So if you follow me on Twitter, then you know that when I'm not being cranky,
or angry, or sad at the state of the world,
or ceaselessly disappointed in James Woods, or...
... cranky,
Y'know, I really did love Moana!
MAUI: ♫ There's no need to pray, it's okay, you're welcome~♪
Moana was probably my favorite movie to come out of Disney Animation Studios since the 90s.
It was, y'know, a simple movie, buddy comedy, but y'know, tight and well done and I loved it.
And you know what else I love?
Disney villains.
Y'know, that thing Moana didn't really have?
TAMATOA: ♫ Well, Tamatoa hasn't always been this glam~♪
I mean it kinda did, but not in that, like, classic Disney villain kinda way.
MALEFICENT: ... thinking you could defeat me? Me! The Mistress of All Evil!
Disney villains are probably my favorite aspect to all of Disney animated canon,
and I'm not alone, Disney has noticed this...
I went to Disney World last year and probably my favorite thing I did was this new thing called Club Villain,
and it was great, it was hosted by Dr. Facilier and we got to chill and hang out with all these classic villains,
and they brought out their A team as far as the villains were concerned,
only complaint is that it wasn't long enough.
Unfortunately, just... gone and left most of my villain merchandise in a different state.
I have a bunch of pins though!
Like, yes, I have fallen down the deep, deep well of Disney pin trading...
And yes, the vast majority of my pins are villain pins.
This one was Halloween 2016, it's one of my favorites
because it was an exclusive to Disney Visa card holders and I had just gotten one,
and I was like "well, I have to!"
It's an exclusive!
There's Maleficent...
Yzma... Kronk...
Gaston...
This one is one of my absolute favorites.
Here is Ratigan coveting an ice cream sundae...
I try to grab Hades whenever I can...
And Hades is actually the only Disney villain who is voiced by an actual heartless person!
This one's another one of my favorites, 'cuz...
They're such ex-boyfriends.
More of the bitter ex-boyfriends...
Villains are a branded thing in the same way that princesses are a branded thing,
and Fuck Yes.
Only thing is, they're making new princesses, they aren't really making new villains.
I mean, considering the ones that we've gotten the last five years,
would we add to the ranks of, y'know, the Evil Queen and Maleficent...
the likes of Hans, or... Assistant Mayor Bellwether...
or even Tamatoa, who I think is the closest we've seen to a classic Disney villain in a while,
but y'know, he's only in the movie for like five minutes?
The thing about Disney villains, and movie villains in general as opposed to, say, real-world villains
is that we - we like Disney villains! That's kind of the point.
Disney villains are fun, they're designed to hold your attention, to keep you engaged,
but they aren't designed to be repulsive.
Like sure, they're bad, and maybe they want to own this lady,
but hey, at least they give her a choice in the matter.
FROLLO: Choose me, or the fire.
Or maybe they killed a brother, but y'know, they're not THAT bad, they wouldn't kill a kid!
They'd outsource that, y'know, they let the hyenas do it!
SCAR: Kill him.
Or the crocodiles do it, or their well-meaning lunkhead assistant do it,
or okay, maybe they do kill a kid, but it's only implied and offscreen and hey, it was war, China!
SHAN YU: The little girl will be missing her doll...
Really, the worst we've seen from a Disney villain is that time that Dr. Facilier squished Jim-Cummings-fly.
Oh, movie... you wanted this to be such a moment.
Disney villains are getting a bit of a makeover.
Here's an entire spinoff dedicated to the complex inner lives of the children of Disney villains!
Shere Khan has this tragic backstory,
Maleficent is no longer a one-dimensional spiteful Mistress of All Evil,
but a misunderstood Justice Fairy who's the victim of a rape allegory...
MALEFICENT: [howling in misery]
And Beauty and the Beast isn't out yet, but I think we can probably safely assume that
Gaston isn't gonna get much of a makeover or a tragic backstory,
but even then Gaston is more of a villain in the vein of Hans
than the likes of, say... Ursula, or the Evil Queen, or George C. Scott.
And despite being a total villain stan, or hell, maybe even because of it, I actually like Maleficent.
Like yes, it was hot garbage, but y'know, it was MY hot garbage.
Point is I'm not opposed to this trend, y'know, and that's all it really is, it's a trend,
y'know, black and white villains are out and dimensionality and tragic backstories are in.
But what I've noticed is that we don't really see the clear, coded, brandable villain anymore,
so much as... plot twists.
When it comes to nostalgia, Disney will always have their catalog to fall back on,
just like it always trots out its older films, but what about going forward?
Are Disney villains... going extinct?
So classic Disney movies, with some exceptions like Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland,
have a very simple story: A young princess, some sort of villain who hates her for some reason,
and then we meet a prince, and... love conquers all, the end.
When Eisner and Katzenberg were hearing pitches from their animators in the mid 80s,
this was part of the reason why they were more keen on The Little Mermaid than Treasure Island in SPPAAACCEE
(besides the fact where it sounded kinda stupid)
Little Mermaid harkened back to the classic Disney staples that were still huge draws to the theme parks.
A beautiful princess, good vs. evil, love conquers all.
These were the elements that built the old Disney movies.
But when Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg took charge of the company and studio respectively,
they added one crucial element that has superseded the original and persists to this day,
and that is the search for Identity!
MULAN: ♪ When will my reflection show who I am inside~♫
ALADDIN: ♪ There's so much more to me~ ♫
HERCULES: ♪ To find where I belong~ ♫
QUASIMODO: ♪ Give me one day out there, all I ask is one~ ♫
This brought the basic conflict from external to internal.
Classic Disney protagonists, again with the exception of Pinocchio, were pretty passive.
Things just kind of happened to them, and they weren't searching for anything at the outset,
other than maybe their one true love and also... I guess not being a slave would be nice.
Renaissance Disney protagonists, on the other hand, might have been looking for their one true love, sure
but usually the true love thing was incidental,
and what they really wanted was a coming-of-age sense of identity.
They wanted to figure out their place in the world.
So how do Disney villains tie in?
TAMATOA: ♪ Did your granny say listen to your heart? Be who you are on the inside? ♫
TAMATOA: ♪ I need three words to tear her argument apart: Your granny lied! ♫
Making a conflict about self-identity rather than a simple battle of good vs. evil makes the story more complex.
A one-dimensional villain can exist in a more complex story,
Scar's manipulations work really well as a contrast to Simba's insecurity in The Lion King,
but it can also hamper a story too: Take the inclusion of Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas,
easily the worst thing in an already not-that-great movie.
RATCLIFFE: ♪ ... they see how I glitter~ ♫
See, we got this history of fear, violence, bigotry and genocide... eh, let's just pin it on this one guy.
Who is easily disposed of.
Ehhh... problem solved? And Pocahontas never even meets the guy!
BEN: Just loadin' the last bit of cargo.
A strong narrative ties its elements in neatly; The Lion King is a strong narrative with a flat villain
because the villain's motivation ties in directly with the hero's internal conflict.
Same with Hunchback of Notre Dame, only here the villain has a sliiightly more dimension... slightly.
CLOPIN: ♪ Frollo felt a twinge of fear for his immortal soul~♫
FROLLO: What must I do?
Quasimodo spends his entire life being gaslit by Frollo
into believing that he cannot survive in the outside world.
Villain's villainy directly ties into hero's internal conflict as well as their external conflict.
Now compare this to Hercules: Hades applies to Hercules' external conflict,
but not at all to his internal conflict.
Hades doesn't care about Hercules, except as an obstacle foretold by prophecy.
Hercules doesn't even know that Hades exists,
and Hades doesn't even meet Hercules until the end of the movie.
Like, they TRY to force this thing...
HADES: Now you know how it feels to be just like everybody else!
HADES: Isn't it just peachy?
... but it doesn't make sense that Hades cares at all about Hercules wanting to find his place in the world,
because they don't know each other!
The villain is also one of the weakest elements in The Princess and the Frog.
Dr. Facilier is motivated by greed and has no connection to Tiana, except through her love interest, Prince Naveen.
So this mandatory villain formula that worked so well during the early Renaissance
that it became basically mandatory by the time Pocahontas rolled around,
started to make the movies feel stale when it felt like we were just watching the same movie over and over again.
Because Disney villains are a brand unto themselves,
an element which can be decoupled from its property and sold as its own entity.
So up until Tangled, sometimes villains were just jammed in because that's what you do.
And once or twice we have a movie where the villain is the best part of the movie,
while also weakening the movie as a whole.
Hades is the best part of Hercules, but his evil plan is contrived and stupid.
Dr. Facilier is fun and he has a great villain song!
But his motivation is weak and his connection to the plot is tenuous!
Or Governor Ratcliffe, see, he's greedy. And he is the only greedy.
But if you get rid of the greedy, then everyone gets along!
But in this newer era of Disney movies, audiences respond to...
... more complex narratives that are less about good vs. evil,
and more about... character development.
Look at The Great Mouse Detective, which is... a good little movie, but simple.
The central conflict of The Great Mouse Detective is Basil vs. Ratigan.
Good guy, bad guy.
They know each other, they hate each other, we don't really know why, we don't need to know.
The central conflict in Wreck-It Ralph is Ralph vs...
... society's expectation for his prescribed role which he wants to break out of in society?
I mean, there's a character who's the embodiment of that, yeah, but I don't remember his name either.
This new era of Disney started with the success of Tangled,
and with Tangled we got the last real Disney villain, and not a well-loved one at that.
Like sometimes I'll get a Mother Gothel in my pins, like in one of the villain pin bags,
and you better believe she is the first thing that gets traded.
Wreck-It Ralph breaks away from the Renaissance Disney mold even further
by not only having an older protagonist, but by actively subverting these villain tropes,
examining villainous motivations and creating a scenario where,
and with the right incentive, the villain becomes the hero.
Big Hero 6 follows a more Marvel mold than Disney mold,
with the villain now allowed to have a tragic backstory with a family and everything.
It is not automatically clear that this character will be the villain when we meet him,
but by that point, that was already a thing.
And the whole thing culminates with...
... Lord of All, Frozen.
ELSA: ♫ Let it go, let it go~ And I'll rise like the break of dawn~ ♪
Frozen takes a page from Enchanted, and also subverts a lot of old Disney tropes,
a major plot point being Anna's eagerness to get married.
In the earliest drafts Elsa was the villain, but in one of the more brilliant branding moves of all time,
they decide: Hey, let's make Elsa the heroine's sister,
make it a story about sisterhood and reconnecting with family -
Hey theme park tie-in, book your Disney World vacation today, reconnect with that family!
Yeah, I'll see you guys Labor Day weekend.
And also we have a love interest that turns out to be the villain.
Hans is a bait-and-switch villain, that will also become a thing.
Similar to Gaston, yeah, sort of, but look at how Gaston is introduced:
His first action in the movie is killing an animal,
and he's introduced with his sinister, dominating visage in shadow.
GASTON: I know!
In Frozen, it isn't until the end of Act 2 that...
HANS: If only there was someone out there who loved you.
GAAAASSSPPP... snap.
Zootopia does this too, and we see Disney moving even further away from the Disney villain formula
as the story and conflict of Zootopia is almost entirely between Judy and Nick.
It's a buddy cop movie where the villain really doesn't matter,
and the villain ends up being like... an Alex Jones fever dream false flag sheep.
JUDY: Prey fears predator, and you stay in power? BELLWETHER: Yeah, pretty much.
We've reached something of a culmination to the bait-and-switch villain with the resolution to Moana,
wherein the evil lava monster we have to defeat at the end,
it turns out is basically under an evil enchantment after Maui stole the MacGuffin from her.
And I honestly think this resolution works really well without being predictable.
MOANA: Let her come to me.
The resolution to Moana is directly tied in to Moana's quest to figure out who she is.
She spends the entire movie trying to figure out why the ocean chose her for this quest,
and the bait-and-switch bad guy at the end directly ties in to that.
Moana's compassion for the monster makes her unique.
So the two villains for 2016 were False Flag Sheep and Red Herring Lava Monster.
This also ties in with a new but important marketing move, the need for strong male AND female leads,
and the result is that these movies just don't really have room for Disney villains.
But who knows what remains to be seen,
in 2018 we're going to see a Jack and the Beanstalk adaptation called...
Gigantic...
Disney, we really need to have a sit-down about these adjective titles because they're getting kind of sil-
So you can't have Jack and the Beanstalk without a giant,
and that should lay the groundwork for, y'know, a traditional Disney villain,
Although I'm giving this like an 80-90% chance that it's gonna be like some, y'know, BFG-style...
Like, the giant is misunderstood and, like, there's like an entire, like, giant economy up there,
and there's like a good giant and a bad- like, it's gonna be about, like, overthrowing the...
... y'know, blood-of-an-englishman- based economy, or something.
Just sayin', Disney's been real big on the whole subversion thing lately.
Maybe a lil'... too big.
Ya only got so many tropes to subvert, Didney!
Ya gonna have to git back to just makin' stories that aren't, y'know, meta.
MAUI: If you start singin', I'm gonna throw up.
So now we are living in an age of plots that are less predictable than earlier Disney-er movies,
so new Disney movies are almost fighting against the studio's past as much as they're building on it.
And I kind of wonder how quickly people are going to get tired of this,
the same way they got tired of the villain vs.coming-of- age teenager narrative that - as they did in the 90s.
I mean, look at how quickly people got sick of M. Night Shyamalan in the early 2000s,
doing more or less the same thing!
So, I guess Disney villains... y'know, they'll continue to be a brandable associated property.
They aren't necessarily going yet extinct, but...
they could be an endangered species.