Name: Top 10 Things Movies And TV Get Wrong About Greek Mythology
Uploaded: 2025-12-12T17:06:55.000Z
Duration: 11 min 37 s
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Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

Welcome to watchmojo and today we're counting down our picks for depictions of Greek myths in popular mainstream media that differ significantly from the source material.

They say your mother is an immortal goddess.

The siren's appearance when most people hear of the Sirens, they imagine young women using their beauty in siren song to lure unfortunate sailors to their watery demise.

I heard it said a kiss from a mermaid protects a sailor from drowning.

Mermaids are all female, son, and lovely as a dream of heaven.

This concept is reinforced by depictions in films such as Pirates of the Caribbean.

While talk of their beautiful singing may be faithful to the source material, depictions of their appearance most certainly are not in their original appearance in Greek mythology, the Sirens are endowed with bird like features rather than aquatic fins.

And some sources indicate it is their song, not their physical appearance which is beautiful and alluring.

Take the wounded cities and find one mermaid still alive.

He's making this story sound like some Greek tragedy.

If your only knowledge of the Muses is from Disney's Hercules, you probably think that they are primarily storytellers and singers.

That's because they narrate the film as a gospel quintet.

Although in fact there are nine Muses, not five.

We are the Muses, Goddesses of the arts and proclaimers of heroes.

While their connection to the arts checks out with the source material, the Muses are also strongly connected to history and the sciences.

And they are definitely not bit players or simply narrators.

The musical Xanadu is somewhat more accurate in this regard.

The muse Terpsichore is shown exerting great influence after coming alive again.

Despite their important role in mythology, many films utilizing Greek myth ignore them entirely.

This is the first time I've cared about what I painted in a long time.

It must be frustrating to waste your talents on things that don't really matter to you.

Zeus frequently comes across as a hero in Hollywood projects.

How dare the tyrant pray to me to forgive his savage jealousy and cowardly revenge.

He's often an all powerful Ruler of the gods as seen in both Clash of the Titans movies.

Casting Laurence Olivier in the original and Liam Neeson in the remake reinforces this upright leading man depiction.

Like children, they need to be reminded of the order of things.

Meanwhile, in Disney's Hercules, Zeus is a warm and wise father figure.

He needs a look to the MCU and Russell Crowe's somewhat vain and cowardly portrayal in Love and Thunder to get closer to the Zeus found in Greek mythology.

Every God watches over their own peoples.

The mythological God is all about his own ego and quite depraved in how he makes people suffer for it.

He's also a serial womanizer and adulterer.

Find and fulfill your destiny, Number seven.

Imagine a creature with the body of a lion, the head of a goat in its middle and the tail of a serpent.

That's what Homer did when he wrote about the Chimera in the Iliad.

Things are happening in the world, Perseus.

In some versions, the Chimera is more like a three headed beast with the goat head breathing fire.

This multifaceted creature is not always presented cinematically in such an interesting configuration.

For example, in Wrath of the Titans, we get a beast with the body of a lion and two lion heads.

One of the heads still breathes fire and it has wings.

But aside from that, it's essentially a large two headed lion.

The Broadway musical Hadestown isn't a movie yet, but

it is likely to make its way to the big screen screen someday.

When it does, it'll continue the trend of romanticizing and softening the depiction of Persephone's abduction by Hades.

There's even one version where it unfolds in front of modern Japanese tourists.

Often when Hades and Persephone are characters in a project, they seem to be a regular couple with no hint of their true backstory.

When two souls are meant to be together in the source material, though, Hades kidnapping of Persephone is a violent, non consensual act.

While the abduction isn't shown in the best light, their relationship is still reciprocal in TV's blood of Zeus.

A truly faithful rendition of their story would be hard for modern audiences to take taken its original form.

The Minotaur has the head and tail of a bull with a human body and so technically can be considered a monster.

And yes, even in its original Greek origins, it's presented as a beast that ate humans to survive.

But modern media representations of the creature tend to stop there without giving the backstory.

He was born from the union of a bull and a human woman as punishment for her husband's insult to the God Poseidon.

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Top 10 Things Movies And TV Get Wrong About Greek Mythology

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