What do you get when you toss the entirety of Greek mythology into the seething cauldron that is Walt Disney Productions?  You get Hercules (1997).  I can imagine ancient Greek scholars turning watching this movie into a drinking game.  I do not consider myself an expert on any related subject and even I had trouble taking this bologna, and not the least reasons for my doubts being that it is a musical.  It starts off with Charlton Heston narrating the story of the gods of Mount Olympus, led by Zeus (voiced by Rip Torn) defeating the Titans to establish order on Earth.  At that moment I thought, okay, at least something sensible.  But, no, he is rudely brushed aside for the Muses, which is a chorus line of annoying soul singers that, culturally speaking, have as much to do with the Peloponnese Peninsula as the Olympic games have to do with penguins in Antarctica.  Yet, what does anyone care about such matters as long as there are some zany antics along the way?!

After we set the background in Hercules, we meet the baby demi-god as a newborn in Zeus’ court on Mount Olympus. Everyone is lining up to meet the child of a proud Zeus and Hera (voiced by Samantha Eggar).  All the other gods are bringing Hercules gifts, and the parents give the baby Pegasus, which Zeus forms on the spot.  There to spoil the party is Hades (voiced by James Woods), god of the underworld.  Zeus is too full of himself and the moment to notice any discontent, but Hades has designs on usurping his brother’s place as king of the gods.  The thing is, he is not sure how to accomplish this task, particularly since Hercules’ coming is what is preventing this from happening.  The fates warn him as such, telling Hades that in eighteen years when the stars align, he will have the chance to awaken the Titans.  They can defeat the Olympians, but only if Hercules is out of the way.  The solution is to turn Hercules mortal, and then kill him. To accomplish this task, Hades sends his minions, Pain (voiced by Bobcat Goldthwaite) and Panic (voiced by Matt Frewer), to steal Hercules.  Once on Earth, they feed the child a potion that begins the process of, er, de-immortalizing Hercules, but they are interrupted by Alcmene (voiced by Barbara Barrie) and Amphitryon (voiced by Hal Holbrook).  They are two farmers passing by who had been praying for a child, and they believe their prayers answered by Hercules.  Still, they immediately notice something different about the child, from its medallion marking him as being from the gods, and the fact that he takes care of two snakes.  All the same, they take in Hercules to raise as their own.  As he grows into a teenager (voiced by Josh Keaton), he finds that he has trouble handling the incredible strength that he retains from his true parentage.  As a result, while going into town with Amphitryon, Hercules accidentally brings down the entire building housing the market.  Though he is apologetic, everyone looks at him as a freak.  It is at this point that Alcmene and Amphitryon tell Hercules about his real background.  To the boy, this explains much about why he has always felt like he belonged elsewhere, and that he was destined for something bigger.  Hence, with his adoptive parents’ blessing, he sets off to travel to the Temple of Zeus.  Once there, he kneels before the statue of his real father, only to have it come alive.  It is the answer for which Hercules had been searching, though Zeus tells his son that the boy cannot yet rejoin them on Mount Olympus.  To do so, Hercules must prove his heroism.  In accomplishing this end, Zeus rejoins Hercules with Pegasus with the command to seek out Philoctetes “Phil” (voiced by Danny DeVito), trainer of Greek heroes.  And I do mean all heroes.  Sigh.  The faun is disillusioned with his trade since all those with which he has worked have proved to be a disappointment in some fashion.  Case in point: Achilles’ heel.  Hercules is able to wear down Phil by stating that the boy is willing to “go the distance” to become great.  Picking up an enormous weight and throwing it several miles also helps.  Now a pupil, Hercules continues training until he is nearly eighteen (voiced by Tate Donovan).  Having grown in his skills, he is eager to get into the world and prove his mettle as a hero.  Phil says the place to do this is Thebes, but on the way there they encounter Megara “Meg” (voiced by Susan Egan).  She is being attacked by a centaur, though it is part of Hades plan to use her to recruit monsters to his side.  Hades is not pleased when he learns that Hercules is still alive.  Also not initially impressed is Meg.  Hades and Meg watch with interest as Hercules gets to Thebes and offers himself as their champion.  Hades sees an opportunity here to conjure various monsters to fight Hercules and hopefully kill him.  The first of these is the many headed hydra, the defeat of which not only get the people behind him but begins the process of winning Meg’s heart.  With each new beast Hercules takes down, his fame grows.  On the eve of the fated day where Hades is supposed to unleash the Titans, it appears that Hercules has no weaknesses.  This is Meg’s assessment as they spend a day together, confirming for her the feelings she has for him.  This is where Hades sees his opportunity, using Meg to get Hercules to give up his god-like strength for a day while Hades does his thing, promising that Meg will be unharmed and that they can be together.  Despite warnings, namely from Phil, Hercules agrees.  Despite having mere human strength, Hercules goes to take on the monster Hades unleashes on Thebes.  Doing so earns him back his abilities when Meg gets hurt in the process, thus voiding the deal he made with Hades.  Hercules then achieves god status by helping the Olympians once more beat back the Titans.  This is proved when Hercules goes down to the underworld to bring back Meg’s soul.  He is on the verge of entering Olympus for good when he tells Hercules and Zeus that he wishes to remain with Meg.  The end.

I may have been sighing a lot while watching Hercules, but the story did remind me of something that I have been speaking about with my spiritual director for the past few months.  Namely, it is in my propensity to look way into the future.  Granted, it is with an eye to where God wants to take me.  In gazing so far down the road, however, it can be hard to see how to get to that point.  The same can be said for Hercules.  This notion he has as a teenager that he is bound for something more is not unlike how I have been focusing too much on God’s ultimate purpose for my life.  Like the ancient Greek legend, I have long felt God’s finger on my life.  One way that differentiates us, other than the obvious lack of superstrength on my part, is that Hercules is given a clear object for his pursuits when he meets his father in the temple.  As an aside, I do have to applaud him for his earnest prayer before the statue of his father comes to life.  Yet, Hercules figuratively and literally comes back to Earth by the end of the film.  As my spiritual director has been reminding me lately, the way to deal with the frustrations of peering too far ahead is to focus instead on the next step.  God is there, too, every step of the way, and He is easier to understand in the moment than whatever it is that He is calling you to in the future.  You can have an idea of that ultimate goal, but faith is about trusting in the day-to-day process and that it will get you to where you want to be.  This is something Hercules has trouble with when he thinks he has done everything he is supposed to do to get into heaven, so to speak, but Zeus tells his son that there is more to do.  As long as we are breathing, there will always be more to do, and that is a blessing.

Though I have laid out what I feel is a pretty compelling parallel between Hercules and faith-life, the film is ultimately a fail for me.  Credit my spiritual director for helping me to see God acting in this moment in my life, but the packaging for this message in the movie was annoying.  It has all the elements mentioned in the introduction, and the Muses had a distracting habit of saying that everything about which they sang was the “gospel truth.”  No.  That is something else.  I also do not see why any age group would find this movie appealing.  It is a hard pass on all fronts.