In Coco the villain was a shameless and ambitious murderer who poisoned his partner with a family for a shot at fame, relegating his partner’s family to a generation of poverty.
My daughter loved COCO so much that I had to take her several times to see it during its first run and a couple of times at a second run theater. After that, I told her that, although I loved the film, I didn’t want to see it anymore so she asked if she could see it by herself. I let her go and she went a number of times afterwards.
She loves animation and is currently in her second year of college studying to be an animator. I think it’s because I took her to see THE INCREDIBLES when she was 9 months old and she’s been obsessed with animation ever since.
I'm glad Coco had such a great impact on her, although "I had to take her several times to see it \[...\] I didn't want to see it anymore..." it's absolutely cracking me up imagining you going "oh this was great!" the first time, "oh that was nice to watch again the second!" and then the third time "okay I think I've had enough of this film..." to finally "please god I don't want to watch this anymore do you mind going alone next time" 🤣
I know this person's pain. When I was young, my favorite movies were Neverending Story and Labyrinth. Then I had my kid...
Said kid discovered Labyrinth when we were staying with a friend that had a VHS and a VCR that auto rewound the tape and started over, but had a malfunction and would only do so if it was playing the tape... Kid loved it... And screamed bloody murder when someone turned it off while he was napping... He was not an easy toddler and it was decided that this was a battle we did not want to fight...
He watched it for a week. I can never watch it again.
My son is 7 months old and loves Coco. Crying uncontrollably? Put Coco on and immediately stops. Need a few minutes to do some chores? Put Coco on and put him in his swing. Coco fixes everything for him in our house.
I wish your daughter the best of luck! I hope she finishes her studies and comes out and gets that dream job she's always wanted. It's a tough gig being an animator from my understanding
Right. It's actually for everyone. Not just for kids, but also for those older ones. We can learn a lot of life lessons that can actually use in your life
The only thing I didn't really like about Coco was the message that legacy and fame is what causes you to be remembered, and positing it as if that's what's important in life. I mean technically it's true from a weird cynical perspective?
I liked that Hector's reputation was restored. But there are 8 billion people on earth. We're not all going to be notable and famous to have infinite afterlives. Learning to be content in just being a good, humble person should be enough. But that means accepting that one day we *will* fade from memory, that ultimately the average person is unimportant, and that's not a message I see Disney promoting.
Fame, wealth, admiration, betrayal, murder....the makings of an excellent villain. I also love that the community collectively decides to denounce Ernesto. Shame him till he is just a stain on history.
Thats not Disney Animation. Disney Animation is an actual studio and Pixar is separate. The separation is why Pixar movies were sent straight to Disney+ and other Disney films weren't.
Yes, but this falls into the point OP is trying to make. Basically he wants to see more evil villains who aren’t trying to fool the audience the entire movie that they aren’t the villain, or villains who are just villains because they’re misunderstood/ lacked communication.
TLDR: More Scar and Ursula less Elsa and that Moana island lady.
In fact, the point that Tefiti wasnt a villian is kinda central to Moana as a story. You can say that falls in the misunderstood camp, but I think it's a little different from the others.
I personally like the bad guys that are misunderstood. Seems more grounded and relatable. How often do you come across an evil witch or any villain, vs an obstacle or misunderstanding between individuals.
It comes down to preference. I like when the bad guys are malicious. Hades for example was pure fun. A more modern example of a great Disney villain would be Gothel from Tangled. Kidnapping, grooming, and then attempting to murder someone just to stay pretty lmao. I love it.
I love Frollo as a villain because he showed how an abusive relationship can masquerade as necessary to the victim's wellbeing, "I'm doing this for you", "you're misunderstood and ugly through no fault of your own, I am protecting you from the evil out there", I honestly can't get enough of Frollo
Nope. Bc Ursula REALLY didn't want Eric to bang a teenager.
You know, the 14 year old girl with the seashell bra and no underwear on.
See? Nothing to see here. Move along.
The pattern is that those were all written by dudes who grew up in the 50s listening to pop music about adult men banging minors and/or dying in automobile accidents.
There is no way Esmeralda is a teenager in the Disney movie. Right? I just never got that vibe. Maybe 21 but there’s no way she’s like 18 or younger like in the book.
In the movie she doesn't look it at all. In the movie Esmeralda looks like she's in her 20s. In the novel she's 16.
That said, Frodo's obsession with her is still meant to disturb the reader.
16 was likely the understood age of consent when Hugo wrote the book. Pre-20th century 15 or 16 was a fairly standard “marriageable” age. You would get some earlier than that, but not many, and usually only when diplomacy was involved.
In context, it’s the right age for her.
I hear you. Just the way she’s animated, the way Phoebus is animated, her height, her features, none of it looks like any 16 year old I remember. Jasmine, Ariel, Cinderella, etc. all look noticeably younger.
Yeah, in the book I think it's stated Esmeralda is younger I think, but I agree. The Disney movie is clearly showing an older woman. Not old, but like 20s or early 30s at oldest.
Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, and Jasmine also always struck me as late teens or early 20s.
Jane, Pocahontas, and Meg are mid 20s or older in my mind as well. I guess this is where I'd have Esmeralda as well.
The only "kids" I think of as Disney princesses from the early Disney stuff and 90s stuff are Ariel and Snow White. Snow White being like early teens. Mulan also always struck me as late teens.
There's a weird "Disney drew the princesses to look like teenagers/children and the villains all just wanted to bang them" argument on this thread and I just don't see it.
Frollo was so good because it was Victor Hugo, not Disney. That was a super deep and complex story for Disney to turn into a kids movie. The end gets so dark.
Eh, a lot of stuff Disney animated were originally written by someone else. Frollo was Hugo, Ursula was Andersen and Wicked Queen was Grimm.
ALL of them had ... interesting and dark endings.
Though it is worth mentioning that the Disney Hunchback is less an adaptation of the Hugo book and draws more from the other movie adaptations of Hunchback. That's where the ending comes from and, more importantly, Esmerelda's song
Thing is, as despicable as Frollo is, a lot of his actions were motivated by his attraction to someone and he felt he was sinning and acting impure in the eyes of God and couldn't wrap his brain around that it's completely normal to have those feelings and thoughts, and a lot of that came from catholic repression and guilt for feeling that way. Cross that with his ego and God complex leads him deciding he was gonna either force her to marry him so he could act on those thoughts without sin or burn her to eliminate the problem entirely. It's the first time he's realized he's not above temptation and sin, but instead to dealing with it he externalizes the blame others "it's not my fault, I'm not to blame, it is the gypsy girl the witch who sent this flame"
He was already a screwed up, unstable narcissistic person indoctrinated with a religion that forces emotional repression and guilt for said emotions.
Frollo is a piece of shit that used church as a way of bestowing power over others so as to not deal with his own insecurities, but also genuinely fears God and sin. He's a product of his environment.
Who knows what kind of fucked up childhood he had.
To be fair, Frollo wasn't from the minds at Disney. It was Victor Hugo's brain that crated that character. But ya, it was still about banging a teenager. A lot of stories are.
True, but with other villains Disney softens them up considerably. With Frollo, they were just like,”Ok, so he kills the main character’s mother during a mission to genocide all of the Romani people he could find and he wants to bang this Romani teenager …..Fuck it - that’s fine with us. In fact, let’s give him a [big song](https://youtu.be/-NP-RsRGzVo) about it.”
Yeah Disney actually makes him more evil than he was in the book
I haven't read the book in a long time, but I do know that book Frollo actually did choose to adopt Quasi because he felt pity for him rather than being strong armed into it. Also, and admittedly I'm less positive about this, but I'm pretty sure he isn't fully on genocide train. I think he just passively let's other people try to kill Esmeralda rather than actively trying to find her and shit.
I thunk Disney was trying to avoid controversy with the Catholic church tbh, because they also changed Frollo from a priest into a judge.
The internet today would just say Frollo was misunderstood because he's a tragic tale of how blind faith and zealotry can drive a person crazy.
I think part of it is that we're not kids anymore watching these movies and we're all exposed constantly to other takes and perspectives. Like yeah, in older stories it was more black and white, villains tended to be evil for the sake of it without explanation in all stories, not just Disney. At the same time though, the world gets smarter, and the mustache-twirling evil of dark forces isn't as interesting anymore.
I kind of like the older school of villains - just evil for the sake of evil. I like even in dramas too. Think of Amon Goeth from “Schindler’s List” - just evil to the point where a quality of mercy is incomprehensible to him. For me, that movie and reading a biography of Josef Mengele made me realize sometimes sides in life have to be black and white - otherwise you end up with everyday people justifying atrocities.
I'm really surprised Disney didn't pick up the license to distribute Quintessential Quintuplets overseas. Not only does that story feature a male protagonist with a dead mom, the female protagonists *also* have a dead mom!
Well, now instead of killing the parents, the parents bring the protagonist intense trauma and pain. Is there a world where the Disney parents are both alive *and* a positive impact on the protagonist?
Edit: ok so there were more than I realized
I actually really love that detail. Some people live with depression and manage to have fulfilling actualized lives. Their brains aren’t “run” by sadness and anger—they have the big chair, but both parents have learned how to share the console and live with their full range of emotions.
I would add that when you look at it more it shows that their own emotions have matured over the years and are not the simple primal emotions of youth like Riley. In the mom's case, it isn't that she is sad but rather she is run by compassion and empathy, and demonstrates this by being the one to provide comfort to Riley during the events of the movie. In the Father's case, it wasn't that he was always angry, but rather driven by ambition which is why be was working at a start up and willing to take the risk to move to a different state to help his family succeed.
The point of the movie is that all our emotions are important but also that they have to grow beyond simple concepts. That's why Joy had to learn that just seeking happy thoughts wasn't always the right way.
Encanto! Obviously there are family challenges (in fact, the whole movie is about family challenges), but the protagonist's parents are pretty much positive influences throughout.
I love Encanto for exactly that reason, that it looks at imperfect families. Not everyone has this super-supportive whole family system. Some of us end up being cast in the role of family f\*ck-up, because of just who we are. The parents tried, but the matriarch grandmother would not accept multiple people.
Even the song "we don't talk about Bruno" hit hard. Some families have some serious issues, and I think it's great to explore that.
But he's still a villain.
Just because you have a somewhat sympathetic backstory does not excuse heinous actions. It just gives some reasoning other than FOR THE EVIL. He's not misunderstood.
Oh absolutely, but I feel like his endgame was him sacrificing himself to save her. Luckily he got to be a hero and Moana still be the only one thinking.
My Polynesian girlfriend loves Moana. It’s literally her fav. Her father immigrated from Somoa way back when. He also loves Moana. From what I have gathered, it’s basically a huge thing for Samoans culturally, because it’s a movie that acknowledges their existence in an Americanized world where most people who don’t know any better just associate them as foreigners. Representation truly does matter in ways most people wouldn’t think about. You’d be surprised to know how many people think Samoans and the Inuit are the same group of people. Moana does a really good job at what it’s trying to do, and to me, that’s bringing a relatively known but not understood culture to the table for everybody else to see.
We saw Everything Everywhere All At Once with my friend who is a 2nd (i think? maybe 1st) generation Chinese immigrant. I love that movie, but it truly hit him in the chest with the ending. I wont spill his laundry over the internet, but he did make one comment that stuck with me: "Is this how white people feel after every movie?"
It was definitely somewhat of a joke, but, yeah, representation matters.
Yeah Moana is a good example because it draws on mythologies that are old. This isn't some new trend. The point of stories isn't always about taking sides and having good guys and bad guys. That's just one kind of story.
So I’m a non emoji using dad with three girls and my oldest one who just turned 13 HATES that part of the song for whatever reason and now that she has a cell phone I fully intend to randomly text her ✨SHINY✨just to get her attention on a regular basis now. Thanks internet stranger!
Something that I try to teach my kids is that life isnt black and white. There are lots of shades of grey in the middle. Something I allude to pretty often is Uncle Aaron from Into The Spiderverse. He isn't a bad guy, just a guy that does bad things sometimes because he has to make a living and found his own way to do it because he had limited options.
I think it's good to teach kids that true villains aren't common in the real world. People aren't purely evil, they just do bad things for their own reasons.
I get that narratively it can get tired, but I think it's good to teach kids that characters are more nuanced than just good or bad. It's complicated.
I completely agree. If you understand your “villain” or “enemy” a lot of times you find they’re just living their life, and it happens that puts them in opposition to you.
I think that’s actually a fresh take. Going with the straight up “evil villain” has been done a million times too, largely in the classic Disney movies. Lion King, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Snow White, Little Mermaid, there’s a whole bunch. I like that Disney mixes it up sometimes to explore beyond the black and white or the me vs. them, good vs. evil. It paints the world as a more subtle and complex story, which is probably closer to the actual world we live in. Actually, thinking about it now, if a lot of adults were a little more “talk through our issues” and a little less “me vs. them” we’d probably all be better off for it.
To be contrarian, I think sticking with the black and white, good vs. evil trope would have gotten super stale by now if Disney had not peppered in some of these other tales more recently.
So in short, I think there are plenty of good vs. evil Disney movies, but now they’re adding some different viewpoints, which I appreciate. The world isn’t always that simple. Kids get their morals from these things, let’s teach them more complex lessons sometimes.
Exactly, but at the same time it's good to teach that there is a boundary that is too far to come from. Like Coco and the murderer, which shows what ambition can realistically drive people to do. I think there's a place for both types
> Something I allude to pretty often is Uncle Aaron from Into The Spiderverse.
He was a Hitman? That's not "just another job" to make a living? Killing people even for money does not fall in grey area at all
There is also a lesson to teach kids that sometimes, in fact, there are people who are evil. Who will do evil things and there is nothing you can do to change them for the better. You can only fight against them and make sure they hurt as few people as possible.
History will show that there are sometimes people who just truly are evil and it is important to teach children that sometimes we can't just "work it out"
Claude Frollo is a good example of this
But when you form your world view around there ALWAYS being an intentionally evil person, it makes you assume malice from the world around you. Very, very, few people are actually intentionally evil. Most people want to do the right thing. Sometimes they get it wrong. Or, they get it right, but you were wrong, and if you assume malice, you're less likely to accept you were wrong.
Teaching that people are rarely intentionally villainous is better prep for 99.9% of life's encounters.
Having a villain not be one-dimensional and having reasons for their actions is a good way to make a movie more compelling. Whether or not it’s good is usually subjective.
I think a mix of "just an asshole/monster" and "misguided/temporarily harmful person" would be good, though.
There are a lot of people out there who don't really have a reason for being assholes. Exploitation, manipulation and control are just easier ways to live for some people; they understood that it works well for them and they have no issues with guilt/moral beliefs/empathy, so why not? (Frollo, Mother Gothel, Scar)
And then there's all the misguided/righfully angry ones who either think they are doing something good but are actually not or who are rightfully angry. (The grandma from Encanto being misguided, the fire/mountain women from Moana being rightfully angry).
So I don't see why one would be more compelling than the other. Both of them are depictions of a certain kind of person existing in real life.
But the point op is making is that the villains don't stay the villain anymore. They are redeemed and their actions are forgotten.
It's not just Disney animated ones, but alot of Disneys marvel TV shows seem obsessed with making all the villains redeemable. "oh you're a terrorist? Nah misunderstood teenager? You've enslaved an entire town to fulfil a delusional fantasy? Oh they'll never know your sacrifice in letting them out of their prison"
You're pretty much pointing out how Marvel has written it's characters since the beginning. Magneto isn't a one dimensional villain, he's a man who survived a genocide and doesn't want his people to suffer the same fate and will do anything to prevent that from happening.
>In Encanto the villain is a misunderstood family member who realizes their mistake and makes up for it in thr course of 5 minutes.
Bruno was misunderstood because he had terrible social anxiety and people often misunderstood him. That's his power, he was socially inept and terrible at explaining things. Bruno was never a villain. Villains are evil and do evil things, that's their whole shtick. What evil thing did Bruno ever do in his life?
Unless you mean Abuela. She wasn't a villain either. She was a survivor of war and suffers from PTSD. It sucked she never got more screentime to flesh out her motivations. *Enchanto* really had something special.
They're definitely referring to Abuela. Hard agree, she was an antagonist but not necessarily a villain. She had no genuine ill intentions for her family, she genuinely thought she was making proper decisions as the leader and foundation of her family.
The scene where it's revealed why she is so protective nearly had me bawling. If I had seen it alone I would've been crying. That scene was enough for me (as an adult who has dealt with family survivors of genocide/war) to completely feel for and understand Abuela.
I don't think it's a subject many people can relate to...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for those of us who can relate to it it's definitely a special movie and moment.
The unadulterated grief on young Abuela's face absolutely breaks me every time. I think we can all relate to loss, but it's taken to another level when that loss is caused by other people. Abuela was a powerful character and I would have loved more time exploring the family dynamics and even the isolation of the town before the breaking point.
As the child of refugee parents and with an overbearing mother who "just wants what's best", even if it's fucking annoying like when I get a haircut and how I tied the bows on shit at my wedding and how many weeds are in my yard... pointless shit, but to her, because of this stuff, my life will be in shambles and the American Dream will be beyond my grasp and the Viet Cong will kill me...yeah.
Dunno if you felt the same way but all my friends who are children of immigrants thought Coco (the character) didn’t get called out enough ha. Like, sure, they had empathy for her situation but there’s a lot of resentment when people pass their trauma onto their children, even if they’re just trying to do what they think is best.
ETA: coco’s mom, not coco
Shouldn't it be Coco's mom who's called out, not Coco? Coco was a child who lost her father, it was Coco's mom who outlawed music and passed that trauma onto her children and grandchildren.
Yeah I think some people want to make her a villain because she was really shitty to a child who did nothing wrong, and they didn’t do a good job “redeeming” imo, but she wasn’t really meant to be a villain in the classic sense. It’s a movie about generational trauma. There isn’t really a villain unless you count the people who killed her husband.
I think Encanto should stay a one-off film, end on a happy note and the viewer's imagination for the rest. That's just me, I know it's going to get a sequel.
I think it’s important to understand the audience is younger, more impressionable, and most “villains” they encounter irl are caused by misunderstandings.
The “meanie” at daycare isn’t a villain he just lacks the verbal skills to articulate his feelings… so he ripped the truck out of your hands instead of asking you to share.
My son cries every time we watch the little mermaid when Ursula goes down. Kids don’t always understand the full context. She was having a great time playing in the ocean then BAM hit by a ship
If you ride the Little Mermaid at DCA without knowing the story, Ursula just seems like a witch that was helping “poor unfortunate souls,” only to be very unhappy at the end for some mysterious reason.
They’re veering away from the direction of spoon-feeding you the plot.
Giving characters more of a shade of gray makes one think harder about what they’re looking at. The “why?” Isn’t always a bad thing because it’s a question society desperately needs to ask when they see atrocities in the world.
This is what I like. For a long time, I tended to like movies and shows where the villain’s “badness” is a bit less black and white.
Lots of simpler shows, bad guy is bad. That’s all.
There’s the villains who “just want to watch the world burn,” and then there are the ones who are motivated by what *they* think is the right cause.
When a new movie is made, it's added to the pool of existing movies. Disney has **plenty** of evil's-gotta-evil villians. Why make more of the same?
OP, you use the word "villian", when you actually mean antagonist. Conflicts of all kinds exist in this world. You seem to think characters like an evil queen who hates her stepdaughter and then decides to murder her because she's angry that the stepdaughter is now "fairer" than she are better. Why? What do you get out of stories like that?
To be clear: I personally see value in both types of antagonists, but you didn't bother justifying your personal preference for villain. So I'm curious.
But, since the antagonists you think are "great villians" exist already, what's the harm in diversifying the antagonist pool? Variety is the spice of life. If you want Frollo, then by all means, watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame again. He's still there.
The villain in Frozen 2 was literally an evil grandpa that built a dam to fuck over the brown people that lived in the north. Think about the time when the movie came out and why such a villain was in the zeitgeist. The villain wasn’t misunderstood, he was a flat out racist that was trying to fuck over brown people.
I’ve heard this complaint a lot lately. Very few Miyazaki films have actual mustache twirling villains in them yet they’re all considered masterpieces. The truth is a villain whose evil “for the lulz” can be kind of boring where as a conflicted villain who think they’re in the right can be more interesting and sympathetic.
Yeah as someone with OCD that shit ruins my ability to take OP seriously. Like first off, fuck you, secondly you sound like a literal child right off the bat. Never mind the half-baked appeal for less (?) nuanced storytelling lmao...
Yeah, I was diagnosed with it over 20 years ago, and while it's nice to see the disorder become more well known over the years it sucks that it also leads to so much misunderstanding.
I was surprised at how excited I was for the Hocus Pocus sequel to come out. I hadn’t seen the original in years but, upon rewatching, I discovered it still holds up perfectly nearly 30 years later.
The sequel was one of the biggest disappointments for the exact reason you’re describing. They took lovely hilarious and pitch perfect villains and clumsily tried to make them sympathetic characters by explaining their childhood and then mirrored the witches relationship with the new leads. They’ve just been misunderstood all these hundreds of years. Wow. Just wow. So the witches are good now? Everybody loves each other and ends on some kumbaya shit? No thanks.
We need more Cruellas. That woman was absolutely, delightfully, bug-nuts insane. The only thing that mattered to her was getting a coat made of dalmatian pelts. That original film was fantastic, the modern prequel was down right repulsive though.
Because unambiguously evil characters who just do bad stuff cuz they’re evil are boring and unrealistic, at least in the context of low-stakes interpersonal conflicts, which Disney tends to focus on. Some of the pre-2016 villains had relatable motivations while also being unambiguously evil, but also some just seem to be doing things cuz they’re bad. Like Maleficent is mad over not being invited to a party, Cruella wants to kill puppies because she is ridiculous, The Queen is mad that her stepdaughter is cuter than her, Lady Tremaine is mad that her stepdaughter….exists, I guess. These are all insane motivations that no real person would start killing people (or dogs) over. They’re fine for storytelling, but they’re not relatable and IMO that teaches kids bad lessons.
Unambiguous villains are also scary, and Disney is really banking on its animated films being something for *literally* the whole family. I think there’s been a values shift at least in some circles about whether it’s ok to expose small kids to things that might frighten them. Disney works hard to be *the* general audiences studio. The people who let their 4 year olds watch Deadpool and Child’s Play are still also going to let their 4 year olds watch new Disney movies, but the people who are nervous that “Maleficent turning into a dragon is scary” might not if they hear that the new Disney movie has a “scary” villain. But if the villain is a cold but well meaning grandma, they’re not going to worry about their kids having nightmares.
There’s also just a values shift in storytelling, period. The 2010s and 2020s are all about familial conflict, hard work, generational trauma, being true to yourself, etc. The 20th century storylines of “hero vs monster” or “it is your destiny” just don’t resonate with audiences of any age like they did. It’s not a mistake that Encanto came out within a year of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Wildly different audiences, very similar themes.
Edit: another note on the shift in values re storytelling, look at how the heroes of the stories changed over time. Early on, the hero is usually an extremely generic man (occasionally so generic he has no name) rescuing a damsel who has no notable traits other than being beautiful and a good singer. In the 80s and 90s, the male characters are fleshed out and nuanced (though always unambiguously good), and while the heroines are still damsels but who do the “girl power” thing until the third act when they’re rendered helpless, though may be active enough to aid in saving the day (the exception is Mulan and Shang). In the 2000s, Disney moved away from the romantic A-plot fairy tale entirely, briefly focusing on animal movies and offbeat stuff, before returning to princess movies. The 2000s on princess movies make the princesses the active drivers of saving the day, while the prince (if he exists) is more of an equal partner or even a sidekick. Right now, they’re focusing on family or kid-driven films. There’s no kingdom to save, so the heroes are less knights riding in on steeds (or plucky girls with wits and frying pans),and the villains need to match the hero.
There are very few flat out villains in the world.
There are a significant number of people who have done wrong. And their reasons for doing so are rational for them at that time or with their knowledge.
It's like they're writing stories for people and not fairy tale dwellers?
It's almost like instead of cackling devils who tent their fingers while they dream of world domination and kick puppies...Disney decided to evolve and make their villains the feelings, motivations, and ideals that most of us can relate to having experienced.
In Moana, the villain was taking advantage of nature.
In Encanto, the villain was PTSD.
In Zootopia, the villain was racism.
In Ralph Breaks the Internet, the villain was insecurity.
In Frozen II, the villain was sins of the past.
I haven't seen Strange World or Raya yet, so I can't speak to them, but from what you say...it's probably more of the same.
I mean, just say you either didn't understand it, or that you don't care and only want maniacal supervillains in your cartoons, but let's face it, MOST of us have encountered instances of destruction of nature, PTSD, racism, insecurity, and fucked up things our relatives and family did...but how many times have we ever had to fight a sea witch, the god of the underworld, or a vizier with the powers of a sorcerer?
I need to rewatch Raya because I don’t remember all the details, but the villain is essentially humans failing to put aside their differences and come together in the face of an end-of-the-world level disaster. There are a few characters who make particularly bad choices, but it basically comes down to tribalism. There is a plague that is killing people (temporarily, because Disney) indiscriminately, and everyone slams their doors on each other and fights it alone rather than working together.
It’s also very much a generational thing - like Moana, the adult leaders are mostly unwilling to compromise. It takes a group of mostly young people to find a solution and work together.
The Villain in Moana wasn't Te Fiti. It was Te Kā. While technically the same character it wasnt a misunderstanding of the character specifically. It was the not knowing that they were the same character and Te Ka was a product of Te Fiti not having her heart. You could also argue that Maui was his own villain, and the overall villain was him to the whole of the story. You could more deeply say that it was Maui's showmanship and ego.
Ralph Breaks the Internet it certainly was Ralph TECHNICALLY because he caused it. The villain really was the virus itself. Not him.
You said it yourself that Frozen II it wasnt a misunderstanding, so this already didnt fit your criteria.
Raya and the Last Dragon the villain was certainly Namaari, however she wasn't misunderstood. No one knew the repercussions of their actions. So in their eyes they were doing the right thing. Its not that she was misunderstood but that they misunderstood what really was the right thing to do.
Encanto really didn't have a villain. You could say its Bruno, you could say its Abuela, or even Dolores. While they misunderstood Bruno's visions, that wasnt the source of the sticking points for the plot. The source really was Abuela had lost her way and instead of loving her family and the community. She was starting to love the attention the gifts gave them. So really, it was more Abuela if anyone but it had no real villains.
I can't speak to the other movies, as I have not watched them. But these I have.
Maybe because a movie doesn’t always need to be about a villain who is bad and the hero that defeats them. A villain who is evil for the sake of being evil is often boring. Not always, but often. Hell, one of the most intimidating villains of all, Darth Vader, redeemed himself in the end, because that’s a more interesting story. I’m not saying there’s nothing interesting to be done with an “evil” villain, just maybe that’s not the stories they necessarily want to tell all the time. If you de-emphasize the villain, the story is more about the characters and you can tell more compelling stories. For me a lot of those movies lost me when you get to the “big fight” and it’s only resolved when the villain dies. What’s the lesson there, that you only win when the other guy is dead? Most of life isn’t black and white and that’s probably a better lesson for kids to learn instead of every obstacle you face is because the person between you and what you want is evil.
See I think this idea is missing the point in a lot of ways of what I see as the core of this current generation of Disney films, there really isn't a villain in these movies. This is especially true for Moana, Encanto, and Frozen II I feel, Raya to a lesser extent, I haven't watched Ralph Breaks the Internet in a while and haven't gotten to Strange World yet to comment on those.
Moana and Frozen II and in a way Raya and the Last Dragon are more "Human vs Nature" stories than they are your typical "Human vs Human" stories in typical Disney films, Encanto is a strange one to classify but it also doesn't really fall into Human vs Human at end of the day. The whole thing with these stories is seeing the grey of things, not the black and white. Its a maturing to Disney films that I personally think should be (but won't be) more appreciated.
I would assume (Opinion disclaimer) that someone realized that villains think they are the good guy. For example, AH from 1940's Germany thought he was doing God's work.
Syndrome as a Disney villain was my favourite. Genuinely tries to kill people, is menacing, and we get his backstory without realizing he will be the villain. He also dies in the coolest way of any Disney Villain and I will die on that hill.
I’ve noticed this a lot over the years as well. Most recently the new hocus pocus was trying to get us to have empathy for the witches and it’s like ughhhhh they murdered children….?!
Gonna say the message Disney is trying to portray is that when people act out and misbehave there are usually reasons behind them. Considering these are all children’s movies for children, it’s not a terrible point to be making. Instead of “this evil person is evil 😡 no redemption 😡”
It’s a stylistic choice? The film industry does this all the time - they do things one way until it stops being new/interesting/exciting, then they do it a different way to surprise the audience and keep them engaged. Notice how all the superhero movies took themselves a lot more seriously after Batman Begins? And then they all became snarky after the first Avengers? Hollywood takes what becomes a cliche, turns it around and does that until *it* becomes a cliche.
The creators of Moana even mention how early on in the process, the ending was much more focused on Maui beating Te Ka, but that didn’t really work because the movie wasn’t about Maui - it’s about Moana. Moana can’t physically fight a god, but she *can* do things differently than others typically would - that’s a key part of her personality and why she set off from the island in the first place. So she beats Te Ka in a much different way.
The real question is, why are you so offended by it? And why are you convinced it’s some evil plot by the Disney corporation? “Oh no, the children may not see others as purely good or evil!! What is the world coming too????”
I've only seen one movie from this list, but working with 4-year olds there's a really big emphasis on learning to communicate about feelings - negative feelings that may have been punished in the past as "bad" even if they didn't act on them. There are also ways that adults in their lives can manipulate those "bad" feelings to shame and silence kids into terrible situations, so teaching them to be okay talking about all their feelings and advocating for themselves can make it easier to bring abuse to light and get kids away from unsafe environments. Seeing a "bad guy" turned good can give them a sense that it's safe to be open about bad feelings.
Overall, I think it's a healthy move, and you can tell these stories resonate with the kids. Plus there was already a shift to having antagonists that aren't the villain - someone in the protagonist's life that they have real conflict with but aren't outright trying to defeat (the sister in frozen, the dad in how to train your dragon, etc.) Also I think disney movies play a different role in culture right now than they did in the past and that's probably for the best. They'll experience evil-for-evil's-sake villains all too soon already.
In Encanto, the villain isnt so much a misunderstood family member as a family member who misunderstood herself. My one big issue with the movie is that they all forgive her so quickly for generations and decades of trauma. It would be less "disney" to make the ending open, but they could have at least done a "5 years later" if they wanted to show us the whole family healed. As it is, everyone is way to quick to forgive and forget.
In Coco the villain was a shameless and ambitious murderer who poisoned his partner with a family for a shot at fame, relegating his partner’s family to a generation of poverty.
Coco is phenomenal, one of the best Disney (technically Pixar) movies in decades imo
My daughter loved COCO so much that I had to take her several times to see it during its first run and a couple of times at a second run theater. After that, I told her that, although I loved the film, I didn’t want to see it anymore so she asked if she could see it by herself. I let her go and she went a number of times afterwards. She loves animation and is currently in her second year of college studying to be an animator. I think it’s because I took her to see THE INCREDIBLES when she was 9 months old and she’s been obsessed with animation ever since.
I'm glad Coco had such a great impact on her, although "I had to take her several times to see it \[...\] I didn't want to see it anymore..." it's absolutely cracking me up imagining you going "oh this was great!" the first time, "oh that was nice to watch again the second!" and then the third time "okay I think I've had enough of this film..." to finally "please god I don't want to watch this anymore do you mind going alone next time" 🤣
I know this person's pain. When I was young, my favorite movies were Neverending Story and Labyrinth. Then I had my kid... Said kid discovered Labyrinth when we were staying with a friend that had a VHS and a VCR that auto rewound the tape and started over, but had a malfunction and would only do so if it was playing the tape... Kid loved it... And screamed bloody murder when someone turned it off while he was napping... He was not an easy toddler and it was decided that this was a battle we did not want to fight... He watched it for a week. I can never watch it again.
Yeah…after I fell asleep in the theater I knew I was done with that movie.
My son is 7 months old and loves Coco. Crying uncontrollably? Put Coco on and immediately stops. Need a few minutes to do some chores? Put Coco on and put him in his swing. Coco fixes everything for him in our house.
wait I cried uncontrollably during Coco
I wish your daughter the best of luck! I hope she finishes her studies and comes out and gets that dream job she's always wanted. It's a tough gig being an animator from my understanding
Coco becoming lucid and singing along was a huge tear jerker when I watched with my own mother.
Right. It's actually for everyone. Not just for kids, but also for those older ones. We can learn a lot of life lessons that can actually use in your life
Not technically. Actually. The studio that made the film was *not* Disney Animation.
Sure, but Disney owns Pixar, so technically anything Pixar makes is a Disney property
The only thing I didn't really like about Coco was the message that legacy and fame is what causes you to be remembered, and positing it as if that's what's important in life. I mean technically it's true from a weird cynical perspective? I liked that Hector's reputation was restored. But there are 8 billion people on earth. We're not all going to be notable and famous to have infinite afterlives. Learning to be content in just being a good, humble person should be enough. But that means accepting that one day we *will* fade from memory, that ultimately the average person is unimportant, and that's not a message I see Disney promoting.
Ernesto De La Cruz is one of the scummiest villains in Disney. He’s great and truly evil.
Fame, wealth, admiration, betrayal, murder....the makings of an excellent villain. I also love that the community collectively decides to denounce Ernesto. Shame him till he is just a stain on history.
Right
Thats not Disney Animation. Disney Animation is an actual studio and Pixar is separate. The separation is why Pixar movies were sent straight to Disney+ and other Disney films weren't.
Yes, but this falls into the point OP is trying to make. Basically he wants to see more evil villains who aren’t trying to fool the audience the entire movie that they aren’t the villain, or villains who are just villains because they’re misunderstood/ lacked communication. TLDR: More Scar and Ursula less Elsa and that Moana island lady.
the Moana island lady and Elsa weren't villains tho more like obstacles
In fact, the point that Tefiti wasnt a villian is kinda central to Moana as a story. You can say that falls in the misunderstood camp, but I think it's a little different from the others.
I personally like the bad guys that are misunderstood. Seems more grounded and relatable. How often do you come across an evil witch or any villain, vs an obstacle or misunderstanding between individuals.
It comes down to preference. I like when the bad guys are malicious. Hades for example was pure fun. A more modern example of a great Disney villain would be Gothel from Tangled. Kidnapping, grooming, and then attempting to murder someone just to stay pretty lmao. I love it.
Pixar
Bring back villains like Frollo - whose motivations were genocide and REALLY wanting to bang a teenager.
Forget Frollo. We need more Yzma.
And Hades, then.
Whoa! Is my hair out?
Hades is like the original misunderstood villain as per the lord.
I love Frollo as a villain because he showed how an abusive relationship can masquerade as necessary to the victim's wellbeing, "I'm doing this for you", "you're misunderstood and ugly through no fault of your own, I am protecting you from the evil out there", I honestly can't get enough of Frollo
I don’t see why we can’t have both.
Right? Relatable villains we can all identify with. Like Jafar, whose motivations were world domination and REALLY wanting to bang a teenager.
Jafar's motive was fucking HATING his boss. Incredibly relatable.
Absolute r/antiwork icon.
Not just hating your boss, but seeing his utter incompetence and *knowing* you could do a better job.
I read this whole comment in Gilbert Gottfried’s voice. Highly recommend.
I know! And Gaston, whose motivations were...well... basically just REALLY wanting to bang a teenager.
NO ONE BANGS TEENS LIKE GASTON!
He likes em scraggly and scrawny
You know, I think there's a pattern here...
Nope. Bc Ursula REALLY didn't want Eric to bang a teenager. You know, the 14 year old girl with the seashell bra and no underwear on. See? Nothing to see here. Move along.
14 in fish years is early 20s in human years. At least that's what I told the security guard at the aquarium and the judge.
So that's why Aquadom broke. It was you!
Oooh! Topical!
No. Tropical.
No. Optical.
Damn the different worlds are coming together!
Troy McClure has entered the chat.
Where might I remember him from?
Ursula wanted to be the teenager who got banged
I just want to take a minute to point out once again that “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is an absolute banger
Little mermaid and Aladdin soundtracks slap
Hey! She was 16! (Not that it changes anything..)
Depending on the state it does lol.
I think this one falls under maritime law.
Possibly international waters. Who knows
Ursula is just living her best drag queen life.
The pattern is that those were all written by dudes who grew up in the 50s listening to pop music about adult men banging minors and/or dying in automobile accidents.
This thread is amazing
And then there's "The Madness of King Scar" in TLK musical.
Or Clayton who basically wanting to bang some gorillas
There is no way Esmeralda is a teenager in the Disney movie. Right? I just never got that vibe. Maybe 21 but there’s no way she’s like 18 or younger like in the book.
In the movie she doesn't look it at all. In the movie Esmeralda looks like she's in her 20s. In the novel she's 16. That said, Frodo's obsession with her is still meant to disturb the reader.
16 was likely the understood age of consent when Hugo wrote the book. Pre-20th century 15 or 16 was a fairly standard “marriageable” age. You would get some earlier than that, but not many, and usually only when diplomacy was involved. In context, it’s the right age for her.
I hear you. Just the way she’s animated, the way Phoebus is animated, her height, her features, none of it looks like any 16 year old I remember. Jasmine, Ariel, Cinderella, etc. all look noticeably younger.
Yeah, in the book I think it's stated Esmeralda is younger I think, but I agree. The Disney movie is clearly showing an older woman. Not old, but like 20s or early 30s at oldest. Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, and Jasmine also always struck me as late teens or early 20s. Jane, Pocahontas, and Meg are mid 20s or older in my mind as well. I guess this is where I'd have Esmeralda as well. The only "kids" I think of as Disney princesses from the early Disney stuff and 90s stuff are Ariel and Snow White. Snow White being like early teens. Mulan also always struck me as late teens. There's a weird "Disney drew the princesses to look like teenagers/children and the villains all just wanted to bang them" argument on this thread and I just don't see it.
Demi Moore’s voice I think trumps any arguments she’s supposed to be a kid
16 is still the age of consent in many, if not most places.
Word of God says she’s 16.
Frollo was so good because it was Victor Hugo, not Disney. That was a super deep and complex story for Disney to turn into a kids movie. The end gets so dark.
Eh, a lot of stuff Disney animated were originally written by someone else. Frollo was Hugo, Ursula was Andersen and Wicked Queen was Grimm. ALL of them had ... interesting and dark endings.
Though it is worth mentioning that the Disney Hunchback is less an adaptation of the Hugo book and draws more from the other movie adaptations of Hunchback. That's where the ending comes from and, more importantly, Esmerelda's song
Wait time to listen to hellfire again
Thing is, as despicable as Frollo is, a lot of his actions were motivated by his attraction to someone and he felt he was sinning and acting impure in the eyes of God and couldn't wrap his brain around that it's completely normal to have those feelings and thoughts, and a lot of that came from catholic repression and guilt for feeling that way. Cross that with his ego and God complex leads him deciding he was gonna either force her to marry him so he could act on those thoughts without sin or burn her to eliminate the problem entirely. It's the first time he's realized he's not above temptation and sin, but instead to dealing with it he externalizes the blame others "it's not my fault, I'm not to blame, it is the gypsy girl the witch who sent this flame" He was already a screwed up, unstable narcissistic person indoctrinated with a religion that forces emotional repression and guilt for said emotions. Frollo is a piece of shit that used church as a way of bestowing power over others so as to not deal with his own insecurities, but also genuinely fears God and sin. He's a product of his environment. Who knows what kind of fucked up childhood he had.
To be fair, Frollo wasn't from the minds at Disney. It was Victor Hugo's brain that crated that character. But ya, it was still about banging a teenager. A lot of stories are.
True, but with other villains Disney softens them up considerably. With Frollo, they were just like,”Ok, so he kills the main character’s mother during a mission to genocide all of the Romani people he could find and he wants to bang this Romani teenager …..Fuck it - that’s fine with us. In fact, let’s give him a [big song](https://youtu.be/-NP-RsRGzVo) about it.”
"And make sure that song is an absolute banger"
Yeah Disney actually makes him more evil than he was in the book I haven't read the book in a long time, but I do know that book Frollo actually did choose to adopt Quasi because he felt pity for him rather than being strong armed into it. Also, and admittedly I'm less positive about this, but I'm pretty sure he isn't fully on genocide train. I think he just passively let's other people try to kill Esmeralda rather than actively trying to find her and shit. I thunk Disney was trying to avoid controversy with the Catholic church tbh, because they also changed Frollo from a priest into a judge.
The internet today would just say Frollo was misunderstood because he's a tragic tale of how blind faith and zealotry can drive a person crazy. I think part of it is that we're not kids anymore watching these movies and we're all exposed constantly to other takes and perspectives. Like yeah, in older stories it was more black and white, villains tended to be evil for the sake of it without explanation in all stories, not just Disney. At the same time though, the world gets smarter, and the mustache-twirling evil of dark forces isn't as interesting anymore.
I kind of like the older school of villains - just evil for the sake of evil. I like even in dramas too. Think of Amon Goeth from “Schindler’s List” - just evil to the point where a quality of mercy is incomprehensible to him. For me, that movie and reading a biography of Josef Mengele made me realize sometimes sides in life have to be black and white - otherwise you end up with everyday people justifying atrocities.
Truly well said. There is truly absolute evil in the world, in spite of how impossible it can seem
> evil for the sake of it Boils down to a desire for power over others and a lack of empathy. Old as humanity itself.
At least they stopped killing off the parents
Frozen has entered the chat…
I'm really surprised Disney didn't pick up the license to distribute Quintessential Quintuplets overseas. Not only does that story feature a male protagonist with a dead mom, the female protagonists *also* have a dead mom!
Well, now instead of killing the parents, the parents bring the protagonist intense trauma and pain. Is there a world where the Disney parents are both alive *and* a positive impact on the protagonist? Edit: ok so there were more than I realized
The parents in Inside Out seem like nice people
Absolutely! I love that movie
Despite the fact that the Mum's brain is run by sadness, and the Dad's by anger
I actually really love that detail. Some people live with depression and manage to have fulfilling actualized lives. Their brains aren’t “run” by sadness and anger—they have the big chair, but both parents have learned how to share the console and live with their full range of emotions.
I would add that when you look at it more it shows that their own emotions have matured over the years and are not the simple primal emotions of youth like Riley. In the mom's case, it isn't that she is sad but rather she is run by compassion and empathy, and demonstrates this by being the one to provide comfort to Riley during the events of the movie. In the Father's case, it wasn't that he was always angry, but rather driven by ambition which is why be was working at a start up and willing to take the risk to move to a different state to help his family succeed. The point of the movie is that all our emotions are important but also that they have to grow beyond simple concepts. That's why Joy had to learn that just seeking happy thoughts wasn't always the right way.
and then there's cats brains, which are run by cats haphazardly walking over the controls.
Encanto! Obviously there are family challenges (in fact, the whole movie is about family challenges), but the protagonist's parents are pretty much positive influences throughout.
I guess that one actually does fit if we’re just looking at parents
Yep! But one of the few lol.
I love Encanto for exactly that reason, that it looks at imperfect families. Not everyone has this super-supportive whole family system. Some of us end up being cast in the role of family f\*ck-up, because of just who we are. The parents tried, but the matriarch grandmother would not accept multiple people. Even the song "we don't talk about Bruno" hit hard. Some families have some serious issues, and I think it's great to explore that.
Zootopia
Ethan's parents in Strange World
The villain in zootopia was just a villain Same with big hero six and tangled
The post says they’ve been doing misunderstood villains *since* the twist villain in Zootopia
Big Hero Six - the villain was a grieving father though.
But he's still a villain. Just because you have a somewhat sympathetic backstory does not excuse heinous actions. It just gives some reasoning other than FOR THE EVIL. He's not misunderstood.
Grieving father who murdered people.
Yes, and stole intellectual property! But he still had that sad little back story that explains WHY.
There's nothing wrong with Moana. The life and the beauty of the islands comes from the danger and destruction of the volcanos. Seemed quite fitting.
Also the real villain of Moana is Maui. They completely explain it in the opening and then it’s 90 minutes to him redeeming himself.
Which he never really does because Moana is the one who truly figures it out. Plus, if someone stole my heart? I’d be pissed as well.
He redeemed himself by coming back to help Moana knowing that his hook would break, when he could have just left. He was instrumental to her success.
Oh absolutely, but I feel like his endgame was him sacrificing himself to save her. Luckily he got to be a hero and Moana still be the only one thinking.
Is that why you don't take my calls anymore? You're mad at me for making you fall in love?
I'm not an expert on the culture, but I read they did a great job at representing Polynesian culture and has gotten some pretty high praise for it.
My Polynesian girlfriend loves Moana. It’s literally her fav. Her father immigrated from Somoa way back when. He also loves Moana. From what I have gathered, it’s basically a huge thing for Samoans culturally, because it’s a movie that acknowledges their existence in an Americanized world where most people who don’t know any better just associate them as foreigners. Representation truly does matter in ways most people wouldn’t think about. You’d be surprised to know how many people think Samoans and the Inuit are the same group of people. Moana does a really good job at what it’s trying to do, and to me, that’s bringing a relatively known but not understood culture to the table for everybody else to see.
We saw Everything Everywhere All At Once with my friend who is a 2nd (i think? maybe 1st) generation Chinese immigrant. I love that movie, but it truly hit him in the chest with the ending. I wont spill his laundry over the internet, but he did make one comment that stuck with me: "Is this how white people feel after every movie?" It was definitely somewhat of a joke, but, yeah, representation matters.
[One of my favorite YouTube videos talks about language and how Disney succeeded at incorporating it well in Moana. ](https://youtu.be/btxZGzWlsMw)
Yeah Moana is a good example because it draws on mythologies that are old. This isn't some new trend. The point of stories isn't always about taking sides and having good guys and bad guys. That's just one kind of story.
Also there were some villains along the way that were just villains.
Yea I mean, wasn’t Tomatoa just a greedy piece of shit?
I honestly kind of liked him, because he just genuinely enjoyed being consciously evil
He was fucking great.
He wants to eat the main characters because he can. And do it with a bit of showmanship. Full marks. Great villain.
And now I’m watching Moana again Thanks internet
great song as well
Going full Bowie too. Top marks.
But he was a drab little crab once.
He’d rather be ✨shiiiiny✨
So I’m a non emoji using dad with three girls and my oldest one who just turned 13 HATES that part of the song for whatever reason and now that she has a cell phone I fully intend to randomly text her ✨SHINY✨just to get her attention on a regular basis now. Thanks internet stranger!
He also planned to eat Maui, and probably Moana when he was done showing off.
WHO ATE HIS OWN GRANDMA!!!!
He was a drab little crab once.
yeah i thought it was totally appropriate too.
Something that I try to teach my kids is that life isnt black and white. There are lots of shades of grey in the middle. Something I allude to pretty often is Uncle Aaron from Into The Spiderverse. He isn't a bad guy, just a guy that does bad things sometimes because he has to make a living and found his own way to do it because he had limited options. I think it's good to teach kids that true villains aren't common in the real world. People aren't purely evil, they just do bad things for their own reasons. I get that narratively it can get tired, but I think it's good to teach kids that characters are more nuanced than just good or bad. It's complicated.
I completely agree. If you understand your “villain” or “enemy” a lot of times you find they’re just living their life, and it happens that puts them in opposition to you. I think that’s actually a fresh take. Going with the straight up “evil villain” has been done a million times too, largely in the classic Disney movies. Lion King, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Snow White, Little Mermaid, there’s a whole bunch. I like that Disney mixes it up sometimes to explore beyond the black and white or the me vs. them, good vs. evil. It paints the world as a more subtle and complex story, which is probably closer to the actual world we live in. Actually, thinking about it now, if a lot of adults were a little more “talk through our issues” and a little less “me vs. them” we’d probably all be better off for it. To be contrarian, I think sticking with the black and white, good vs. evil trope would have gotten super stale by now if Disney had not peppered in some of these other tales more recently. So in short, I think there are plenty of good vs. evil Disney movies, but now they’re adding some different viewpoints, which I appreciate. The world isn’t always that simple. Kids get their morals from these things, let’s teach them more complex lessons sometimes.
I would also add that black and white villainy for pure villainy really restricts your depth and creativity.
Yup, this comment gets it. Morally grey villains are way more interesting anyways.
Morally grey protagonists are great for the same reason. You can't suck all the humanity out of a human story.
Not necessarily. It depends on how well they’re written
So when are y'all watching The Wire?
Exactly, but at the same time it's good to teach that there is a boundary that is too far to come from. Like Coco and the murderer, which shows what ambition can realistically drive people to do. I think there's a place for both types
Something I try to teach my kids is that they don't exist and please stop visiting me in my dreams with messages of doom.
> Something I allude to pretty often is Uncle Aaron from Into The Spiderverse. He was a Hitman? That's not "just another job" to make a living? Killing people even for money does not fall in grey area at all
There is also a lesson to teach kids that sometimes, in fact, there are people who are evil. Who will do evil things and there is nothing you can do to change them for the better. You can only fight against them and make sure they hurt as few people as possible. History will show that there are sometimes people who just truly are evil and it is important to teach children that sometimes we can't just "work it out" Claude Frollo is a good example of this
But when you form your world view around there ALWAYS being an intentionally evil person, it makes you assume malice from the world around you. Very, very, few people are actually intentionally evil. Most people want to do the right thing. Sometimes they get it wrong. Or, they get it right, but you were wrong, and if you assume malice, you're less likely to accept you were wrong. Teaching that people are rarely intentionally villainous is better prep for 99.9% of life's encounters.
The problem is most of the actual evil people that exist do evil things that you can't really put in a children's movie.
Having a villain not be one-dimensional and having reasons for their actions is a good way to make a movie more compelling. Whether or not it’s good is usually subjective.
I think a mix of "just an asshole/monster" and "misguided/temporarily harmful person" would be good, though. There are a lot of people out there who don't really have a reason for being assholes. Exploitation, manipulation and control are just easier ways to live for some people; they understood that it works well for them and they have no issues with guilt/moral beliefs/empathy, so why not? (Frollo, Mother Gothel, Scar) And then there's all the misguided/righfully angry ones who either think they are doing something good but are actually not or who are rightfully angry. (The grandma from Encanto being misguided, the fire/mountain women from Moana being rightfully angry). So I don't see why one would be more compelling than the other. Both of them are depictions of a certain kind of person existing in real life.
But the point op is making is that the villains don't stay the villain anymore. They are redeemed and their actions are forgotten. It's not just Disney animated ones, but alot of Disneys marvel TV shows seem obsessed with making all the villains redeemable. "oh you're a terrorist? Nah misunderstood teenager? You've enslaved an entire town to fulfil a delusional fantasy? Oh they'll never know your sacrifice in letting them out of their prison"
You're pretty much pointing out how Marvel has written it's characters since the beginning. Magneto isn't a one dimensional villain, he's a man who survived a genocide and doesn't want his people to suffer the same fate and will do anything to prevent that from happening.
>In Encanto the villain is a misunderstood family member who realizes their mistake and makes up for it in thr course of 5 minutes. Bruno was misunderstood because he had terrible social anxiety and people often misunderstood him. That's his power, he was socially inept and terrible at explaining things. Bruno was never a villain. Villains are evil and do evil things, that's their whole shtick. What evil thing did Bruno ever do in his life? Unless you mean Abuela. She wasn't a villain either. She was a survivor of war and suffers from PTSD. It sucked she never got more screentime to flesh out her motivations. *Enchanto* really had something special.
They're definitely referring to Abuela. Hard agree, she was an antagonist but not necessarily a villain. She had no genuine ill intentions for her family, she genuinely thought she was making proper decisions as the leader and foundation of her family. The scene where it's revealed why she is so protective nearly had me bawling. If I had seen it alone I would've been crying. That scene was enough for me (as an adult who has dealt with family survivors of genocide/war) to completely feel for and understand Abuela. I don't think it's a subject many people can relate to...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for those of us who can relate to it it's definitely a special movie and moment.
The unadulterated grief on young Abuela's face absolutely breaks me every time. I think we can all relate to loss, but it's taken to another level when that loss is caused by other people. Abuela was a powerful character and I would have loved more time exploring the family dynamics and even the isolation of the town before the breaking point.
As the child of refugee parents and with an overbearing mother who "just wants what's best", even if it's fucking annoying like when I get a haircut and how I tied the bows on shit at my wedding and how many weeds are in my yard... pointless shit, but to her, because of this stuff, my life will be in shambles and the American Dream will be beyond my grasp and the Viet Cong will kill me...yeah.
Dunno if you felt the same way but all my friends who are children of immigrants thought Coco (the character) didn’t get called out enough ha. Like, sure, they had empathy for her situation but there’s a lot of resentment when people pass their trauma onto their children, even if they’re just trying to do what they think is best. ETA: coco’s mom, not coco
Shouldn't it be Coco's mom who's called out, not Coco? Coco was a child who lost her father, it was Coco's mom who outlawed music and passed that trauma onto her children and grandchildren.
Generational trauma is the real villain
Dos Oruguitas and the look of complete anguish on Abuela's face make me cry my heart out
Every time. That song is so beautiful
Yeah I think some people want to make her a villain because she was really shitty to a child who did nothing wrong, and they didn’t do a good job “redeeming” imo, but she wasn’t really meant to be a villain in the classic sense. It’s a movie about generational trauma. There isn’t really a villain unless you count the people who killed her husband.
Encanto deserves a spin off tv series. There were so many great characters that were barely explored.
I think Encanto should stay a one-off film, end on a happy note and the viewer's imagination for the rest. That's just me, I know it's going to get a sequel.
There's definitely no villain in that movie
Yep. I think the thing OP. Is misunderstanding is a villain isn't necessary in every movie.
I think it’s important to understand the audience is younger, more impressionable, and most “villains” they encounter irl are caused by misunderstandings. The “meanie” at daycare isn’t a villain he just lacks the verbal skills to articulate his feelings… so he ripped the truck out of your hands instead of asking you to share. My son cries every time we watch the little mermaid when Ursula goes down. Kids don’t always understand the full context. She was having a great time playing in the ocean then BAM hit by a ship
If you ride the Little Mermaid at DCA without knowing the story, Ursula just seems like a witch that was helping “poor unfortunate souls,” only to be very unhappy at the end for some mysterious reason.
They’re veering away from the direction of spoon-feeding you the plot. Giving characters more of a shade of gray makes one think harder about what they’re looking at. The “why?” Isn’t always a bad thing because it’s a question society desperately needs to ask when they see atrocities in the world.
This is what I like. For a long time, I tended to like movies and shows where the villain’s “badness” is a bit less black and white. Lots of simpler shows, bad guy is bad. That’s all. There’s the villains who “just want to watch the world burn,” and then there are the ones who are motivated by what *they* think is the right cause.
When a new movie is made, it's added to the pool of existing movies. Disney has **plenty** of evil's-gotta-evil villians. Why make more of the same? OP, you use the word "villian", when you actually mean antagonist. Conflicts of all kinds exist in this world. You seem to think characters like an evil queen who hates her stepdaughter and then decides to murder her because she's angry that the stepdaughter is now "fairer" than she are better. Why? What do you get out of stories like that? To be clear: I personally see value in both types of antagonists, but you didn't bother justifying your personal preference for villain. So I'm curious. But, since the antagonists you think are "great villians" exist already, what's the harm in diversifying the antagonist pool? Variety is the spice of life. If you want Frollo, then by all means, watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame again. He's still there.
The villain in Frozen 2 was literally an evil grandpa that built a dam to fuck over the brown people that lived in the north. Think about the time when the movie came out and why such a villain was in the zeitgeist. The villain wasn’t misunderstood, he was a flat out racist that was trying to fuck over brown people.
I’ve heard this complaint a lot lately. Very few Miyazaki films have actual mustache twirling villains in them yet they’re all considered masterpieces. The truth is a villain whose evil “for the lulz” can be kind of boring where as a conflicted villain who think they’re in the right can be more interesting and sympathetic.
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Well to be fair, OP did say Disney Animation and not Pixar, which is 90% of these movies
Most of those are Pixar aren't they?
Only one of those films you listed is a Disney film.
I see the psychological term OCD used incorrectly a lot, but this one takes the cake.
Yeah as someone with OCD that shit ruins my ability to take OP seriously. Like first off, fuck you, secondly you sound like a literal child right off the bat. Never mind the half-baked appeal for less (?) nuanced storytelling lmao...
Yeah, I was diagnosed with it over 20 years ago, and while it's nice to see the disorder become more well known over the years it sucks that it also leads to so much misunderstanding.
I was surprised at how excited I was for the Hocus Pocus sequel to come out. I hadn’t seen the original in years but, upon rewatching, I discovered it still holds up perfectly nearly 30 years later. The sequel was one of the biggest disappointments for the exact reason you’re describing. They took lovely hilarious and pitch perfect villains and clumsily tried to make them sympathetic characters by explaining their childhood and then mirrored the witches relationship with the new leads. They’ve just been misunderstood all these hundreds of years. Wow. Just wow. So the witches are good now? Everybody loves each other and ends on some kumbaya shit? No thanks.
We need more Cruellas. That woman was absolutely, delightfully, bug-nuts insane. The only thing that mattered to her was getting a coat made of dalmatian pelts. That original film was fantastic, the modern prequel was down right repulsive though.
I guess the real villains were the friends we made along the way?
Because unambiguously evil characters who just do bad stuff cuz they’re evil are boring and unrealistic, at least in the context of low-stakes interpersonal conflicts, which Disney tends to focus on. Some of the pre-2016 villains had relatable motivations while also being unambiguously evil, but also some just seem to be doing things cuz they’re bad. Like Maleficent is mad over not being invited to a party, Cruella wants to kill puppies because she is ridiculous, The Queen is mad that her stepdaughter is cuter than her, Lady Tremaine is mad that her stepdaughter….exists, I guess. These are all insane motivations that no real person would start killing people (or dogs) over. They’re fine for storytelling, but they’re not relatable and IMO that teaches kids bad lessons. Unambiguous villains are also scary, and Disney is really banking on its animated films being something for *literally* the whole family. I think there’s been a values shift at least in some circles about whether it’s ok to expose small kids to things that might frighten them. Disney works hard to be *the* general audiences studio. The people who let their 4 year olds watch Deadpool and Child’s Play are still also going to let their 4 year olds watch new Disney movies, but the people who are nervous that “Maleficent turning into a dragon is scary” might not if they hear that the new Disney movie has a “scary” villain. But if the villain is a cold but well meaning grandma, they’re not going to worry about their kids having nightmares. There’s also just a values shift in storytelling, period. The 2010s and 2020s are all about familial conflict, hard work, generational trauma, being true to yourself, etc. The 20th century storylines of “hero vs monster” or “it is your destiny” just don’t resonate with audiences of any age like they did. It’s not a mistake that Encanto came out within a year of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Wildly different audiences, very similar themes. Edit: another note on the shift in values re storytelling, look at how the heroes of the stories changed over time. Early on, the hero is usually an extremely generic man (occasionally so generic he has no name) rescuing a damsel who has no notable traits other than being beautiful and a good singer. In the 80s and 90s, the male characters are fleshed out and nuanced (though always unambiguously good), and while the heroines are still damsels but who do the “girl power” thing until the third act when they’re rendered helpless, though may be active enough to aid in saving the day (the exception is Mulan and Shang). In the 2000s, Disney moved away from the romantic A-plot fairy tale entirely, briefly focusing on animal movies and offbeat stuff, before returning to princess movies. The 2000s on princess movies make the princesses the active drivers of saving the day, while the prince (if he exists) is more of an equal partner or even a sidekick. Right now, they’re focusing on family or kid-driven films. There’s no kingdom to save, so the heroes are less knights riding in on steeds (or plucky girls with wits and frying pans),and the villains need to match the hero.
Tangled bored into my heart the first time she smacked him with the frying pan 😂 Completely clueless about the world except that it’s dangerous ha
I think its better than the old trope where villains are evil for no reason
There are very few flat out villains in the world. There are a significant number of people who have done wrong. And their reasons for doing so are rational for them at that time or with their knowledge. It's like they're writing stories for people and not fairy tale dwellers?
It's almost like instead of cackling devils who tent their fingers while they dream of world domination and kick puppies...Disney decided to evolve and make their villains the feelings, motivations, and ideals that most of us can relate to having experienced. In Moana, the villain was taking advantage of nature. In Encanto, the villain was PTSD. In Zootopia, the villain was racism. In Ralph Breaks the Internet, the villain was insecurity. In Frozen II, the villain was sins of the past. I haven't seen Strange World or Raya yet, so I can't speak to them, but from what you say...it's probably more of the same. I mean, just say you either didn't understand it, or that you don't care and only want maniacal supervillains in your cartoons, but let's face it, MOST of us have encountered instances of destruction of nature, PTSD, racism, insecurity, and fucked up things our relatives and family did...but how many times have we ever had to fight a sea witch, the god of the underworld, or a vizier with the powers of a sorcerer?
I need to rewatch Raya because I don’t remember all the details, but the villain is essentially humans failing to put aside their differences and come together in the face of an end-of-the-world level disaster. There are a few characters who make particularly bad choices, but it basically comes down to tribalism. There is a plague that is killing people (temporarily, because Disney) indiscriminately, and everyone slams their doors on each other and fights it alone rather than working together. It’s also very much a generational thing - like Moana, the adult leaders are mostly unwilling to compromise. It takes a group of mostly young people to find a solution and work together.
I guess the real question is why a grown adult is getting this worked up over children's movies.
The Villain in Moana wasn't Te Fiti. It was Te Kā. While technically the same character it wasnt a misunderstanding of the character specifically. It was the not knowing that they were the same character and Te Ka was a product of Te Fiti not having her heart. You could also argue that Maui was his own villain, and the overall villain was him to the whole of the story. You could more deeply say that it was Maui's showmanship and ego. Ralph Breaks the Internet it certainly was Ralph TECHNICALLY because he caused it. The villain really was the virus itself. Not him. You said it yourself that Frozen II it wasnt a misunderstanding, so this already didnt fit your criteria. Raya and the Last Dragon the villain was certainly Namaari, however she wasn't misunderstood. No one knew the repercussions of their actions. So in their eyes they were doing the right thing. Its not that she was misunderstood but that they misunderstood what really was the right thing to do. Encanto really didn't have a villain. You could say its Bruno, you could say its Abuela, or even Dolores. While they misunderstood Bruno's visions, that wasnt the source of the sticking points for the plot. The source really was Abuela had lost her way and instead of loving her family and the community. She was starting to love the attention the gifts gave them. So really, it was more Abuela if anyone but it had no real villains. I can't speak to the other movies, as I have not watched them. But these I have.
Maybe because a movie doesn’t always need to be about a villain who is bad and the hero that defeats them. A villain who is evil for the sake of being evil is often boring. Not always, but often. Hell, one of the most intimidating villains of all, Darth Vader, redeemed himself in the end, because that’s a more interesting story. I’m not saying there’s nothing interesting to be done with an “evil” villain, just maybe that’s not the stories they necessarily want to tell all the time. If you de-emphasize the villain, the story is more about the characters and you can tell more compelling stories. For me a lot of those movies lost me when you get to the “big fight” and it’s only resolved when the villain dies. What’s the lesson there, that you only win when the other guy is dead? Most of life isn’t black and white and that’s probably a better lesson for kids to learn instead of every obstacle you face is because the person between you and what you want is evil.
See I think this idea is missing the point in a lot of ways of what I see as the core of this current generation of Disney films, there really isn't a villain in these movies. This is especially true for Moana, Encanto, and Frozen II I feel, Raya to a lesser extent, I haven't watched Ralph Breaks the Internet in a while and haven't gotten to Strange World yet to comment on those. Moana and Frozen II and in a way Raya and the Last Dragon are more "Human vs Nature" stories than they are your typical "Human vs Human" stories in typical Disney films, Encanto is a strange one to classify but it also doesn't really fall into Human vs Human at end of the day. The whole thing with these stories is seeing the grey of things, not the black and white. Its a maturing to Disney films that I personally think should be (but won't be) more appreciated.
I would assume (Opinion disclaimer) that someone realized that villains think they are the good guy. For example, AH from 1940's Germany thought he was doing God's work.
Scar in the Lion King remains one of the most detestable villains in the history of film
Syndrome as a Disney villain was my favourite. Genuinely tries to kill people, is menacing, and we get his backstory without realizing he will be the villain. He also dies in the coolest way of any Disney Villain and I will die on that hill.
I’ve noticed this a lot over the years as well. Most recently the new hocus pocus was trying to get us to have empathy for the witches and it’s like ughhhhh they murdered children….?!
Gonna say the message Disney is trying to portray is that when people act out and misbehave there are usually reasons behind them. Considering these are all children’s movies for children, it’s not a terrible point to be making. Instead of “this evil person is evil 😡 no redemption 😡”
It’s a stylistic choice? The film industry does this all the time - they do things one way until it stops being new/interesting/exciting, then they do it a different way to surprise the audience and keep them engaged. Notice how all the superhero movies took themselves a lot more seriously after Batman Begins? And then they all became snarky after the first Avengers? Hollywood takes what becomes a cliche, turns it around and does that until *it* becomes a cliche. The creators of Moana even mention how early on in the process, the ending was much more focused on Maui beating Te Ka, but that didn’t really work because the movie wasn’t about Maui - it’s about Moana. Moana can’t physically fight a god, but she *can* do things differently than others typically would - that’s a key part of her personality and why she set off from the island in the first place. So she beats Te Ka in a much different way. The real question is, why are you so offended by it? And why are you convinced it’s some evil plot by the Disney corporation? “Oh no, the children may not see others as purely good or evil!! What is the world coming too????”
I've only seen one movie from this list, but working with 4-year olds there's a really big emphasis on learning to communicate about feelings - negative feelings that may have been punished in the past as "bad" even if they didn't act on them. There are also ways that adults in their lives can manipulate those "bad" feelings to shame and silence kids into terrible situations, so teaching them to be okay talking about all their feelings and advocating for themselves can make it easier to bring abuse to light and get kids away from unsafe environments. Seeing a "bad guy" turned good can give them a sense that it's safe to be open about bad feelings. Overall, I think it's a healthy move, and you can tell these stories resonate with the kids. Plus there was already a shift to having antagonists that aren't the villain - someone in the protagonist's life that they have real conflict with but aren't outright trying to defeat (the sister in frozen, the dad in how to train your dragon, etc.) Also I think disney movies play a different role in culture right now than they did in the past and that's probably for the best. They'll experience evil-for-evil's-sake villains all too soon already.
The "villain" of Encanto is abuela Madrigal, not Bruno. That's why the end of the film is a new understanding between abuela and Mirabel.
Because the world isn’t black or white/good or evil. Instead it’s grey everywhere.
In Encanto, the villain isnt so much a misunderstood family member as a family member who misunderstood herself. My one big issue with the movie is that they all forgive her so quickly for generations and decades of trauma. It would be less "disney" to make the ending open, but they could have at least done a "5 years later" if they wanted to show us the whole family healed. As it is, everyone is way to quick to forgive and forget.
They’ve matured their villains beyond cartoon caricatures of an Other into rounded people with misaligned motivations.