Themes
Americanized Ideals
Self-Sacrifice
Role in Society
When you were a child everyone asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up. This actually gives children the idea that they have to find their role in society and know what they want to do with their lives right away. Disney continues to stimulate this idea by having young Hercules not fit in which sends him on a quest to find where he does belong. They even make an inspirational and catchy song about it. The other children call him things like "destructoboy" and it is clear that his strength sets him apart from the other children. Hercules realizes this and journeys off to see his real father, Zeus, at his temple. There he asks his father how he can become a god because he believes Olympus is where he belongs. According to Zeus he must become a true hero on earth in order to become immortal and live on Olympus. In order to achieve this Hercules goes to Philoctetes who will train him to become a great hero. After all his training he finally gets to use his skills. He defeats many scary monsters, saves a damsel in distress as well as the people of Thebes. These heroic acts do not make him a true hero but in the end he becomes a true hero by sacrificing himself and saving Meg from the underworld. After getting the chance to live on Olympus he chooses instead to live with Meg on earth as a mortal because that is where he believes he will truly fit in and be happy. This shows that you do not need to be famous in order to fit in and be happy. That being a simple family man is also an acceptable role in society.
Self-sacrifice is a common theme within other Roman and Greek movies. This sacrifice is demonstrated by the characters dying a glorious and heroic death for the people they love and the things they believe in. In the final scenes of 300 we see the Spartan king, Leonidas, nailed to the ground by arrows after a hard battle to hold off the Persians and keep Sparta free.
Although Disney down plays the gore and avoids the death of the main hero they still were able to show many self-sacrifices from different characters. This begins with Meg pushing the weakened Hercules out from under the falling column only to be smashed by it herself. This results in Megs soul being sent to the underworld. Hercules dives into the river of souls to rescue her which he knows will end up killing him but he sacrifices himself to save her. This finally results in Hercules becoming immortal which is something that he wanted to achieve the entire movie. He tried to achieve this by training with Phil, fighting monsters to become a hero so that he could join his birth parents on Olympus. He finally achieves it but once he is welcomed into Olympus he realizes that with Meg is where he will be truly happy and sacrifices his immortality to be with Meg. This theme shows the audience that in order to become a true hero you have to sacrifice it all. It shows that true sacrifice happens when you put all thoughts of yourself aside and do something for someone else.
Disney's Hercules has similar themes to other Roman epics such as the 300, Spartacus, andQuo Vadis. The themes in Hercules show more American ideas and try to teach the audience of children about them.
Hercules is a Greek myth but Disney puts many American ideas into the storyline. The characters also follow the American society's gender expectations with Hercules being this very masculine and strong hero and Meg having a tiny waist and looking very feminine. In this story we see the importance of having a dream and the value placed on family. These are both very Americanized values. The theme of having a dream is something very familiar to us because we are constantly surrounded by people pushing for us to "follow our dreams". Hercules follows his dreams by training to become a hero because it is his dream to belong somewhere. He believes he belongs on Mount Olympus with his birth parents. He spends majority of his life following his dream and working hard to achieve it. In the end he does achieve it which demonstrates that when you work hard and persevere you can achieve all of your dreams no matter how big or small. This story also shows the value of family. It shows the love that Hercules has for his birth family and his adopted family. It is clearly displalyed how much Zeus and Hera love their son Hercules and you can see how sad they are when they lose him. Finally when he gets the chance to be with his family and chooses Meg, his family is okay with it because they want him to be happy. This demonstrates that your family will always support you and love you. Family is something that will always be there for you. That is why Disney stresses the value of family to its audience through this film.