It should be set at least 200 hundred years before that. Most of literally sources on Hercules myth were written in 5th century BC, including Euripides tragedy about him killing his family (written around 420 BC). Ideally this story should be set sometime 600-700 BC during the Greek Dark Ages when cities were ruled by tyrants (before democracy) and when first written accounts on Hercules were made.
shareUh uh uh...you had good point there but you got lost along the way a bit.
Story should be set in 1300's BC which is the time Herodotus said Herakles lived, or 1200 if we choose some later sources, but in any case a generation before Trojan war and in Mycenean/Bronze Age Greece. Which in turn makes all the Classical/Hellenistic/Roman references in the movie absurd.
600-700bc is by no means a Dark Age of Greece(which ended by then) and is equally wrong as 4th BC mysteriously choosen for the film setting...Also, Herakles doesn't belong in the Dark Age even if you did get the dates right.
I meant at least 200 years before, not exactly 200 years before. You're right though, Mycenean Greece is probably were most myths were born. And yeah VI-VII centuries BC are called Archaic, not Dark Age.
But. Earliest survived sources we have on Herakles are written in 5th century BC when Herodotus lived and we can't confirm if he was right. It's plausible that Herakles lived anytime before Herodotus (just not after, like in the film).
I'll agree with that. You have some valid points there.
Altthough Homer is our earliest source on Herakles, it is indeed the 5th BC in all its written word glory that saved maybe the last "pure" version of his story, before the era or rewriting and messing up "ancient" sources started towards the end of that century, and really gained momentum in subsequent periods...
I almost wonder if the script read 1358 BC but someone made a typo and left off the first digit. 358 BC is way too late for even a make believe story like this to be plausible. If it had wanted to go the whole hog for being ridiculous, a la Monty Python (which puts King Arthur in AD 932), 358 BC would have been okay, but this movie is supposed to make sense on its own terms (no 4th wall breaks, no anachronisms highlighted for the sake of a gag). Homer, Herodotus, Euripides, etc., based their stories on semi historical events that happened at various points between 1600 and 1100 BC, so a 1358 date would be acceptable.
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