The Top 10 Disney Villians by Hawke Culbertson on 6.18.08
I credit Disney Film Studios with making the Hero figure so damned unappealing. With the inflexible goody-to-shoes qualities never leaving the constant straight-forward motivations of the attractive yet oh-so-charmingly flawed protagonists, viewers like myself reached out to the villains of Walt’s films for some form of variance and depth. Strange thing is, for a company priding itself on family values and cheery tunes; Disney has a wonderful love for its bad guys, often giving them the better themes, outfits, and character design. The antagonist of a Disney movie thus becomes more entertaining, and definitely more fun to imagine yourself being.
While my grandparent’s and parent’s generation acted out repressed sexuality in their youth as Prince Charming looking for their Sleeping Beauties or Snow Whites, I was practicing my malignant Jafar laugh or trying to goad rollie-pollie bugs into giving me their lunch money as both Honest John and Gideon. It seems I am not alone in this respect, as forums around the net are filled with “Wich Disney Villin R U Most Lik?” threads and proudly placed “You Are Professor Ratigan” personality quiz results on a multitude of sites. It is with this shared appreciation of Disney’s sometimes melodramatic, sometimes truly frightening that Reelgamers.com counts down the Top 10 Disney Villains. These suckers have to be evil, cool, and show us the true reason why it’s so damn good to be bad.
#10: Monstro (Pinocchio)
This gigantic being, even by whale standards, epitomized the fear of nature that hangs around every overwhelmed kid like an unquenchable cloud. Drawn with the intent of pure malice by one of the famous Nine Old Men, Wolfgang Reitherman, Monstro goes beyond the simple eat-or-be-eaten nature in his pursuit of Pinocchio and Geppetto in the open seas. It was the first time an audience got an animated look at a nature combined with the brutality of the urge to destroy. Perhaps it was this beast, with its famously shaky looking line animation and grossly gaping maw, which placed the foundational fear of oceanic creatures in our movie-going hearts, making the lame mechanical shark in Jaws much scarier than it was. Its lack of overall presence in the film demotes it from higher rank, but this frightening fish is the perfect place to begin the countdown.
#9: Gaston (Beauty and the Beast)
Before Chuck Norris became the internet God he is today, all we had was Gaston to show us the way to pure manliness….through song. I could list his amazing attributes, but he made it a point to emphasize them for us (in harmony) during the events of the film, so I will list them here for your clarification: aside from being “roughly the size of a barge,” “As I specimen…[he’s] in-tim-i-dating,” “No one hits like Gaston, matches wits like Gaston, in a spitting game no one spits like Gaston,” ….you get the point. A (no doubt homoerotic) creation by Ben Bartley and voiced by Richard White, the Don Juan de Disney gets points off for sticking around the spineless LeFou and ridiculously pursuing the up-tight book worm when he has three attractive French bimbos groping their dress hems at his very name.#8: Hades (Hercules)
Voiced by the deliciously menacing James Woods, Hades brought a sardonic wit and acid smoothness to the dated image of the Lord of the Underworld. His emotional flaming hair was cause for comic relief, but with his pointed face and evil-for-evil’s sake motive, this guy can work the slow close-up zoom like no other. He comes off as one of the most relatable villains of this countdown both for his realistic cynicism compared to the cliché naivety of the film’s protagonist; but more importantly for the self-effacing humor he wrought on the very fabric of the Disney film, quickly summarizing the love cycle of “we dance, we kiss, we smooze, we chariot off, we go home happy…” in trailers. Being constantly overcome by (literally) the Fates and losing his own useful slave by the end of the film, Hades is definitely more relatable the over-muscled, popular Adonis who was emo in the film’s first ten minutes. It’s his clinging to the sad Disney cliché of dumb, useless sidekicks and inability to overcome his adversary, despite obvious intellectual superiority, that keeps this Satan beneath the soil.
#7: Shere Khan (The Jungle Book)
Another of the Nine Old Men’s masterpieces, this time one of Milt Kahl’s, this villain was just too cool for the first 2/3rds of the film, appearing proportionally later than Venom in the recent Spider-Man flick. Ditching the melodramatic mannerisms of previous Disney bad guys, Khan simple oozes class, most likely due to his haughty, purring voice, supplied by English actor George Sanders. Shere Khan doesn’t need to show us his cool, the entire jungle shakes in his wake, cowering at the very mention of his name, building up the character to be one of ultimate power, and the tiger doesn’t disappoint. With the entire animal cast of the film strangely accepting Mogwli’s humanity, Shere Khan is the only one ready to kill him simply for his unwelcome presence in his domain. He stands at the lower end of this countdown for the worthless way that he is defeated. A flaming branch attached to his tail? Yeah, he’s afraid of fire, but jeesh…after giving us such a glorious build up this cat is practically bitch slapped out of frame. But there is no doubt that the sheer menacing charm that this kitty holds merits a spot on this list.#6: Scar (The Lion King)
In your animated ode to Hamlet, your King Claudius’ performance better be worth a concealed regicide. Jeremy Irons’ deceptive and manipulative weaker-brother lion was just that, even fitting in some musical time to be a Hitler allegory (re-watch the “Be Prepared” sequence, I’ll wait…). Our second kitty in a row takes the opposite route of Khan’s class and takes on the mantle of the grungy, ambitious, and dark-hearted black sheep of the Mufasa family. The brainchild of Jonathan Roberts, Scar dances the melodramatic line perfectly. His dark haired visage was one of easy-to-hate and fun-to-love malevolence, giving credence to young Simba’s emotional turmoil and subsequent domestic abandonment by being the ultimate evil to the cub’s former innocence. Points are knocked off for his lack of ability to one-up his brother by producing even a single child in Simba’s lifetime absence. Seriously? A lone male, of a species built only for lazing and sex, can’t seem to do anything with the entire colony of females now at his control? Sure it’s a Disney movie, but we don’t get a “years later” cut to a young Scar cub being prepped to rule before Simba returns? Even Claudius let us know in monologue that he took pride in banging Hamlet’s mom once in a while….
#5: Ursula (The Little Mermaid)
Any woman villain based on a drag queen in a John Water’s movie deserves to be in the Top 5 simply for that reason. Yes, Pat Carroll’s voice gave the weighty witch a throaty, deep seated power, but it was Divine’s (real name) performance in the film “Pink Flamingos” that gave Roger Allers the idea in the first place. Ursula’s arrogance and sheer love of her outright villainy is a joy to an audience raised on a series of “I’m evil but here’s why,” rent-a-villains. Her bulky frame, sinister dwelling (the concept art for that cave is off-putting on any scale), and maniacal laugh all share a love for the art of evil, and its why, when faced with a stories-tall version of her at the climax, it still creeps us out. A wonderful flair for melodrama and the best song in the film’s trashy recycled plot put her solidly in the second wind of this countdown.#4: Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)
Returning to the work of the Nine Old Men (this time, Mark Davis) the black-cloaked magician has what all villains (animated or not) try for: style. From her green and black smoke entrance in the happiest of the film’s opening to her death from a sword-to-the-gut, Maleficent never stops being evil, and never stops being cool. She embodies the darker underside of the Arthurian influenced art style of Sleeping Beauty, her laugh one of venomous flightiness and her wraith feared by all. Points go for a bitching staff and a calculating raven servant (named Diablo, which is AWESOME,) not to mention the eerily fashionable body-length black and purple ensemble. Also, villains always get a bonus if they have the ability to turn into a dragon, always. She sadly stays behind our Top 3 however, for her death at the hands of the most one-dimensional Prince ever and those irritating little fairies.
#3: Judge Claude Frollo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Sometimes, despite our urges to see a villain bent on evil for no apparent reason, we find true fear in the examination of a virtuous character turned to evil by that which infects our own life. Judge Claude Frollo, a figure of religious sacrifice and piety, is driven by the deepest of fears: that fear for his soul. What drive Frollo’s fear home is its roots in his sanctimonious pride and all-too-human arrogance. Despite him believing his soul to be purer than the "poor, weak, licentious crowd," this piety-driven arrogance is tempered by his acceptance, and hatred, of his humanity. In perhaps the strongest moment of the film, Frollo reaches toward masked, red-robed figures in anguish, the figures melting into a mass of fire around him as he sings that, "Its not my fault, if in God’s plan, he made the devil so much stronger than a man." Claude is voiced with spine-tingling malice by Tony Jay; who was hand-picked for his performance as the shadowed man that motivated Gaston’s mob to kill Beauty’s Beast. Frollo stands as a villain cursed with what we all have within us, trapped within his own soul. The first animating assignment for Kathy Zielinski, Frollo’s only deterring factor is the strength of his two superiors in this countdown.#2: Chernabog (Night on Bald Mountain Segment – Fantasia)
A brilliant gothic masterpiece along the lines of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, this big guy made three minutes of wordless archaic orchestra into a gorgeous orgy of demons and witches, giving us a very glimpse into the bowels of hell; in a Disney Movie. That’s right, he was so badass that his short piece had bare-breasted harpies flying camera center; in a Disney movie. So large that this Slavic Demon-God takes up the entirety of a mountain’s tip, the Chernabog summons fire on a whim and sexily calls forth (based on movements made by “Dracula” star Bela Lugosi) hordes of demented creatures from that very fire; in a Disney movie. Under the direction of Vladimir Tytla, this sequence was so down-to-bone intense that they had to follow it with a placid, practically religious piece put to Ave Maria. Did I mention this was a Disney movie? This guy is the epitome of what a dramatic villain hopes to be. It’s too bad that his better was to be drawn less than a decade later…
#1: Lady Tremaine (Cinderella)
If animal associations are a good gauge of personality, what does it say about you if you have Lucifer drinking milk at your feet? The stepmother in Cinderella was so evil, the misdeeds and demonic nature of the very Anti-Christ only amounts to her pet. While villains of Disney films reach for the very heights of melodrama, Tremaine was cold, slow-moving, but no less cold-hearted than her overacting counterparts. The reason for her very existence in the film was the calculated smashing of everything Cinderella held dear. Possibly the greatest animation ever to be placed to a character, Frank Thomas’ (yet another of the Nine Old Men) work is that of Gods, his lines of expression wrinkled with the age of an elder woman, yet containing the very depths of cruelty and snobbish masochism. She was voiced by Eleanor Audley, who was such a kickass bitch that they brought her back for the voice of Maleficent earlier in this countdown. Like Frollo, it is her humanity that drives fear into the viewer’s heart, the fact that this woman could exist in the simplest of plausibility, without the aid of demonic hordes, hyena flunkies, or underwater magic. Despite the drawbacks of the Disney moniker, the animators made the very world darken at her presence, and the mood turn to ice at her voice. She is villainy incarnate, an unopposed and unbeatable example of why it is better to be bad.Want to discuss this article in our forums? Click Here
