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Portable Apps
Disney's Hercules
I know that there are a lot of Disney's Hercules fans out there on the web. They write tribute pages to the Disney Hades and when this site was in it's infancy, a websearch for "Hades" would return many such pages dedicated to this "Disney character". Unfortunately, the Disney character, "Hades," perpetuates the exact misconceptions that this site is intended to combat. Although I am a fan of James Woods, and I generally do enjoy Disney movies (although their formula is getting stale), I don't like what Disney has done to the Greek myths.
One of the guys I used to work with was talking about how cool the "Hades" character was in the movie his kids were watching. Somehow I got around to telling him that the real Hades wasn't out to take over the universe, and that everyone, good or bad, went to the underworld. He was shocked. It just didn't occur to him that Disney would alter the myths so radically.
I can't help but think that other parents and children will also come away from that movie convinced that although the film had some Disney magic, the plot was more or less true to the original story. Why would they think otherwise? All the Disney movies about stories they were familiar with have pretty much followed the plot of the original. "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", and "Cinderella" are all pretty much as we remember them from our youth. But "Hercules" bears only a superficial resemblance to the myths of the ancient Greeks.
In the Disney film, "Hades" is an evil God who seeks to take over the universe. His plans are thwarted by Hercules, who instead of using his Greek name, Heracles, as all the other gods in the movie do, goes by his Roman name.
In the myths, Hades was a well respected God. He chose to remain in the underworld and mostly ignored the events of the upper worlds. He was not evil. He was a devoted husband to his queen Persephone, and the two were often pictured together in their palace garden in the underworld. Hades was not the devil, as Disney would lead you to believe. Hades and Heracles got along just fine. In fact Heracles' mortal half is down in the house of Hades right now.
It was Hera who hated Heracles. In the Greek Myths Hera was not his mother. Alcmene was Heracles' mother and Zeus was his father. Hera was jealous of Alcmene, and she hated Heracles. She sent serpents to kill him as a child, and later made Heracles go mad, killing his first wife Megara and their children.
Hades never tried to harm Hercules or any of the other Gods. To the contrary, he kept the Titans who fought against Zeus and the rest of the Olympians safely locked away in Tartarus. He punished those who offended the Gods, and kept Otus and Ephialtes and other giants in Tartarus, where they could not overthrow the Gods.
Some believe that Disney was just doing what they had to to make the movie palatable to children. I have a hard time believing this. I remember many childrens' books about Hercules from the "show and tells" of my youth. Perhaps Disney was trying to make the film more palatable to religious parents. Maybe they were just out to sell tickets, toys, and videos and it didn't matter what the plot of the movie was as long as it fit their formula for success. You have noticed that almost every Disney film since "The Little Mermaid" has been essentially the same haven't you?
When I followed the white rabbit through Lewis Carrol's "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland," I found all the characters and scenes that were left out of the Disney Film. Still, the basic plot was the same. The characters had the same relationships and motivations. The biggest shock was that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum did not appear until "Through the looking Glass." If any of the children who enjoyed "Disney's Hercules" later pick up a book on Greek mythology, they will be in for a rude awakening. Instead of enriching what they already know, their long-held beliefs will be challenged.
See http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/DisneyHercules.html for a comprehensive list of differences between the Disney movie and the myths.
