Heracles: Similarities Between The Greek Myth And The Movie

Many of the greek myths created are reproduced numerous times, but most myths directed by Disney has been most successfully. One of the more famous and influential myths turned movies is the myth of Heracles. Heracles is dramatized by Disney’s version for the young viewers; however, this leads to some major inconsistencies between the myth and the movie. One glaring difference between the myth and the movie include Heracles’s parentage. In the actual myth, Heracles was born as the product of Zeus’s infidelity with Alcmene, the daughter of Perseus. Hera was so jealous of her husband’s affair causing her to be distant with Heracles due to him being a constant reminder of adultery. Disney decided that the concept of infidelity was to mature for the younger audience and decided that Heracles’s mother would be Hera, Zeus’s wife, and father as Zeus. They acted as the loving and caring parents of Heracles and the name Alcmeme was never mentioned. Another major inaccuracy between the myth and movie involves the depiction of Hades. In the movie, Hades is portrayed as the evil being that has one main goal/dream, dominating the realm of Zeus. His evilness Disney created allows for children to see the division between Hercules and all of Hercules’s enemies, identifying whose good and …show more content…
In the movie, Hercules slowly falls in love with Megara, “Meg,” a mortal woman’s whose soul is in the hands of Hades. She continues to manipulate Hercules under the control of her soul keeper, but regrets her actions when she reciprocates her feelings to Hercules. In the myth, Megara is never mentioned and Hercules’s wife is named Deianeria. Deianeria is nearly raped by a centaur, Nessus, when crossing a ranging river. Disney probably thought that it would be less complicated using the name Meg and more appropriate in avoiding any mentioning of rape as it is a serious concept that children would not