Movie Thoughts: Hercules (1997)

• Released: 27 June 1997
• Directed by: Ron Clements, John Musker
• Running time: 1 hr 33 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

A semi-God named Hercules must stand up against the evil Hades to save mankind and become a full-fledged god, allowed to live on Mount Olympus.

My Thoughts

This is one of the only Disney movies I've only watched once before going through them again in order for the Movie Thoughts Disney Project. Most of the movies by them that tell a complete story (so no Fantasia, package films or the like) I've seen at least multiple times (Home on the Range being the only outlier, which I've never once seen before), but Hercules I only watched once and never really paid that much attention to during that watch because it just didn't hold my attention. So does that make it bad?

No, not really. After finally watching it for the first time with my undivided attention, I wouldn't call this bad. It just doesn't particularly keep me engaged throughout. It just feels very average, which is not often the case in the Disney Renaissance. 

Most of this movie honestly just feels decent to me. Not bad, not overly good, just decent. Nothing about it just stands out. Hercules is a very boring main character to me, I didn't like the pervy Danny DeVito satyr, and Pegasus has to be one of the most useless sidekicks to come out of the Renaissance. The music also doesn't stand out. I would not go out of my way to listen to any of these soundtracks again. The only one I kind of remembered was "Go the Distance", but I still didn't like it all that much. 

The art style is more stylized and cartoon-y here, and it's not really my cup of tea. They didn't go overly angular, going with more rounded shapes, but it just doesn't really speak to me. That said, the animation was still really good and Disney is definitely getting better at blending in their CGI elements with their 2D animation. 

Then there's the elements to come out of the movie that are actually really good: Megara and Hades. Like mentioned before, I didn't particularly care for any of the characters. Well, except these two. Meg is a very non-standard Disney love interest, being very cynical and smooth. She still has to be rescued in the end, but at least her personality and mannerisms were a lot of fun. 

Hades (voiced hilariously by James Woods) is our main villain, and he's arguably the best element out of the entire film. Meg was fun, but she was still being held back a little bit by her crush on Hercules (seriously, I felt no chemistry between them whatsoever). Hades, however, just has the best parts of the movie.  His humor is very dry, he's intimidating but not overly so, his voice acting has this great charm to it, and he kind of goes about his hell-business as if it is literally that, business. I wouldn't go out of my way to call him one of the best Disney villains, but he's definitely one of the saving graces that makes this movie "pretty good" rather than "painfully average yet also boring". 

So, yeah, I don't like this movie all that much and it did somewhat bore me, but all of the scenes with Meg and Hades were generally great. It still looks pretty good, but it just didn't really interest me.