Aidonian's blog

Well i’m not doing a review of these shows, as they are well known by now. Hercules started as a series of 5 movies before moving to a tv show. Production was fine and they drew heavily on mythological sources. Unlike most, they decided to opt out of showing the 12 labours, which was a wise decision. First of all, the ancient Greeks called him Herakles, not Hercules. Hercules was the Roman name for him. I suppose, it sounded better for American audiences if it was Hercules. After all, there have been movies about Hercules before, two with Lou Ferrigno and one with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Hercules. This Hercules is not like the mythological version. He is the typical good guy, hero of the show who does nothing wrong and is good to his core.

The first movie starts with Hercules and Iolaus facing the Amazons and even the Hydra, send by Hera to try to kill Hercules. Herakles did had a labour where he was sent to the Amazons and had to bring back the girlde of Hippolyta. The same Hippolyta was shown here. Without the girdle. Here the Amazons are under command by Hera. So they played losely with the source material and they know it. Which is fine.

The second movie starts with Hercules going to Troy, yes that one and to free it from a small army of henchmen under control of a Blue Priest who serves Hera. Hercules and Deianeira gets swallowed by a sea monster on route to Troy. It was good to expand that the Gods had minions who serve them, but it wasn’t fleshed out as it should be. The Blue Priest was a strong opponent and Deianeira believed that he fate was to be sacrificed to the Gods, which Hercules opposed, just to spite Hera. It was only due to the intervention from Zeus that Hera didn’t kill him. The third movie introduces us to a different Deianeira who later will be the wife of Hercules. Here they play with the myth of the creation and theft of fire. Again its Hera who is the villain here. Hera took the fire from Prometheus which plunges the world into a kind of ice age. Which was weird to see, but they got that idea from the abduction of Kore by Hades where Demeter also does this. The movie ends with Hercules sacrificing his immortality and giving the fire back to Prometheus. This caused mankind to receive the gift of fire again. Interesting to see that here was the first time Hercules went up against even his own father who was determined to stop Hercules from taking the fire because he had to step into the circle of fire which would drain him of his immortality. The third movie also shows us Anteus, the giant, Herakles also encountered on his labours. They stayed true to the source material with him. They showed him that so long he was connected to the ground, the Earth, his mother, he would be invincible, so Hercules held him high so he lost his connection to his Mother and he died. This movie ended with Hercules and Deianeira falling in love. In the 4th film, years have passed and Hercules has settled down and has married Deianeira and they have kids. In a village far away, a chasm opens up and ghosts escape from it.Iole is dispatched to bring Hercules to the village and save them. Only a jealous Nessus who is in love with Deianeira instills bad thoughts into Deianeira, thinking that Iole will take her husband away. When Nessus is killed, a dying Nessus tells Deianeira that his blood soaked in the cloack will protect Hercules. Not knowing it is trap, she gives the cloack to Hercules. This plays heavily on the myth where Herakles dies and is deified by his father, to become a God. Only in the myth, its played out differently than in the movie. In the movie, the cloack almost kills Hercules and in a fit of rage, he jumps into the chasm. When Deianeira found out what happened, she kills herself out of pentence because she caused the death of her husband. The myth they refer to it, is similar as in Herakles is driving insane by the cloack as he makes his own funeral pyre and orders to set it on fire while he tells his kids to go after their mother who caused this pain. Here Hercules isn’t dead, but lives. He is in the underworld where he faces ghouls, and minions of Hades. Appearently Cerberus got lose and souls were able to escape from the Underworld. When Hercules sees Deianeira, he makes a deal with Hades. He brings back Cerberus in exchange that Deianeira is brought back to live. Hades agrees and holds on his deal when Hercules is able to capture Cerberus and brings him back to the Gates of Hades. Hercules forgives Deianeira for what she did. She did not knew what Nessus had in store for Hercules. Another difference between the myths here is that Hercules in the movie rejected the advances of Iole, while in myth, Herakles doesn’t do that at all.

The fifth movie is different. A Minotaur is freed and wreaks havoc. Hercules and Iolaus go on the adventure to stop the minotaur, only it turns out that this Minotaur is no ordinary Minotaur but a halfbrother of Hercules who was turned into a Minotaur after he tried to rebell against the Gods and overthrow Them. Zeus couldn’t kill him, but Hercules did when he was going to kill Iolaus. In the myths, no Minotaur was a son of Zeus, but rather a offspring of Queen Pasiphae and a bull send by Poseidon.

Up and till the 5th season, they rely on Hellenic mythology, than they expand the mythology through the introduction of Dahak, already introduced in season 4 of the show, but first seen in season 3 of Xena Warrior Princess where she met his cult of followers in Brittain. Dahak is a name of a Mesopotamian demon, not a devil like figure. Seeing how they were going for force of darkness, and a force of light, but were not keen on calling it the devil, they used Dahak, but the Light did not receive any name. Seeing how Zarathurstra was introduced, one can assume the Light is Ahura Mazda and the darkness Ahriman of Zoroastrian religion. In Season 5, Hercules travels to Sumeria, where the Sumerian Gods are battling Dahak and he meets Gilgameshj, the original demigod, Hercules/Herakles was probably based upon or heavily influenced by him. Here Gilgameshj is the son of Ra, which is funny because Ra is the Egyptian God of the sun. The King of the Gods there was Anu, later it was Marduk. Don’t know why they didn’t use that. Season 5 was the first time that they used a overal storyarc for the season. After Hercules defeats Gilgameshj who joined Dahak after he killed Iolaus, Hercules travels around the world and ends up at Eire, Ireland where the meets Morrigan and the Druids. After he frees her of the influences of Cernunnos, he and Morrigan become a couple and even ends up in Norseland where he meets the Norse Gods and fight of Ragnarok. It was nice to see the Norse Gods on tv, even it was short. A devil like figure aids Loki to bring about Ragnarok. In the end Hercules is able to defeat Loki and brings everything back as to how it was. He returns to Eire, where he wants to live peacefully, but that is interrupted by the arrival of Dahak who kills the Druids, so Hercules is forced to go back to Sumeria, to find out that his dead friend is alive again and is being possesed by Dahak. Probably influenced by the tv show Sliders, they introduced the concept of a alternate world in season 3 and its there where the Gods fled to when they saw Dahak coming. Ares was left behind, as he got punished for siding with Dahak the first time around. In the end Hercules is able to defeat Dahak and send him back to his realm and was able to bring the Gods back to their world before both collapse. the final episode we see the archangel Michael coming down to bring about the end of the world through the four horseman of the Apocalyps. Even Ares was outmatched by the Horsemen and the Archangel. When Hercules sacrificed himself to stop Death, the fourth horseman, the light stopped Michael and brought Hercules back to Earth along with Iolaus.

Season 6 is a short season because Kevin Sorbo wanted to quit the show as Xena became more popular than his show and it bothered him a lot it seems. Here we are introduced to vampires, called Strigoi, to a devil like figure who got souls from Hades when they were even to bad for him to handle. She was able to persuade Hercules to take her power to defeat this demon and managed to almost corrupt him.

Overal it was a campy tv show. Don’t expect much from the characters, they tend to be one dimensional at best. Aphrodite being represented as a ditzy blonde, showed how they viewed the Gods. Apollon had a couple of episodes where he was similar to a surfer dude. Ares appeared first monstrous, but than changed into a human form as Kevin Smith seemed tp have fun playing the character. All in all, they didn’t stay true to the source material, but its a fun introduction to the world of Greek mythology through that tv show. Xena was no better than that. There were crossovers between the tv shows. Xena appeared in season 3 and Hercules in season 1 and later in season 5 where Xena was carrying the child that would bring about the end of the Olympian Gods. Bacchus even appears as a kind of devil like figure in earlier seasons of Xena, where the Bacchae were kind of like vampires. Which is what they werent at all in the source material.

These tv shows are nothing more than your run of the mill action adventure tv show of the 90’s and early 2000’s. A typical villain of the week who was either human or a monster that had to be fought. Xena was the show where the characters actually kind of evolved throughout the seasons with Gabrielle being first a helpless sidekick who evolved into a real warrior by season 3. Little depth is to be found in both tv shows, but that is ok. They are campy tv action adventure shows and they knew it. They didn’t pretend to be anything else. Its good that they didn’t try to stick to the source material. I was a teenager when i watched these shows and i was a huge fan. Now i look back at them with a sense of nostalgia but that is it. It was fun to watch it when i was young. The music of Joseph LoDuca who scored all seasons of Hercules, Xena and even the only season of Young hercules, im to this day still a fan of his music. He collaborated alot with Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert like his Evil Dead movies, and Spartacus tv showsand spinoffs.