Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter analyzes Disney’s Hercules franchise, the film (1997) and the spin-off television series (1998–1999), as examples of the 1990s turn toward highlighting ancient Greek divine vulnerability. Although the franchise was criticized for the liberties it took with the Greek myths, it has also been praised for its focus on and fascination with divine weakness, also detectable in the contemporaneous television series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–1999) and Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001). Like these television series, Disney’s Hercules emphasizes the divine machinery while stressing divine vulnerability, with its creators parsing Greek myth in search of objects, entities, and storylines that could limit divine powers and so avoid deus ex machina resolutions. However, unlike the films in these series, which portrayed the pantheon as morally ambiguous, Disney’s sympathy lies firmly with the benevolent Olympians, supported by Hercules against the threat of interdivine violence and deicide: divine death is alluded to, but it is never realized.</jats:p>