Hercules

Hercules (1997)

After a set of serious and dramatic films, culminating in the very dark The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney took a step back into light-hearted comedy with Hercules, one of their zaniest and wackiest films. Though Hercules is mostly entertaining, it borrows perhaps a little too freely from other sources, while failing to properly borrow from what should be its most important source of all – the original legend of Heracles, or, Hercules and the Greek, or Roman, mythology that surrounds it.

It’s a Renaissance movie, do I really have to say how good the animation is? As usual, it’s smooth, expressive, detailed, it’s all good stuff and adds a lot to the great action scenes, though some of the computer animation, particularly that of the Hydra, is a little dated. The art style is more angular and stylised, without going as far as films animated in the xerographic process, such as One Hundred and One Dalmatians; it’s more similar to what Disney tried with Sleeping Beauty but, in my opinion, they are more successful here, making for some very interesting character designs. The colours are nice and clean, of particularly note is the way in which the Gods shine with this kind of neon glow, it looks great and creates a really cool effect. This neon look, combined with the art style, kind of gives the film a look of the Ancient World not as it really was, but more like how it is portrayed in Las Vegas, like Caesar’s Palace; this is a very interesting and original idea that gives the film a unique and heavily stylised look which perfectly suits its sense of humour. The backgrounds are mostly just okay, there are a couple of standouts such as the top of Mount Olympus, which looks great, but mostly they aren’t that noticeable. Overall, Hercules’ art and animation isn’t quite as grandiose or artistic as The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Lion King; the little touches just aren’t as developed, the lighting, the shading, the framing, it’s a lot more simplistic, but there’s nothing wrong with that and it fits the more light-hearted tone of the movie well.

Hang on I thought we were watching the Hercules movie not playing the PS1 game- oh wait...

The story is... messy, at best; there are a lot of issues that hold the film’s narrative back and just leave you scratching your head and wondering why Disney ever made such strange choices. At the centre of these problems is the fact that Hercules is ostensibly based on Greek mythology and yet takes so little from it that it becomes difficult to understand why Disney even bothered calling the film Hercules at all. Practically nothing whatsoever is depicted with any accuracy – Zeus and Hera being happily married, good parents, Hades being this over-the-top bad guy, the Titans being these mindless beasts, even little things like making Narcissus an Olympian God when he was just an ordinary guy, all for the sake of one bad joke. While Disney always messes with the stories it adapts to make them fit their formula and keep them family friendly, this one really takes the cake; the original novel for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example, is obviously quite different to the Disney film, containing much more pessimistic aspects, adult themes and a tragic ending, but Disney still made their version dark and serious, while still suiting their family friendly style. Hercules however, ignores the original source material so spectacularly that it comes off as a parody of bad Disney adaptations; really, it feels more like an adaptation of Superman than it does the stories of Hercules – a young baby is found by a couple who live on a farm, who have been praying for a child but could never have one. The baby is revealed to have superhuman strength and grows up feeling like an outsider and looking for a place to belong; when he reaches adolescence, the boy is told the truth and so goes on a journey to find who he is. He manages to make contact with his father, who comes from another world and tells him who he truly is; the boy then trains to control his powers, travels to the big city where he meets a feisty young woman and becomes the world’s greatest hero who consistently defends the city from- do you see where I’m going with this? It’s just a very strange choice, why choose to make a film about Greek mythology if you’re just going to make a film about comic book mythology?

The weirdest thing about this is that the whole point about Greek mythology is that it is open to interpretation, there is no one source material to stay true to, so you can pick and choose what stories you want to tell and then interpret them in new and different ways – this is one of the only times where Disney had a lot of freedom and room in which to mould a story to suit their needs. It’s strange then that for one of the only stories Disney adapted where they had a lot of lee-way, they don’t take advantage of this, as they take such little inspiration from any aspects of Greek mythology that it really has nothing to do with it, it almost seems like a bad joke. At the end of the day, I understand this is probably just a personal issue, as I’m pretty into Greek mythology, so I see the flaws and strange choices more than others; still, objectively, this just feels like a really big missed opportunity, as Disney seems more focused on making The Flintstones-esque jokes about the Ancient World than it does with engaging with the source material, perhaps most blatant in the fact that the Gods, who are always the most fun and interesting parts of Greek myths, barely appear in the film. It just feels like they made all the worst choices they could’ve possibly made. 

Close but no... ethereal, ancient Greek deity-conjured cigar

The movie also struggles with issues that are present in the original Greek myths as well, in terms of the Gods’ powers and the extent of their ability to interfere with mortal lives. The original stories would suggest several different excuses for this problem and go back and forth as to which was true – sometimes the Gods couldn’t interfere because of fate, sometimes they could change fate but just weren’t supposed to, sometimes the Gods had the power to interfere but Zeus wouldn’t let them, sometimes they did interfere but then apparently couldn’t later on – it never really made much sense, but this is because all these different stories were told by different people, so obviously there is not one solid continuity throughout them. This excuse doesn’t really work with Hercules however, which, as a single ninety minute film, should be internally consistent and make sense within itself; however, the writers just seem a little too lazy to really address any of these issues, as well as some basic concepts of storytelling, ending up with a lot of things that just don’t make sense. Why can’t Hercules go back to Olympus? ‘Only Gods can live on Olympus’ seems like a pretty flimsy reason to me and even if so, I don’t understand why Zeus, King of the Gods, can’t just make Hercules a God again. How come Zeus never comes to Hercules until he’s a teenager? How come he never helps him? How come Zeus defeats the Titans single-handedly in the opening, but in the climax, the combined force of him and every God on Olympus can’t beat them without Hercules’ help? Is Zeus just getting too old for this stuff? How come in eighteen years, Hades never discovers that Hercules isn’t dead, even though he’d surely have double-checked and all the other Gods knew? It’s explicitly stated that Hera and Zeus were watching over him, so what, did they just never talk to Hades once in eighteen years? Did he not even come up to offer his fake condolences only to hear that Hercules wasn’t really dead? And when Hades takes Hercules’ strength away, why doesn’t he just kill him there and then instead of sending the Cyclops? It seems like it would be a lot easier to just slit the helpless Hercules’ throat, or for an all powerful God to just burn him to a crisp, rather than give Hercules the time to escape or formulate a plan. A lot of the story just does not make sense; even for a kid’s movie this is very flimsy.

The movie is jam-packed with stuff, there’s always something going on; while in some respects, this is a good thing and there’s certainly not a wasted minute, I’ll give it that, things just move so fast that it’s kind of hard to build up a satisfying story. We’ve only known Hercules for about ten minutes before he starts talking about how he tries so hard to fit in and doesn’t belong and yada yada, yet we haven’t seen much evidence of that; we see him screw up one time, but that’s not really enough to justify what he’s saying, it’s not that I don’t believe it’s true, but I just haven’t seen enough to really emotionally identify with Hercules’ problem. Compare this to the opening of Beauty and the Beast, where the song “Belle” perfectly communicates to the audience Belle’s place in the town, why she is an outsider and what she wants from life, all within the space of about five minutes; we instantly like Belle, believe in her problems and, most importantly, understand how and why she feels the way she does and want her to get what she wants. Hercules never does this, it’s always rushing to the next thing – one minute he’s a baby, the next he’s a teenager, then suddenly he’s met Zeus, then he’s rushing off to find Phil, then suddenly he’s an adult, then he’s the biggest hero in Greece, then he’s in love after one date, it all moves very quickly. While this frenetic pace does match the film’s irreverent sense of humour, it stops it from ever really developing a compelling narrative and prevents the audience from ever becoming emotionally involved in the characters.

Rip on, Rip off

Speaking of its sense of humour, this is perhaps where Hercules is most derivative – it’s clearly trying very hard to be Aladdin in Greece: it has the same Ancient World setting, the same zero to hero story and most importantly, the same comic style, utilising modernistic dialogue and pop cultural references for jokes. However, while Aladdin knew to keep this to a minimum and mostly only make these kinds of jokes through the appropriately wacky character of the Genie, Hercules relies on them a little too often, undermining the style and atmosphere of the film. Gags like Thebes being called “The Big Olive”, acting as a stand-in for New York City, having huge mosaics instead of billboards, pots with green and red men painted on them instead of traffic lights and Pain saying ‘someone call IX-I-I!’ resemble History of the World, Part I or Life of Brian in the way they use aspects of the Ancient World to poke fun at modern day life. However, the satire in Hercules is, unsurprisingly, not as intelligent and, though it does have a bit more bite than most Disney films, it’s still too soft and family friendly for it to ever really work as the satire it seems to want to be. The jokes aren’t insultingly bad or anything, they’re just corny and a bit too prevalent; they never annoyed me, but the only times they really made me laugh were in pure disbelief at how silly they were.

The characters are hit and miss, some are very bland, some of full of personality. Hercules himself is a very traditional Disney hero, he’s nice and noble, but dull as a rock, he really doesn’t have much of a personality to him at all, so you never really get very involved with his character or care about what happens to him. Meg is actually a much better candidate for the main character role, as she not only has a personality, but actually changes over the course of the film and has to make tough decisions and sacrifices, unlike Hercules, who seems to have everything come pretty easy to him after the first twenty minutes or so. Meg is a very likeable and different love interest, in that initially, she actively resists this role and is never defined simply as “Hercules’ girlfriend”; her back story is simple, but effective, giving her a legitimate reason for her behaviour, as well as a genuine and well executed character arc which is much more interesting than Hercules’ – the way in which she learns to trust and love again is portrayed realistically, even if her relationship with Hercules isn’t especially well developed. Meg is a classic femme fatale, charming, seductive, dangerous, witty and always in control; she’s another enjoyably sassy Renaissance love interest.

Meg in full effect

Zeus is well voiced by Rip Torn and can be quite fun, but is mostly as dull as his son and doesn’t really do much; we don’t see much of the others Gods’ personalities, besides Hermes who is just annoying, but when we do they just come off as boring sycophants who suck up to Zeus. This is a real waste considering the rich characteristics of the Gods in the original tales and also bizarre, considering, as I said earlier, their exploits are always the best part, so it’s surprising how underutilised they are here. Phil is reasonably fun, he seems to be inspired by characters like Mickey from Rocky, the gruff, streetwise trainer with a heart of gold, a fun character type Disney hasn’t really done before; Danny DeVito has a great, distinctive voice and does a good job here, he’s pretty fun. Hades is a wonderfully enjoyable villain, at times he is deliciously smug and cocky, at others humorously ill-tempered and vindictive; his mood just changes at the drop of the hat as he explodes from totally in control to completely enraged. James Woods gives a fantastic performance; he puts so much life and energy into it, when Hades is supposed to be angry, he really does sound furious, when he’s being a sleazy fast-talker, Woods delivers his lines with effortless speed and aloof disinterest, masterfully transforming Hades into this kind of supernatural used car salesman or shady loan shark who deals in souls instead of money, it fits his character perfectly. In fact, Hades is so fun and likeable it’s almost a problem, as it’s very easy to want to see him triumph over the boring and self-indulgent Gods of Olympus; he’s always a blast to watch and is one of the best parts of the movie. Pain and Panic are typical villainous sidekicks, but they at least mix the formula up a bit by being a double-act, though they are basically just the Hyenas from The Lion King, sans Ed. While I have always found Bobcat Goldthwait’s “voice” annoying, I have to admit it at least works better for animation and Matt Frewer is good as Panic. They have a couple of funny lines and obviously put effort into their performance, but at times, Pain and Panic can be a little too obnoxious.

Besides Hades, the best part about the movie is the soundtrack, which is one of the most consistently good of any Disney movie. Most of the songs are inspired by gospel music, demonstrated through the characters of the Muses; this ties in to the “Las Vegas version of the Ancient World” theme, as rather than a traditional Greek Chorus, Hercules has a modern Greek Gospel Choir to comment on its story, an appropriate and successful idea. “The Gospel Truth” is the weakest song of the bunch, but is still pretty good; it has a nice, mellow sound and serves as a good intro to the story. “Go the Distance” is effectively “The Whole New World Number” and even though it’s a bit sappy, I quite like it; yeah it’s corny, the lyrics aren’t inventive, it’s very poppy and doesn’t really fit with the style of the other songs, but there’s something about it that feels quite powerful and hopeful to me. I don’t know why, but I like this one. “One Last Hope” is the most classically “Disney” musical number and it’s a great one at that, it’s upbeat, with fun lyrics, serving as a good introduction to Phil’s character, and an effective montage which demonstrates the time span and results of Hercules’ training quickly and capably. “Zero the Hero” is the big show stopper, a great gospel-infused number full of energy and some charming rhymes – ‘Is he bold? There’s no-one braver. Is he sweet? Our favourite flavour!’ – Again, it also works as a good montage, it’s an awesome song. “I Won’t Say I’m in Love” is one of Disney’s better love songs; rather than being slow and overly-sentimental, it’s upbeat and catchy, as another gospel inspired number which, rare for a Disney movie, acknowledges the problems that come with love as well as the positives. Though “A Star is Born” isn’t really a musical number so much as just as a stand-alone song, it’s so good it doesn’t really matter; another gospel number, it’s super high-energy, catchy, triumphant and a perfect end to the movie. Though the numerous musical montages do mean that a lot of interesting parts of the story are skipped over, the lack of depth in the narrative can be forgiven for the quality of this fantastic collection of songs.

Danny DeVito plays a short, hairy, goat-like creature with a New Jersey accent... Not much of a stretch, huh?

Hercules is a fun movie, though not a very smart one; it lacks originality, drawing inspiration from a lot of other sources for its attitude and comedic style, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While the dedication to a more satirical style of humour is admirable, this means that story and characterisation mostly take a backseat to the jokes, which are often a little too goofy and, though harmless, not really funny enough to justify the lack of an engaging narrative or poor use of the source material at hand. While not an especially mature or intelligent film and not purely entertaining enough to make up for its shortcomings in the way that Aladdin is, Hercules is still a pretty good time – it’s nice to look at, the songs are great and the action is fun. It’s a silly movie, but I like it all the same.

7/10