The Magical World Of Disney #333: Top 100 Disney Movies, Part 3

#96: Hercules (1997)

Hercules is a 1997 American animated musical fantasy comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 35th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker. The film is loosely based on the legendary hero Heracles (known in the film by his Roman name, Hercules), the son of Zeus, in Greek mythology.

Development of Hercules began in 1992 following a pitch adaptation of the Heracles mythological stories by animator Joe Haidar. Meanwhile, Ron Clements and John Musker re-developed their idea for Treasure Planet following the critical and commercial success of Aladdin. Their project was removed from development in 1993, and Musker and Clements joined Hercules later that same year. Following an unused treatment by Haidar, Clements and Musker studied multiple interpretations of Greek mythology before abandoning Zeus’s adulterous affair with Alcmene. The project underwent multiple story treatments and a first script draft being inspired by the screwball comedy films of the classic Hollywood era and popular culture of the 1990s before Donald McEnery, Bob Shaw, and Irene Mecchi were brought on board to shorten the script and deliver additional humor. British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe was recruited as production designer where over seven hundred visualization designs of the characters were produced, and research trips to Greece and Turkey provided inspiration for the background designs. Animation for the film was done in California and Paris. Computer animation was utilized in several scenes, predominantly in the Hydra battle sequence.

Hercules was released on June 27, 1997 to positive reviews from film reviewers who praised James Woods’s portrayal of Hades. Despite the positive critical reception, the film under-performed in its theatrical release notably in comparison to its predecessors before ultimately earning $252.7 million in box office revenue worldwide. Hercules was later followed by the direct-to-video prequel Hercules: Zero to Hero, which served as the pilot to Hercules: The Animated Series, a syndicated Disney TV series focusing on Hercules during his time at the Prometheus academy.

There’s definitely some things about Hercules that can be considered really good, the animation in this is spectacular, it’s a beautifully blended mix of the traditional Disney animation along with the usage of computer animation as well, the voice cast is really good especially James Woods as Hades, and the music by Alan Menken is great as usual.

Other than that, the movie itself is kind of generic, it’s basically Disney doing a greek version of the story of Superman, both stories are very similar to each other and unlike other movies that rip it off coughX-Men Origins: Wolverinecough, they try their best to make it something different than the Superman story but it still is very generic and cliché.

Even the main heroes, Hercules and Megara, are pretty generic as well, there’s nothing about their personality or characteristics that make then unique compared to the other Disney leads.

Overall, Hercules is a very mixed bag, it’s got some good elements to it but it’s a major step down compared to the other Disney animated films coming out at the time. Not a bad one but certainly one of Disney’s stronger animated films.

#95: Pocahontas (1995)

Pocahontas is a 1995 American animated epic musical romantic-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 33rd film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is part of the era known as the Disney Renaissance which lasted from 1989 to 1999.

Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, the film is inspired by the known history and folklore surrounding the Native American woman Pocahontas, and portrays a fictionalized account of her historical encounter with Englishman John Smith and the Jamestown settlers that arrived from the Virginia Company. The voice cast features Irene Bedard, Mel Gibson, David Ogden Stiers, Russell Means, Christian Bale, Billy Connolly, and Linda Hunt. The musical score was written by Alan Menken, with songs written by Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz.

Pocahontas was released on June 23, 1995 to a mixed reaction from critics, who praised the film for its animation and music, but criticized the film’s story and historical inaccuracy. Nevertheless, the film was a commercial success, grossing $346 million at the worldwide box office. Pocahontas received two Academy Awards for its achievement in music: Best Musical or Comedy Score for Menken’s score and Best Original Song for “Colors of the Wind”. A video game based on the film was released across various platforms shortly after the film’s theatrical release, and the film itself was followed by a direct-to-video sequel entitled Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World in 1998.

You would think after The Lion King, Disney would figure out everything needed to be done to make the next gigantic hit. In fact, when Jeffrey Katzenberg talked about developing both Pocahontas and The Lion King, he claimed that Pocahontas was “a hit” and “like West Side Story meets Indians” and said that The Lion King was “an experiment,” definitely goes to show you how Hollywood works.

In actuality, both movies seemed to go the other way around, The Lion King seemed to be more like a surefire hit especially with everything it had going to. Pocahontas definitely felt more experimental in terms of how far Disney could go before people start to question if the movie was worth it.

Pocahontas is definitely a movie that looks beautiful in terms of the animation as well as the great music but the story is definitely lackluster, it turns one of the greatest stories in history and turns it into a cheap romantic drama. The relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas was never meant to be seen as romantic but nope, this movie has to do that because it’s “West Side Story meets Indians.”

The movie really is not very good in the story department along with its’ historical inaccuracies. I mean, you can stretch the truth a little bit with the historical aspects but in this, it really did seem like about 75 to 80% of this movie’s history is fucked up just to make the movie go with this BS romantic plotline they’re trying to establish.

It also doesn’t help that once again, we have a villain whose only goal is to just make money and that’s his only motivation and because of that, we have to make him into a heartless, soulless cretin.

Pocahontas could’ve been told much better and a more historical accuracy to the timeperiod but instead we get a nicely animated film with some good songs but a story that we’ve seen done to death numerous times. Not the worst of the Disney animated movies but it was the beginning of the inevitable downward spiral of the Disney renaissance…well, almost, check back with the next film to see what I mean.

#100 & #99

#98 & #97

Follow The Reviewing Network at our Facebook page at Facebook.com/TheReviewingNetwork for continuing updates and debuts for new blog posts and also follow my Twitter feed so you can see new postings right as they are posted.

‹ Time About The Movies – September 30, 1994

He’s A Family Guy #283: Peter’s Sister ›

Tagged with: MagicalWorldOfDisney, TheReviewingNetwork
Posted in The Magical World Of Disney