Argumentative Essay On Hercules

In 1997, Disney adapted the Ancient Greek classical myth of Herakles to the big screen in the movie: Hercules. Hercules, the main character of the movie, was a god born of Zues and Hera who was stripped of his godhood by Hades’s minions and lived out his adolescence on earth completely unaware of his heritage. A gangly, awkward youth, after his first encounter with Zues, Hercules makes it his goal to become a hero and regain his godhood. The film follows him and his trusty Pegasus sidekick on his journey from ‘zero to hero’ as he learns what it means to be a true hero.

The film was the first adaptation of Greek Mythology that was produced by Disney. Which leads to the questions of why? What was the director hoping to accomplish? One could

In this movie, Disney’s message seems to be summed up in the words of Zues when he tells Hercules “A true hero isn’t measured by the size of his strength, but by the strength of his heart.” These ‘words of wisdom’ come to Hercules after he finally attains godhood. Something he struggled to do because he believed that popularity polls and defeating monsters was all it took to be a hero. Before the movie’s climax he tells his Zues that he’s attained hero status because he’s “an action figure!” If heroism is something to be admired and strived for, then the message here is that popularity and public perception don’t necessarily make you a good or ‘heroic’ person. It’s only when Hercules is willing to sacrifice himself in a futile task in order to rescue his love interest, Meg, from the underworld that he attains godhood. The moral of this story seems to be that your worth shouldn’t be measured by how the public views you but by how you treat

Perhaps one of the most apparent changes is that of Hercules’s parentage. In classical Greek Mythology, Hercules is the offspring of Zues and a mortal woman, Alcmene. It can be reasonably argued, that Hercules was actually the born out or rape, because Zues deceived Alcmene into thinking that he was her husband. Because Zues is ruler of the gods there is little that Hera can do to directly punish him for his infidelity, and she enacts her retribution against the mortals involved instead. According to one version of the myth, Hera made it impossible for Alcmene to actually give birth leaving her in painful child-labor for days on end. Hera’s rage doesn’t stop there, once Hercules is born she attempts to kill him with venomous snakes. And when Hercules gets married for the first time, Hera makes him temporarily insane and he goes on a murderous rampage, killing his wife, Megera, and their