THE ONE THING
Now, let’s talk about what holds this movie back the most: Meg. The massive amount of potential Meg had brings me so much frustration when I see it thrown in the garbage over and over throughout the film. She’s positioned as such an interesting, self-serving character, only to revolve around the other male characters for the rest of the runtime. Watching Hercules again after so long really made me wish I had remembered Meg differently, but, unfortunately, she’s mistreated just the same.
This is made all the more obnoxious with the fact that Hercules truly is not a strong protagonist. He serves to appeal to a certain young audience and drive the plot, but not that much more can be said about him; with exposition like “Go the Distance”, we understand his clear motives, but he simply doesn’t have enough personality to make that drive all that believable. So seeing Meg, an infinitely more multifaceted and layered character being pushed to the side for an uninteresting male protagonist is truly painful. Getting the small indicators of what Meg has gone through with her previous partner left me with the wish that the film centered on her instead of Hercules.
The way Meg is given essentially zero bodily autonomy throughout the film is also an unfortunately leftover from old Disney films; I mean, her first scene is her getting thrown around by the river guardian, who was suggested to have assaulted her. The way she’s handled by Hades is also really nasty--he’s always getting uncomfortably close while interacting with her and touching her in all sorts of gross ways. Even innocent Hercules has some uncomfortable scenes with a little too much fixation of Meg’s body, and Phil obviously made us cringe every time he got near a woman.
The duality of Meg having some of the best personality and character in all of Hercules while also being thrown in the shadow of uninteresting male characters who do nothing but violate her autonomy left such a bad taste in my mouth. This all comes with the prospect that all her motivation revolves around other males, whether it be her previous partner or Hercules. Simply put, Meg deserved better. She had the potential to be an absolute icon of interesting, powerful female characters, but was instead left in the dust. She ended up being the one thing that really stopped Hercules from being a true masterclass of animated musicals, all because of the creator’s inability to make female characters independent of men.
