Disney’s Hercules still runs on the same engine that powered it in 1997: a demigod who has to earn his way back to Mount Olympus, a villain having the time of his life, and a satyr trainer who spends most of the film yelling at him. The film is 93 minutes. It is directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, who co-wrote the screenplay with Irene Mecchi and the writing team of Donald McEnery and Bob Shaw. It is loosely based on the legendary hero Heracles.
Trailer, via Animation Compendia.
Zeus, Hera, and a Baby With a Potion Problem
The setup is clean. Zeus and Hera have a son, Hercules. The other gods celebrate. Zeus’s brother Hades, who wants Olympus for himself, learns from the Fates that a planetary alignment in eighteen years will let him free the Titans and take the mountain, but only if Hercules stays out of the way.
Hades sends Pain and Panic to kill the baby with a potion that strips a god of immortality. The demons kidnap Hercules and feed him the potion, but a farmer couple walks past and the two flee before the last drop goes in. Hercules loses immortality and keeps his strength. The couple adopts him. Pain and Panic never tell Hades they failed.
That is the whole machine. It is efficient, and it is funny, and it does not waste a scene.
Tate Donovan, Danny DeVito, and the Long Audition
Donny Osmond tried out for the speaking voice of Hercules and got turned down for sounding too deep. He later sang for Shang in Mulan. Tate Donovan auditioned seven times over roughly three months, then waited another three months to learn he had the part. He recorded Hercules for two and a half years. Donovan has said he saw Danny DeVito only once during that stretch, because DeVito recorded in a separate booth.
Clements and Musker wrote Philoctetes with DeVito in mind. He would not audition, so Ed Asner, Ernest Borgnine and Dick Latessa were brought in to read. Red Buttons read and walked out with a line worth keeping: “I know what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna give this part to Danny Devito!” He was right. The directors and producer Alice Dewey ran into DeVito at a pasta lunch during the filming of Matilda, and he signed on.
I know what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna give this part to Danny Devito!
Meg, Alan Menken, and a Blocked Audition
Susan Egan had chased a voice role in a Disney animated feature since Beauty and the Beast, and got cast as Belle on Broadway instead. When Hercules came up, she went after Megara. Alan Menken initially blocked her. Egan has described his reasoning: the female lead was supposed to be a cynical smart-ass who sounded nothing like sweet, innocent Belle. Menken relented. Egan read in front of a microphone while being videotaped.
James Woods voices Hades. Susan Egan voices Meg. Rip Torn is Zeus, Samantha Eggar is Hera, Bobcat Goldthwait and Matt Frewer are Pain and Panic. Josh Keaton voiced young Hercules, and Roger Bart re-recorded his singing.
Nessus, Thebes, and What Meg Actually Owes
The middle of the film is a road movie. Zeus sends Hercules and Pegasus to Phil for training. Phil and Hercules go to Thebes so Hercules can prove himself. On the way they meet Meg, who is sarcastic and in trouble, and Hercules saves her from the centaur Nessus.
Meg is Hades’s slave. She sold her soul to him to save a boyfriend who then left her for another woman. She does not tell Hercules any of this. When she mentions him to Hades, Hades realizes Pain and Panic failed and starts plotting properly. That is the hinge the whole second half turns on, and the film knows it.
Why 7.5 and Not Higher
Here is where this paper lands. Hercules is a good film with a great villain and a structural problem it never solves.
Woods is the reason to watch. Hades is hotheaded, hilarious and genuinely menacing in the same breath, and the film gives him the best material. DeVito’s Phil is the second engine, a trainer with a grudge and a soft spot, and the casting story behind him is better than most making-of documentaries. Egan’s Meg is the most interesting character on the page — a woman who traded her soul for a man who did not deserve it, and who has been paying for it ever since.
The problem is Hercules himself. The film’s stated goal is that he become a “true hero,” and the movie is far more interested in the people around him than in whether he gets there. Donovan put in two and a half years on the role. The character still reads as the straight man in his own movie.
The darker material got stripped out. Clements and Musker studied multiple interpretations of Greek mythology and abandoned the darker mythical aspects, including Hercules’s birth through Zeus’s adulterous affair with Alcmene. That was the right commercial call for a family film. It also means the myth arrives pre-sanitized, and the stakes feel smaller than the gods on screen.
The six songs by Alan Menken and David Zippel and Menken’s orchestral score do the work they are asked to do. None of them are the reason anyone remembers this film. The reason anyone remembers this film is a blue-haired god chewing through every scene he is in.
At 93 minutes, nothing drags. At 93 minutes, nothing digs in either.
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