Hacker Cinema
Hercules
1997 · Film · 93 min
Directed by Ron Clements, John Musker
AnimationFamilyFantasyAdventureComedyRomance
Bestowed with superhuman strength, a young mortal named Hercules sets out to prove himself a hero in the eyes of his father, the great god Zeus. Along with his friends Pegasus, a flying horse, and Phil, a personal trainer, Hercules is tricked by the hilarious, hotheaded villain Hades, who's plotting to take over Mount Olympus!
1 negative6 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
Didn't "Zero to Hero" come from Disney's Hercules movie before Karparthy used it?
> The context of the Iliad, ancient Greece, is completely alien to the modern US, just as it is to modern China
I was taught Greek mythology in grade school, read the Odyssey and Iliad in middle school English, Antigone and Oedipus Rex in high school, and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was a recurring theme in some college courses but that's a bit specific. Our philosophy courses in highschool and college started with Plato.
And within larger culture, there was the animated film Hercules, the Percy Jackson novels, and a broadway musical based on Orpheus and Eurydice that swept the Tony awards in the last twenty years.
American culture is obsessed with ancient Greece and its stories.
The copyright protected material isn't in the model. This can be figured out easily because, if they did, the models are so much smaller than the input data that it'd be literal unobtanium for compression algorithms.
Copyright also has nothing to do with the tool.
What a piece depicts and how it is used are much more important than how a piece was created. If I paint a picture by hand of a particular scene from a Disney movie, that's clearly a derived work and may be subject to copyright protection (it depends, there could be a fair use argument in specific situations, so even "it's copyright!" is not a cut-and-dried argument). If I paint a picture of Hercules in the style of Disney, that's trademark violation. But I can paint Hercules in any other style and Disney can't say shit (though they certainly try).
This is an age-old argument. Some artists think they should have a monopoly on certain ideas. As a society, we've already said no, you only get to own your expression of your ideas.
And as ideas go, "like a trending artist on ArtStation" isn't a particularly strong one.
I realized exactly this recently: people don't channel surf anymore, and I kind of miss it.
It was relaxing to me, post- many cable channels (81?), pre- guide/DVR, to just click through.
"Oh, Armageddon is on again. Hercules. (flip, flip, flip)" and then settle on something random, pulled from what's currently playing.
It used to be: survey and then choose from a very limited but rotating subset of all content.
Now it's: choose from all content ever and then find where the content lives and then figure out how much of it you want to watch.
For movies, the new way seems superior. For TV, it feels like a lot has been lost. And overall, I feel like the new system definitely leads to winner-take-all.
I dunno, to me the icon is reminiscent of the Hades character from the Disney movie: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/c/cf/Hercules-disneyscreencaps.com-6022.jpg
Any analysis is incomplete if all it look at is the protagonist without looking at the mirror image that is the antagonist. Each film is only as good as its villain, so what does a typical Disney villain look like and what gender/attributes do they have?
In Pocahontas the antagonist is the exploiter, the disrupter of natural order, and the destroyer, and male. In Hercules he is the manipulator and manifestation of evil. In Mulan he is represented as the mindless horde of destroyers. In frozen he is the liar, the cheater, the bully. In Aladdin it is the mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, and old man.
There is a small minority of Disney movies that have a female antagonist, but they are all version of the same evil witch stereotype. Old, infertile, predator of children.
So what does this teach children about social behavior and crime? What about who deserve sympathy and who is redeemable? About conflict resolution and handling of blame?
Disney movies aren't the best places if we want to avoid stereotypes, and that include the newer movies like Frozen.
It's just more of an adult / documentary thing IMHO. They spent way too much trying to make some principled point rather than entertain. Same with 'Up'. I think perhaps they were catering to people who nominate Oscars or something.
My kids were bored. Gimmie Princess and the frog, Hercules, Aladdin, Little Mermaid etc etc any day.