First shot of animation: Pan and push through a temple. These 2-axis shots have become more common than the multi plane camera opening shots they reference.

This one’s fun. The faux-Grecian aesthetic with its swoopy bits and exaggerations gives everyone a stretchy and rubbery presence. The characters are just fun to look at, especially in motion.

This movie has One Joke: today stuff but ancient. I know the point is to look at myth through the lens of sports celebrity, but I think that’s an excuse to tell the One Joke more.

James Woods is the film’s legacy and rightly so, but everyone is essentially doing the same job. He’s just so slimy the same way Hercules is just so swell and Meg is just so jaded. Maybe it’s because Hades also has fits of temper, he’s technically the most complex character here.

And the flattening of difficult material works better here than in Hunchback because it’s evenly flattened. Everyone says directly to camera what they want and why, almost always in their first scene. Just start from scratch and leave what actually happens in the myths for kids who read a book afterwards.