Reanimation
After a spree of studio bankruptcies in the 1960s, the toga movie genre took a turn for the worst in terms of popularity, and was almost left in the dust. How, then, did modern movies like Gladiator and 300 make it off the ground? The answer lies, of all places, with Disney’s Hercules. The release of the film caused a resurgence of the genre due to its consistently shown ability to pander to a diverse array of audiences.
The fact that the film is animated plays a major role in its successful revival of the toga film genre. This seems like an odd choice compared to the stuffy, live-action toga movies of the past, but that is precisely why it worked. They still included plenty of jokes, innuendos, and subtle mature themes to capture audiences from early teens to adulthood, but the use of animation brought toga movies to a new and much younger audience. In this way, the film was able to surpass the success of 1960s toga films—that with live actors, unnecessarily long runtimes, somber musical scores, and often pretentious Christian messaging, took themselves a little too seriously to be enjoyed by a wide range of ages. (That is not to say that Hercules entirely escaped the influence of Christian ideology: see “Myth to Media.”)
Another way the filmmakers created a less pretentious environment than previous antiquity films is by the incorporation of pottery into many facets of the animation. According to Blanshard and Shahabudin in their chapter on Hercules in their book Classics on Screen: Ancient Greece and Rome on Film, “The rejection of the primacy of statuary and the turn to pottery repeats again the rejection of epic cinema” (Blanshard & Shahabudin 2011, 209). Looking back on epic toga films, statues and busts are a major part of almost all set dressings. These add a sense of sophistication and elitism—the feeling that as an audience member, you are witnessing the happenings of the upper-class. By rejecting this and turning to pottery, Hercules makes the case that this story is one that involves the common people, rather than just the high class. Animators incorporated pottery in ways beyond the obvious, as well; as they were drawing, “the guiding shape palette for all forms in the film was the Greek vase” (Blanshard & Shahabudin 2011, 209). Everything from the trees, to the women, to water droplets, emulates the form of a vase—and the style of drawing used for people and vegetation emulates the paintings seen on Greek pottery (Blanshard & Shahabudin 2011, 209).
