Disney's Hercules

The whole story of Hercules was completely different than the traditional stories from Ancient Greece. First of all Hera is not his loving mother, as the Disney film portrays. She is one of the main antagonists in Hercules life, but instead the film creates Hades as the main cause for his strife. Hades is the one that sends "snakes" to kill him as a child instead of Hera. Also, the main plot of Hades trying to gain power is not a part of the traditional stories. Once the Titans are locked up by Zeus, they stay locked up. The film did however have many characters from the stories, but they were very different in the Disney's version. For example, Nessus plays a completely different role in the film, and Philoctetes is a Satyr hero trainer. All these changes were probably done to create a more acceptable family oriented film, as if the story stayed true to the stories it would definitely be much darker and aimed at a different audience. Many aspects of the original story would have been unacceptable, for example the Hercules having to murder his first family and Nessus sexually harassing Hercules' later wife. Plus, with the unfaithfulness of Zeus being the reason for Hera's hate for Hercules, their had to be a completely different antagonist to avoid this debauchery. The Disney team probably did not all study Ancient Greece so they thought the Titans were cool, so why not include them in the film. Also, the twelve labors cast on Hercules by King Eurystheus, was not really in the film at all, only the Hydra and some clips and references to others. For example the boar Hercules had to bring back to the king was shown by a picture on a vase, and it could be inferred he killed the Nemean Lion as he has a lion skin on as he gets a portrait of himself painted. Overall, most of these changes made sense as this is only a film targeted at young children, so they do not know their Ancient Greek history, and the goal was to create an enjoyable film, not a history lesson.