This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Hercules reached theaters on June 13, 1997, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements for Walt Disney Feature Animation, the same directing pair behind The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. Tate Donovan voiced the grown Hercules, Susan Egan voiced Megara, and Danny DeVito voiced the satyr trainer Philoctetes, but the performance singled out most consistently in reviews was James Woods as Hades, lord of the underworld, reimagined here as a fast talking, deal making antagonist rather than the comparatively neutral ruler of the dead found in most ancient sources. Critics compared the energy of his line readings to Robin Williams's Genie in Aladdin, and the casting became the film's most praised creative choice even as its handling of the wider mythology drew objection.
The film frames its story through a gospel influenced chorus of Muses, who narrate Hercules's rise in the style of a stage musical rather than a straightforward retelling, a structural choice that marks the film as openly theatrical rather than attempting a documentary style account of Greek religious tradition. Reviews were largely positive on release, and the film holds an eighty three percent approval score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, though some critics found its animation rushed compared to Disney's own recent work and its backgrounds simplified.
No source consulted for this entry records any revision made to the film in response to the Greek objections that met its release, nor any later reconciliation between the studio and the officials who raised them; the criticism and the film's theatrical framing appear to have simply continued on separate tracks.