From Zero to Hero

Recently I rewatched Disney’s Aladdin from 1992/93 a film that save for the Star Wars Trilogy has probably done the most to shape my love of movies in the way that I have it now.

Needless to say that I fell in love with the film all over again and its my favorite Disney film as I feel it blends all the elements that Disney is so well known for:

- Its memorable villains (and how ironic it is that Marvel Studios ends up with this particular studio which is so well known for its villains and yet Marvel has consistently dropped the ball in that regard)

- Great songs (this movie was sadly the last film to have involvement from Howard Ashman who passed away during the development of the film and his loss is still so sad to this day as he was a gifted lyricist and storyteller who understood how Disney worked and how musicals worked and how to blend the two seamlessly a blend that when he was gone just didn’t work as well)

- Fun side characters (Iago came to mind when I, Tonya came up recently during its awards run)

And finally Robin Williams giving us probably his signature role as well as one of the best supporting acts in any movie as the Genie of the Lamp.

But when thinking about that film I also began to think about the other films in that period of Disney animation in the 1990s and from 1989 to 1995 there was this incredible resurgence of animation as a genre with not only Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King but also the Simpsons and Batman the Animated Series on TV these projects above all doing so much to destroy the sentiment from the 80s that animation was little more than a kids genre and what programs there were most likely just glorified advertisements for the toy lines that came with it.

But there is one film now with all of that out of the way that I want to talk about a film in this group that I feel is underrated and deserves a bit more attention and that film is 1997’s Hercules.

This was the third directorial effort from John Musker and Ron Clements following their huge hits Aladdin and the Little Mermaid and arguably these were the guys that did a lot to make that animation renaissance happen along with Ashman and Alan Menken and like those films there is a great use of music by Alan Menken and a light hearted and breezy tone where humour is well utilised unlike Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame where the comedy felt like it got in the way of the more serious storytelling those 2 films tried to tell.

But there are 2 main reasons I feel this film is overlooked:

- Firstly this was Musker and Clements using Greek mythology to basically do a Superhero movie and there is a very strong influence of Richard Donner’s Superman work all throughout the film in that:

-- Hercules is cast out of his home and must give the people of his adopted home a light to show them the way

-- Hercules communicates with his real father via other means

-- The Titans who were banished into a mysterious zone is very similar to General Zod and his allies being banished into the Phantom Zone

-- Megara is very Lois Lane like with the sarcastic attitude concealing a more sympathetic centre

-- And lastly Hercules’s love for Meg much like Superman’s love for Lois causes him to lose it against the villain

- And secondly there is simply fantastic voice work by James Woods as Hades and he is the main reason I rate this movie as highly as I do because every scene he is in in this movie he lifts the whole thing up to a 15 with his inspired vocal performance.

And you can tell while watching him in the role that he is having the time of his life performing it with this manic energy that changes gears on a dime to sleazy and smarmy to serious and angry and the characters animation by Nik Ranieri who also did Lumiere on Beauty and the Beast nicely matches the vocal work with the fire in the characters design changing according to his mood and while Woods has done a lot of stuff over the years to me he will always be Hades.

This movie was also for me personally one I had to wait quite a while to see as its release year 1997 was one where a lot happened and any chance to see it in cinemas never came to pass but when I heard on the Radio in January 1998 that it was coming soon to Video I got really excited and I can still remember that day.

The day where I had that tape in my hot little hands and I couldn’t wait to finally watch it and I more or less sequestered myself off to a room with a VCR and watched it in peace.

And so that was my column on not only Hercules but also my thinking about that period of Disney Animation in the 1990s which was not the original intent but the two managed to come together really well so I did it that way.