeated Riding high and the nicest guy not conceited he was a nothing, a zero, zero now he's a honcho He's a hero he hit the heights at breakneck speed from zero to hero Herc is a hero now he's a hero yes, indeed. I think that's my favorite synopsis. Let's run through the cast of this movie.

We have Tate Donovan as Hercules, Danny DeVito as Phil, James woods as Hades, Susan Egan as Meg Ripton as Zeus, Samantha Heggar as Hera, Lilias White, Cheryl Freeman Lachanze, Russ Ryan and Venice Y. Thomas as the Muses, Calliope, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Talia and Cleo, respectively.

Bobcat Goldthwaite as Payne, Matt Frewer as Panic and Charlton Heston as the narrator. Hercules has a screenplay by Ron Clements, John Lusker, Donald McHenry, Bob Shaw and Irene Meche.

A story by Khan Katyan, Kelly Whiteman, Randy Cartwright, John Ramirez, Jeff Snow Vance, Gerry Kirk, Hanson, Francis Leibis, Mark Kennedy, Bruce M. Morris, Don Doherty and Tom Enriquez, and was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements.

ements had wanted to do since: 1985

Check out Last episode for more on that. And he loved Muska and Clement's other idea for an adaptation, which was The Little Mermaid. And we all know what happened with that.

The Little Mermaid cemented the Disney renaissance, became a box office sensation, and the directors just really, really wanted to do their passion project. So again they pitched Treasure Planet, but Aladdin was chosen by Disney instead. And again, their diamond in the rough was a huge hit for the studio.

And yet again, Clements and Musker delivered.

Following the release of Aladdin, they pitched Treasure Planet for a third time, this time to Jeffrey Katzenberg, who again, just wasn't interested at this point. Clemence and Musker had directed some of Disney's biggest hits, and they felt the constant rejection was unjust, so they took it to chairman Roy E.

Disney. Roy Disney backed them and made his feelings known to Eisner. And obviously Disney didn't want a pair of their most successful directors to leave.

eir contracts were renewed in: 1995

on to make Treasure Planet in: 2002

That's episode 36 of this podcast. Long time ago, that one.

But in early: 1992

And one was for an adaptation of the Odyssey, one of the two major ancient Greek poems following the Greek hero Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. It was attributed to Homer, not Simpson. Production on the Odyssey was abandoned when it couldn't translate into a typical Disney animated comedy.

And who'd have thunk that the Greek gods wouldn't exactly be family friendly material?

Just after this, animator Joe Hader pitched a version of Hercules during the Trojan War, with him having to choose a side, ultimately learning that strength isn't the answer, and the demigod learning humility through the consequences of his actions. It was very similar to the Odyssey, though, and Hader wasn't convinced it would be approved.

But studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg did approve the project, with Heder crafting a page and a half outline before handing the project over to the story development team.

Hader would have no further involvement in the project after being presented with pitch proposals for animated adaptations of Miguel de Cevantes Spanish novel Don Quixote and Jules Verne's adventure epic around The World in 80 Days. John Musket and Ron Clements learned of Hadar's Hercules concept and somewhat begrudgingly agreed that this would be their next project.

Basically after being told Treasure Planet would not be happening for the fourth time.

But with that Treasure Planet project riding on the success of Hercules, Musket and Clemens took on the task of writing the screenplay personally, with the pair determined to craft the most commercially viable project as possible. And Hercules being presented as a superhero was very intentional from the beginning. Ron Clements and John Muesker were huge comic book fans.

And Hercules would be that superhero with some tweaks to his classic Greek mythological origins. Of course, because it had to be family friendly. Hercules is actually the Roman version of the name, which is originally Heracles.

Heracles story is basically nothing like the Disney version. In a shock horror, it's not authentic. To the Greek mythology. Zeus was his father, but Hera was not his mother.

His mother was the human Alcmene, whom Zeus desired.

And because he was Zeus, because ancient Greek mythology is full of sexual assaults and rapes, Zeus transforms himself into Alcmenes husband, Amphitryon, who was away at war, and impregnates Alcmene. Later that night, the real Amphitryon returns and also impregnates Alcmene.

A case of heteropaternal supercondition, where a woman carries twins sired by different fathers, which is common for dogs and cats, but extremely rare in humans. Heracles was born Alcides, and his twin brother was Iphicles.

And the infant Heracles was taken by Athena, the protector of heroes, to Hera, who didn't recognize Heracles and let him breastfeed from her, which would give him his super strength. This led to Hera experiencing the pain of him feeding. And her milk would end up spraying the heavens, creating the Milky Way.

No, I am not making this up. This is genuinely the myth. To placate Hera, the child was renamed Heracles, meaning Hera's pride or glory. But that didn't mean Hera changed her mind.

When Heracles and Iphicles were just eight months old, Hera sent two giant snakes into the children's chamber. Iphicles cried from fear, but Heracles grabbed a snake in each hand and strangled them.

He was found by his nurse playing with them in his cot as if they were toys. At least that's depicted fairly correctly in the movie Megara. Also exists in the story of Heracles, except it ends the head of the lot.

More tragically and darkly, Megara is the king of Thebes daughter, and Heracles marries her and they have children. But Hera induces within Heracles a fit of insanity and Heracles murders his wife and children.

To absolve him of his sin and become a God, he must perform 12 labors of Heracles, including slaying a Hydra. The 12 labors are featured in the movie in montage form. So yeah, illegitimate children, adultery, sexual assault, vengeful stepmothers, murder.

Not your typical Disney fare. Well, maybe except vengeful stepmothers.

Throughout the script's development, Clements and Musker consulted the writings of Thomas Bulfinch, Edith Hamilton, Robert Graves and other Greek mythological interpreters before deciding against using the classic Hercules narrative.

Zeus conceiving Hercules outside of his marriage to Hera would become them, becoming Hercules loving birth parents, creating another way he could be half God and half man by having Hades be afraid of his power and using his power to make Hercules mortal.

With that, they shifted the antagonistic focus of the story from Hera to Hades, canonically the brother of Zeus and Poseidon and the God of the dead and the king of the underworld. Hades has kind of been done dirty by film, with depictions of him being evil and duplicitous.

Hades was cold and stern according to the myth, but he was also passive and altruistic. But being a Greek God, he was also into abducting Persephone to the underworld to become his bride.

So, you know, there were no good dudes in ancient Greece. But the whole principle of this movie is zero to hero Hercules journey to become a true hero.

The parallels between this story and the story of Superman are pretty obvious. And to be honest, if you are going to steal, no pun intended, from anything, steal from the man of Steel.

From his godlike parents, to him having to leave them as an infant, to being adopted by human parents, to having extraordinary powers on Earth, to him leaving his adoptive home, finding his real father, realizing who he really is, meeting a sarcastic young woman and having a primary antagonist who robs him and his powers temporarily. He also goes the distance, just like Rocky, and has training montages just like Rocky, Musker and Clennance.

nd in excerpts dated November: 1993

A literal Danny DeVito style sidekick, a worldwide heroine and a formidable villain wrapped in a conflict between idealism and cynicism.

The filmmakers also look to the classic screwball comedies directed by Frank Capra and Preston Sturges for inspiration with the character of Meg based on Barbara Stanwyck, particularly the roles she portrayed in the Lady Eve and Meet John Doe and Hercules, based on James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

of his popularity in the mid-: 1990

As Hercules failure rises, it manifests into merchandise, public appearances, giddy fangirls and an endless amount of cash, echoing the life of modern day celebrities, as well as Disney stores worldwide getting ready for their own Hercules merchandising. The Honorary is not lost on anyone.

After nine months, Musker and Clements had completed their first draft script, but realized it was lacking the humor it needed to truly mirror the comedic heights of Aladdin.

Comedy writers Donald McHenry, Bob Shaw and Irene Metchie were enlisted to bring additional humor to the script and rework the key comedic characters of Hades and Hercules. Bolig trainer Philoctetes. Danny DeVito had always been the inspiration for Phil, and the character was written with DeVito in mind.

But DeVito refused to audition, leaving the production to test other actors like Ed Asner, Red Buttons and Ernest Borgman. But it was pretty clear they were going to give the role to DeVito.

Shortly after, the directors and producer Alice Dewey approached DeVito at a pasta lunch during the filming of Matilda, where DeVito signed onto the role without needing to audition. After initially considering singer Donny Osmond for the title role, it was Tate Donovan who won the role after an extensive audition process.

Susan Egan had auditioned for every female part in a Disney animated feature since Beauty and the Beast, and each time she'd been overlooked. She then landed the part of Belle in the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast, and Belle is sweet and lovely and nothing like Megara.

Egan really wanted the part of Meg, but was initially blocked by Alan Menken, who didn't realize that Egan was acting sweet and innocent for Belle, and she was actually the cynical smartass in real life, just like Meg.

The production team auditioned dozens of voice actors for Meg, but Egan blew them away with her audition and finally landed a leading lady role for Hades.

Michael Eisner, who was now leading Disney animation solo without Jeffrey Katzenberg, wanted to emulate Katzenberg's acquisition of Robin Williams as the genie in Aladdin with his own casting decision for Hades. He wanted Jack Nicholson, and Nicholson was interested.

He had young children and he brought them his daughter dressed as Snow White, alongside his young son for a tour of the Disney building in Glendale. He was shown artwork for Hercules. He was given toys for his children, and he was impressed. He was the Joker.

So of course Disney wanted his name in lights for Hercules, but he was the Joker. And for Batman, Nicholson had an unprecedented level of financial reward and freedom, which included a slice of the profits and merchandising.

He wanted the same for Hercules, plus an upfront paycheck of 10 to 15 million dollars. And you can come for Disney on most things, but coming at them for their lucrative merchandising is one step too far, even if you are Jack Nicholson.

Nicholson reportedly wanted 50% all merchandising of the character of Hades. Bear in mind, too, that Disney was willing to offer him $500,000 to voice the character.

Nicholson obviously passed on the project, and the search was on to find Hades with Kevin Spacey, Phil Hartman and even producer Robert Evans, all considered. They auditioned James woods, who was great at improvising and hadn't prepared any lines and was hilarious.

but they hired him in autumn: 1994

Lithgow was let go in August: 1995

ter. He even tweeted in April: 2022

, Disney Dreamlight Valley in: 2024

Let's go to the best characters in the movie, shall we?

Muscar and Clemens wanted Hercules to open with some very serious narration, panning through a museum of classical antiquities, but then be interrupted by the Muses. Originally, the Spice Girls were approached to play the Muses.

They were the biggest girl group in the world at the time, and they declined due to scheduling conflicts. Instead, we get the first named black women in a Disney movie when they want to take over narration of the story.

The narrator concedes with a you go girl. It sets the tone for Hercules immediately.

This is not a serious movie, but its narrator is the late Charlton Heston agreed to record the intro but had questions about the grammatical correctness of you go girl, suggesting instead go ahead, young lady. Thankfully, he said the line introduce the Muses, who are one of the highlights of this movie.

I adore the Muses, the literal Greek chorus singing the gospel truth. Linnaeus White as Calliope, Venice Y Thomas as Cleon, Ros Ryan as Talia, Lachanze as Terpsichore and Cheryl Freeman as Melpomene.

Calliope was the muse of epic poetry and eloquence, Cleo the muse of history, Tali at the Muse a comedy, Terpsichore the muse of choral song and dancing and Melpomene the muse of tragedy. There are nine muses in Greek mythology, but five was the ideal girl group number Roz Ryan wasn't the first choice for Talia.

They originally hired Nell Carter, but while she was wildly talented, she struggled with the direction they wanted for the character, and it turned out she was having some personal issues at the time. So Carter was let go. And Musker had seen Roz Ryan on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse, and they signed her up as Talia straight away.

time before he passed away in: 1991

Howard Ashman had used a black girl group as a sort of Greek chorus in Little Shop of Horrors, but when John Musker suggested the idea of the all black female Muses, Alan Menken worried it might be too derivative, but ultimately relented when Musker suggested Hercules was a screwball comedy slash comic book film and the gospel music would make the movie more fun, accessible and stand out. And the animation style also stands out.

on the album cover for their: 1979

In: 1982

imators and designers in July: 1995

That same year, the filmmakers embarked on a research trip to Greece and Turkey to research classic Greek mythology. Scarfe's work was fluid and chaotic, so production stylist Sue Nichols made reference charts for the animators to utilise.

These charts included aspects of Scarfe's original work that were combined with a Disney animation like style.

In total, a team of nearly 700 artists, animators and technicians would work on Hercules in both the Burbank, California studio and a satellite office in France, which contributed nearly 10 minutes of animation, including the finale with the Titans and Hercules descent into the underworld. And the design of Hercules himself was distinctive and at the time a little bit controversial.

Neither the character designs of Hercules or Meg offered a lot for caricature, according to Scarfe, and so they were drawn as hunky and pretty. Meg's supervising animator, Ken Duncan, originally attempted to draw Meg as a realistic looking heroine.

But upon deciding to incorporate elements of Greek pottery into the character's hair, Duncan ultimately decided to base the character's entire body on pottery as well, which is why Meg's body style is so different to any other Disney heroine. Meg was also the first Disney heroine to have a romantic past.

She's clearly more sexual than any other female character and she has an ambiguity around her intentions. Some critics and fans revere Meg as a feminist icon, and she's clearly one of the most beloved characters from the movie.

Alongside Hades, Andrea Stasia was supervising animator for the adult version of Hercules.

After a career of mostly animating famous villains, he studied photographs of Olympic athletes, specifically swimmers who have long necks and natural musculature.

He wanted to emulate the Greek tradition of character drawing, which means straight nose, pursed lips, almost cherubic, large eyes, the classic style you find on Greek vases or drawings. For Hades, animator Nick Ranieri took inspiration from Scarfe's concept drawings and James Wood's mannerisms.

During the recording sessions, while Hades body was drawn by hand, the animation of the hair was handled by the effects animators, with input from Ranieri as to how it should move. Musker and Clements decided to portray Greek Society as a kind of parallel of modern day society.

The bustling town of Thebes took on the nickname of the Big Olive and drew inspiration from modern day Manhattan and Los Angeles. Tom Cardone, the film's artistic supervisor for backgrounds, was a key player in determining the color palette.

For the opening party on Mount Olympus. They used colors that were happy and light, lots of violets and pinks with a deep blue sky.

The Big Olive, on the other hand is a gray place that's supposed to be dirty and weathered after all the catastrophes. Hades underworld headquarters is primarily a built for white environment where the only real colour you see is the flame of his hand.

The Armageddon sequence starts with a warm green sky lit by a fire and transforms to deep violets and reds as the action intensifies.

The Hydra sequence in Hercules represents one of Disney's most complex early iterations of CGI and traditional animations for the Hydra scarf provided preliminary drawings to give the mythical beast its requisite fangs and serpentine necks before work was transferred over to the computer animation team headed by Roger Gould. Disney used combination of hand drawn animation for Hercules and the basic Hydra body while using CGI for the multiple heads and complex movements.

The scene required extensive planning and storyboarding to ensure the CGI elements would blend seamlessly with the traditional animation.

The Hydra was sculpted into a clay model where the dimensions were digitized into the computers as a wireframe model by which the monster was animated. Early into production, the filmmakers decided the Hydra would ultimately have 30 heads.

The animators created one master head and the computer could multiply the heads to the desired scale.

The CGI team also constructed a computerized model of the Hydra that allowed the animators to stretch the eyes, twist the jaw and essentially make the character as loose as if it were hand drawn.

gle headed hydraulic required: 1244

ra battle sequence. In total,: 1601

A team of 108 visual effects animators were responsible for putting the glow into the gods and the fire into Hades hair as well as creating the whirlwind of elements surrounding the various titans, Zeus's lightning bolts, rain, wind, flames and the trails of pixie dust left by Hermes and speaking of whirlwind developments. It's not a very good segue, but it's what I'm going to use.

It's time to segue into the obligature Keanu reference for this episode, and this is a part of the podcast where I've tried to link the movie that I'm featuring with Keanu Reeves and it's always really difficult with Keanu and animation and the links tend to be quite tenuous.

ectorial attempt, Freaked, in: 1993

Now this is a Disney movie, so of course the protagonist needs an I want song to communicate to the audience his want to become a renowned hero.

Go the Distance, a song by Alan Menken and Tony Award winning lyricist David Zipple describes Hercules sincere desire and will to find his place in life, to find his birth family and become the hero he believes he needs to be. The song's instrumental was a major component of Menken's overall score.

It became the unofficial anthem of the movie and also a hit for Michael Bolton, who produced a pop version for the toy. In album and credits, Menken and Zipple had another song in Mindful Meg called I Can't Believe My Heart.

It was only after Ken Duncan, Meg's supervising animator, pointed out that the song didn't fit with the character or her sharp edged personality. Did the composer and lyricist come up with I Won't say I'm in Love, which is again one of the best songs on the soundtrack.

The gospel soundtrack in its entirety is a breath of fresh air within the Disney animated musical canon and the muses have never seemed to quite get the adulation they deserve. So this podcast is here to do that. Hercules lives and breathes with this gospel infused soundtrack and I will die on that hill.

This was also the last Disney Renaissance film for which Alan Menken composed music.

So unlike the previous episode on the Great Mouse Detective where they basically pulled any and all marketing for the movie, the marketing for Hercules was astonishing.

th February: 1997

Surely it should have been a Merc for Herc, but anyway, the tour began in Atlanta, Georgia and went on to 20 cities.

The tour included 11 attractions, including a multimedia stage show, a miniature carousel with a baby Pegasus theme, a fun fair with game booths with a Hercules theme, and a 10 minute animation workshop led by animator Andrea Stasia, where guests could try their hand at drawing Hercules. The same tool had previously been used for the marketing campaigns for Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame.

June: 1997

Several roads had to be closed for the parade, which included more than 30 electrified floats that traveled from 42nd street to 5th Avenue and 66th street, much to the annoyance of local Manhattan residents. Local businesses were asked to either turn down their lights or close as the parade passed by.

And residents of New York City strongly criticized Mayor Rudy Giuliani for effectively allowing Disney to close a busy part of the city.

And considering this is a movie focused on Greek mythology, Disney were very keen to get the Greeks involved with a planned open air premiere at Nick's Hill, located in central Athens, a site for assemblies in ancient Greece and the official meeting place of the Athenian Democratic Assembly. But the Greek government declined after significant media and public outrage to the depiction of the Greek legend of Heracles.

And the Greek press called it, quote, another case of foreigners distorting our history and culture just to suit their commercial interests, unquote. The idea for Disney to use such a revered ancient site just for the premiere also fueled the controversy.

June: 1997

And in that third week was the same week as Face off and Men in Black came out.

Hercules dropped to third in its fourth week and stayed in the top 10 for seven weeks in total, on its $85 million budget, Hercules grossed $99.1 million in the US and $152 million internationally, for a total worldwide gross of $253 million. Which doesn't sound terrible, but Disney considered Hercules a disappointment.

It was the lowest grossing Disney animated feature since the Rescuers Down Under.

In its first two weeks of general release, Hercules took $58 million in box office grosses compared to Pocahontas, which took in $80 million, and the Lion King, which grossed $119 million in their respective two weeks of general release.

Critics were kind to Hercules, though A Rotten Tomatoes has it at 83%, with the website's critical consensus reading fast paced and packed with dozens of pop culture references, Hercules might not measure up with the true classics of the Disney pantheon, but it's still plenty of fun.

James woods received Universal praise for his role as Hades, but the general scarf inspired animation style was received less favorably with the designs of Mount Olympus and Thebes being singled out for not looking as lavish as they could.

Her Kinneys did receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for Go the Distance, which is not the best song on this soundtrack by the way. It unsurprisingly lost to the Oscar juggernaut that was Titanic. It also lost the Best Original Song Golden Globe to Titanic.

It was also nominated for six Annie Awards, winning four when it comes to sequels, so there's several things we need to discuss. The first is Disney's the Animated Series, which is an animated TV series based on this movie.

The series follows Hercules as a teenager in training to be a hero prior to the events of the film. The majority of the film's voice cast reprise their roles in the series.

Zero to Hero was released in: 1999

It would have been about Hercules now living in Athens with Megara and their daughter. When his old friend Helen is captured by the evil Paris Troy, Hercules joins the United Greek army as they head out to war.

new chief creative officer in: 2006

me Kwe Arma, which debuted in: 2019

use in Milburn, New Jersey in: 2023

remake was also announced in: 2020

ired by the original. In June: 2022

I am never a fan of live action remakes anyway, but I'm curious to see how they could adapt Hercules with a modern twist apparently inspired by TikTok. Let's hope Hercules doesn't also get shut down by the US government. Now if there's a price for rotten judgment, I guess I've already won that.

No man is worth the aggravation. That's ancient history. Been there, done that. But enough of me relating to Meg, who's genuinely one of the best female characters in any Disney movie.

Hercules as a movie is just really fun. The vastly different animation style is kind of jarring, but you get used to it. Tonally, it's a bit all over the place.

The comedy seems to mostly just land poorly. And don't even get me started on the character of Phil. I adore Danny DeVito and he's well cast, but Phil is a God awful character.

Speaking of characters, when your titular lead just isn't as interesting as your supporting characters, you've got problems. But luckily Hades and Meg are so great in this movie it actually makes Hercules the character better.

And I think this episode speaks volumes because I've spoken more about Hades and Meg than I've spoken about Hercules. And bless him, Herc isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. But Musker and Clements never wanted their hero to be a stereotypical dumb jock.

They just made him naive and idealistic. The central theme of this film isn't good versus Evil, it's idealism versus Cynicism.

The Disney renaissance was full of beauty with hand drawn and CG mixing to create often works of art. The movie before this, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, was especially gorgeous.

So going from that to something a lot more cartoonish in its style does seem like a step back. The Hutchback of Notre Dame was also super serious. I look forward to delving into that movie in future on this podcast.

Hercules is such a departure from those serious themes. It's almost like Disney gave up on getting another Best Picture Oscar nomination.

Hello Pocahontas and Hunchback and just decided to go with general crowd pleasers. And Hercules is a crowd pleaser. He's even an action figure. This is a lesson on self acceptance.

Many well known individuals with platforms today might benefit from learning the lesson that Being famous isn't the same as being a true hero. It would be good for Hercules to have a bit more nuance and character. At least enough to match his nemesis and his love interest.

But the hero's narrative, which is a jumble of sports, superhero and celebrity culture movie cliches, does work in broad strokes. This is a Superman story in all but name. And it works as a Superman story.

The tale of a nearly invincible God who is cast out of his home to live among the mortals, falls in love with one of them, finds out then his father is a God and that his destiny is to be the savior of mankind. And many superhero narratives have their roots in mythology.

Not just Thor, but the idea that beings with godlike power either have to deal with the whims of humanity or. Or protect humanity. The problem with being a hero, especially in Hercules case, is his heroics are through mostly selfish means.

Hercules only loves humanity when they start to idolize him. He's mostly arrogant and learns nothing other than gaining fame and fortune. And this is the ultimate problem with the character of Hercules.

It seems like Meg and Hades have more interesting arcs than Hercules does. And don't even get me started on the love story between Hercules and Meg. It's cute, but so very, very un debate. It's basically just cakes.

The other issue I have is the idea that a God who was turned mortal by another God, then has to prove their godly worth when they didn't to become a God in the first place. If Zeus is the leader of all gods, where does this rule come from? Who is higher in God Dom than Zeus himself?

When the Fates claim to see the future, but none of them see that Hercules will regain his immortality. Nor do they know baby Hercules lived. Or if they did, they chose not to let Hades know, which is a plot point that the animated series undoes.

It sounds like I dislike this movie. I really don't. I think it's a lot of fun and I really enjoy it for what it is. I love Meg. Take away the James woods of it all. And I love Hades.

I love the Muses and I love the music. Hercules may be strong, but even his strength isn't the thing that saves this movie.

This movie's biggest strength is the gospel soundtrack and the Muses.

And while you can indeed argue that these songs weren't written by black people, they elevate this movie higher than what it would have been without them. Black women are the true heroes here.

Hercules could have gone the distance if this was the first film of the Renaissance or if it had arrived before Aladdin. In both of those cases, it might have felt fresher and funnier. Hercules is flawed and fascinating.

It's timeless and so very late 90s and only existed so that John Musker and Ron Clements could make the movie they really wanted to actually make. And if you haven't seen Treasure Planet, please go and watch Treasure Planet because it is also similarly flawed and fascinating.

Well, thanks for everything Herc. It's been a real slice and thank you for listening.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Hercules and thank you for your continued support of this podcast on its sixth birthday and beyond. If you want to get involved and help this podcast grow, you could tell your friends and family about this episode.

You could leave a rating or review wherever you found this podcast. Or you can find me Follow Me Share Posts Like Posts Comment on Posts on Social Media I'm at Verbaldiorama on all major social media platforms.

So the next episode in this verbal diorama 6th birthday 3 episode extravaganza is we are going post Renaissance, the movie that actually came just before Treasure Planet came out. And it has so many links to Treasure Planet, it feels like it could be a companion movie to Treasure Planet in so many ways.

It is so grandiose, it has so many wonderful visuals and ideas and it's just a shame that the story just kind of lets those visuals and ideas down a little bit. But it is an absolutely fascinating movie and the next episode is going to be on the history and legacy of Atlantis, the Lost Empire.

So please join me as a release of this episode in a few days time for Atlantis, the Lost Empire. And I always say this podcast is free and it always will be free.

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