Hercules (1997)

Hercules, oh Hercules, how romanticised you are from the myths. I remember watching a part of this film when I still had Greek in secondary school and my teacher wanted to turn it off since it's so far from the actual myths we had been studying. But it figures, it's been loosely based off the myths of HERACLES, and not Hercules.

Anyway, even though it doesn't seem to resemble the myths at all, I still love the movie, especially its characters. One of the first characters we're introduced with are the muses. These are the five muses of Greek mythology, the muses of epic poetry, drama, music, comedy and dance. Each of the muses has their properties incorporated in their design and it peaks through in the songs they're performing and they way they behave and act overall. A thing I really adore in the artistic style of the film is how they tried to make it look different than Disney films made before, they wanted it to look Greek. The art style is inspired by statues, paintings and vases from Ancient Greece. Aside from that they were also inspired by the artwork of Gerald Scarfe, who created album artwork for Pink Floyd's the Wall. 

In general, I really love how the characters are designed all quite differently with tiny detailes that makes it a whole. While Hercules and Zeus are quite "angular" in design and build, Megara and Hades for example are quite the opposite, consisting of smooth lines and here and there the necessary spiked details. Because such big characters are so different in design with tiny details (like the swirls on joints such as kenes, or at the end of lines, in the hair etc) that try and make them fit together, to me it's already they "opposites attract" that is key in the design. Because they are so different in design to me, they complement each other when together in shot.

Getting back at puns, I really love all the mythical references the films tries to sneak into the script, all jokes I can greatly appreciate. As well, if you have knowledge of Ancient Greek Mythology, it's always fun to try and point out which character resembles who out of all the gods. Even though I'm not entirely fond of all the bright colours they used to perhaps tell all the different gods apart, it sure does its job. I wonder however how it could've been when they would've stuck to a smaller palette of colours and perhaps only use different "holy glows" to clarify who is godly and who is not.