Pathetic

Rating: 4/10 (3 April 2008)

Now, I'll admit that the music is not half bad. But as for the people who say that it's not important that it be true to the mythology, that's not what us myth-lovers are complaining about. At least for me. I don't know about the rest of them. I am complaining that with this movie Disney took a great story and Christianized it. They corrupted it, they took all of the decency out of it. This movie is to the myth what saccharine is to sugar. And I say that not only because artificial sweetener will never be better than the real thing, but because this movie is in fact nauseatingly saccharine in its "adaptation". Just a few ways in which this movie was Christianized and had all of the punch taken out of the real story: for one, Hera is NOT Hercules' mother, she is the one trying to kill him. But of course, in a Disney movie we have to have the happy family, right? And since we need a new villain, hm, let's see...why not just pin it on the lord of the underworld? Who, I might add, has no demonic connotations in Greek myth and whose only appearance in the Hercules story is when Hercules is tasked to bring Cerberus from Hades and back to the king alive. In the end of the real story, Hercules is driven mad by Hera and kills his wife, "Meg", and his entire family. This kind of interpretation makes me sick because it's just another example of society thinking that children can't handle anything remotely serious. But, to end on an up note, the music was catchy.