Saviours, Six-Packs and Sensitivity: The Hero of Greek Mythology on the Contemporary Screen

Despite the differences between ancient and modern ideas of heroism, the classical world has provided fruitful source material for film makers, both in the golden age of Hollywood, and in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, which have seen an upsurge of fantasy movies centring on mythology. This paper considers the depiction of the mythological hero in such movies, from Harryhausen to the modern day, tracing the development of the heroic figure over the period.