Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of new people. Gotta be honest, I was expecting like 500 views on this video, and it’s already at like 3500, and that’s pretty cool I don’t really know what to say now so welcome to the cult I guess :)
Enjoyed the video. Though I noticed that throughout the video, you seem to keep mentioning that kids are stupid. I would like to argue that they are a lot smarter than you give 'em credit for. Sure, they make stupid decisions, but that's because they just don't know the world yet and are still learning. I guess I'm a bit bias because, I'm 17 years old, so I'm still a child, but yeah, just wanted to point that out.
"Hans is literally willing to run a sword through an innocent and distraught woman and then let her sister die from like cardiac hypothermia just to be in charge of a 19th century Scandinavian city-state for like 10 years before someone usurps him." I'm not a history professor, but I feel pretty confident that real people have done worse things for less.
I think he's an awful character as well, but, like, from a *historical* point of view, his motivation makes sense. He's a prince who has older brothers and will never inherit his parent's kingdom. He needs to marry a princess so he can have one, and he just happened to pick Arendelle. And yeah, people in history have done stuff like that. I still hate how the Hans before the reveal and after the reveal are literally two completely different characters. There is a freaking theory that the trolls cursed him to control his mind and make sure Anna would end up with Kristoff and that explains why he's suddenly a different person.
@@tarniabook3076 thats an interesting theory. But what are the chances that it actually hit Hans? (He was like, VERY FAR AWAY from where the trolls live.)
I think, for me, what makes the twist with Ernesto even better, is the audience’s realization that outed as a murder or not… he won. He killed an innocent man, stole his life’s work, lived the high life basking in adoration until his untimely death. His successful murder indirectly convinced a family that his victim abandoned them for fame and fortune, nearly leading to the man being forever forgotten in the afterlife.
Also its kinda ironic that his "survival" in the afterlife is pretty much guaranteed even after his crimes were revealed to the living world. I mean he still remained famous (or actually infamous) but as a killer and a fraud, therefore he doesnt have a risk of being forgotten
@@fizzy69o.0 Well... who's going to really care about getting him out from under that bell, though? As far as the movie shows, Ernesto is spending the rest of his afterlife trapped underneath an airtight iron prison in pitch dark until one day (maybe centuries later) the last person finally forgets about the hack musician who once stole the famous Hector Rivera's songs.
That is the only song I don’t like from Frozen but your idea would have made it a lot better. Especially if they made it like Jafar’s mocking reprise of “Prince Ali”.
@@doctorchoicetheunchainedx7523Oh absolutely. Jafar definitely isn’t a twist but him just intensely mocking and outting Aladdin in front of everyone is always great. He’s one of the few villains that genuinely seem like a force to reckon with.
Hans didn’t even NEED to be a twist villain. I honest-to-God thought they were going for him being a decent guy, but that the kiss wouldn’t work because a crush or infatuation isn’t *true love.* They could have literally gone with the exact same end point of love between the two sisters, but without this weird… distraction.
An interesting twist is if he had genuine motivation for usurping power from that kingdom. Like, say that kingdom was aggressive and he was trying to stop them, or his own kingdom was dying and he needed their resources or land to rejuvenate it. You could have even made him something of a tragic character, like he knew what he was doing was wrong, didn't like what he was doing, and maybe even genuinely fell for Anna and hated that he had to eventually kill her but felt there was no other way. You could have had great foreshadowing like where he smiles at her under the boat: have after that smile he very briefly gets a really sad or scared look on his face, like that's the point he realized he loved this woman he needs to kill. Have a moment where he "tries and fails" to rescue her and she rescues herself instead, and so on rewatch you realize that was him hoping she'd die so he didn't have to do it. Stuff like that.
I never understood why Hans didn't just kiss Anna, KNOWING that it wouldn't save her because he doesn't love her. Then he'd get to watch her surprise and horror when it doesn't work, and she dies anyway. Like if you're gonna go for it, go for it
@@Whatsit_1121 I think it's because the audience might be pissed off if a villain gets the princess' first kiss instead of the hero. But yeah. In-universe, his actions make no sense.
I believe the “that was his mistake” line could be better if he looked like he was sad or trying to avoid eye contact with Hiro because his prized student died in an accident he caused on purpose as if he was deflecting the guilt but deep down knows the truth, but unfortunately they made him plain and simple angry completely shifting blame without internalizing at least one bit
I kind of took it as Robbert’s version of Hiro taking Baymax’s health care chip out and telling him to destroy Robert. He said it mostly because his emotions of pain and anger were in control and not letting him think straight.
you're missing a point. A good twist villain needs to keep the same personality. When the villain is like "welp I'm busted might as well act insane now" they're less convincing. When they're like waternoose and regret some of the things they had to do to reach their goal that they're still completely serious about, that almost makes them scarier.
@@yuri-sama.questionmarko you mean second game? Because that's the one where the character's entire personality flips (and for a pretty stupid reason) Whereas in the first game, the character has many moments of slipping up and accidentally revealing some of their "true" personality before the reveal. I think the reason people don't like it (or at least in my case) is that it's so bloody obvious that it's them and it could literally not be anyone else so it's frustrating to have to wait for the characters to figure it out. Because the point of dramatic irony is that we the audience have information the characters don't, but since the player and Makoto share the same info, neither him nor the other smart characters realizing for so long makes that whole trial annoying. Edit: as long as we're taking danganronpa I just wanted to say that the third game's third trial is my least favourite example of this. Like it takes everything I didn't like about the other game's chapter 3's, removes anything I did like, and adds incest for some fucking reason. Urgh. Hate that third trial so much. I can't understand why DR can't do third trials right to save themselves
@@bigbadgammagnome Oh the second game too. I said the first game since they built up the murderer to be the ultimate liar since she is a gambler after all. But I get where you're coming from since maybe it is part of her personality, either she let all the anger she stored out or she wasn't used to having things not go her way that she threw a tantrum. The second game, I almost forgot. Because it was so bad. And they didn't have to do Mikan like that. The second game for me is the game with the most missed opportunities. And damn, I don't know anymore because the "twist" was just so bad and forced. Also. We don't talk about the 3rd game's 3rd case.
@@yuri-sama.questionmark Eh, honestly, Mikan being the killer in the second game was a pretty obvious one but I did like it for two reasons; the first two murderers were somewhat sympathetic after doing all they could to be disliked. Mikan is the inverse, starting off as a person who definitely needed help but was a great ally to the others but getting to be this absolute monster, foreshadowing the events of the finale, and proving that yes, they’re all in this together but murders are still being committed. Less frustrating than Gundham for me. For the third game, again, we kind of guessed Kiyo was going to be a murderer but the real story was about Himiko becoming a main character, overcoming her grief and compulsive apathy to see the case through and Shuuji helping her with that. It was nice overall.
I think you’re onto something with this point, but not quite there. Keeping the same personality helps in a lot of cases, but I wouldn’t make it a hardline rule or even a hardline positive, because sometimes a character having been putting on an act is what works for the story. However, what I do think you generally need for a twist villain to be convincing is for their actions before the reveal to still make sense with their true motivations. In fact, I’d say probably the best examples are ones where the villain’s actions seem occasionally strange or slightly at odds with their stated goals before the reveal, but are entirely consistent with their true motives.
I agree. I’m sick of people acting like Coco in general is overrated (looking at you, NitPix! Pixar isn’t dead (not yet, anyways. But sometimes they can massively disappoint like in the early 2010s (2011-12) with Cars 2 and Brave, the same decade but a lot later (2018-19) with Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 of the Sequel Era of both Disney Animation and Pixar) and Lightyear)! I know most people love it, but then there will always be a certain crowd of people who would love to hate on good things to make anything inferior look more slept on like, take for instance, Nickelodeon/Paramount+/Viacom/the current state of Disney via Disney+ originals) by making AniMat look bad for all (or most of) the films he gave the Seal of Approval including this film (I know he has his faults, but having honest reviews/making valid points (except for his left-wing politics) a lot of the time is not one of them.
It just goes to show that even popular stuff can have people making up criticisms (or pointing out that they exist, which wouldn’t have been invalidated if they were treated like they ruin the movies) just to make them look like 3/5s at best or 0/5s at worst. Opinions are opinions, but facts are also facts.
I rewrote Hans for the better, just for fun, once. All you have to do is change the true love's kiss scene to change his entire character into something that's actually believable and interesting. (it's been a while since I've watched frozen) So, Anna comes in, freezing and dying. She explains to Hans that Elsa froze her heart and only an act of true love, true love's kiss can save her. Hans leans in and. . . actually, kisses her. They could both be confused as to why it doesn't work, because Hans really likes Anna, but he's only known her one night and like does not equal love, especially true love. Hans puts two and two together. Elsa is the source of this, I'll go to her, and he'll promise Anna that he's going to go and save her. So, he goes down into the dungeon where Elsa is, tells her the whole kingdom is suffering and Anna is dying, and Elsa is the only one who can stop it. The rest of the movie pretty much happens the same as Hans tries to kill Elsa because he thinks it's the only way to save Anna and her kingdom, Anna saves Elsa and unfreezes herself. Same movie, basically, except Hans is still trying to do what's right because it's the right thing to do and not just, "My brothers bullied me my whole life so, mwah ha ha ha, I'm the bad guy now." Also, good seven points. I love the, subtlety is good, but only so long as it makes sense in the end point, for twist villains and twists of all kinds.
in Big Hero 6, there is aa VERY easy way to fix the villain: make him want to confirm if his daughter is still in the portal and alive, thus having the portal remade and wreaking havoc. it would still allow for the finale (albeit changed) and still have a twist villain.
One thing I will say about de la cruz is that while there wasn't already a villain in Coco, there was a CONFLICT. Miguel was trying to get out of the land of the dead, and be able to play music despite his family's hatred of it. I believe that conflict somewhat draws attention away from de la cruz, which if you aren't paying attention, you wouldn't even consider him to be the big bad of the story. At least that's how it was for me when I first watch Coco.
I was thinking the same thing. It would line up with his earlier observation about Toy Story. Sometimes it's the situation itself that drives the story without needed a traditional villain. The first time watching it I wasn't sure what to expect, and for a while was thinking that maybe it would be about how Ernesto's mistake was that he thought abandoning his family was an acceptable price to pay for doing what he loved and that he would have a redemption arc.
20:55 you know what would have been cool? If Callaghan was convinced that somehow, his daughter was alive. And his entire motivation was to reactivate the portal that was already established to be very dangerous, in order to attempt to save her. But she’s already gone. He’s just so unwilling to move on from his loss that he doesn’t care who he hurts, which could fit in with Hiro trying to get Baymax to kill Callaghan. While Hiro would be unwilling to let go of their anger, Callaghan would be unwilling to let go of his sorrow.
The idea of him being convinced that she was still alive sounds like it would be a really cool way to fit in a “mastermind” behind it all, with his own motives involved. It would also be a smart way to tease a sequel at the end.
I like this idea a lot. It takes his motivation from being a hackneyed revenge plot that makes him a two-faced psychopath to actually giving the whole movie a strong overarching theme. Honestly this one change could fix and strengthen the entire movie. In this version, Callaghan would serve as a sort of "what could be" for Hiro, showing him how bad you can become when you won't let go of the past. Maybe he's mad because the company shut down the program after they lost his daughter, because the portal was extremely dangerous and started destroying everything. He's tried for years to make his own portal but lacks the resources to do it, when he sees Hiro's nanobots and realizes they're perfectly suited for the task. Additionally, he should genuinely feel terrible that he got Hiro's brother killed, but it still doesn't stop him. He's too focused on getting what he wants that he's willing to hurt anybody who gets in his way.
Bellwether could have been done better so easily. Like for the motivation. In her introductory scene you can have the lion say something like “you know she ran against me during the last vote? This shows she has ambition. So as a sign of good faith (and to get the sheep vote) I hired her as my assistant and VP” Frame the scene as the lion trying to show off how great and full of himself he is, typical villain traits and it would work fine as baby’s first twist. It would also strengthen Bellweathers motivation. Since it establishes a rivalry between her and the lion. And overthrowing him is her end goal. Would it be a bit obvious and on the nose? Sure, but an on the nose villain is better than a nonsensical one.
Yeah unlike Pixar Disney don't give us any foreshadowing on their twist villains, Bellwether sounds like Hans a last minutes villain putted in a movie that could have worked better without a bad guy, it's like Disney is lazy and they are afraid to create a cool villain in these days
@@RayManiac90 I think it’s more that they are afraid of overshadowing their protagonists again. One of the most popular criticisms of the 1900s Disney films is that their protagonists are relatively boring, especially when pitted next to their villains that always stole the show. So, in an attempt to course correct they started to over compensate, leaving their villains as forgettable last minute inclusions. To the point where they write the story, without a clear bad guy in mind. Leading to then writing mostly bad guy-less stories with a crappy villain reveal for the climax
@@frankwest5388 yeah they need to stop to listen to these types of criticisms, because it's cool when a cool villain can steal a show, just watch at Puss in Boots 2
@@frankwest5388Huh, I never actually thought about it like that, but you're right. That's so weird. Funnily enough when trying to think of a Disney movie with memorable protagonists AND villains, my first thought was Emperor's New Groove. Seriously, all of them are so iconic and have very distinct personalities. This is probably helped by the movie being very zany and a comedy, but it has its heartwarming moments too, which are further elevated by the characters not being bland and one note.
I'd argue that bellwether is better than Hans because after the lion was arrested you'd naturally assume she was the twist villain. There was no inkling that Hans would be the villain at all. It was a complete rug pull, especially since the Duke of wesselton was right there and could have easily been the antagonist. They even admitted to rewriting the story late into production which explains why the "twist" was so jarring.
Plus she supported making judy he face of the zpd. On the surface seemigly reasonable she had just exposed major corruption but also would serve to add credibility to Judy's biological component comment. Bellweather was the strongest of the three imo. Edit: also wanted to that I still agree her motivation could have been fleshed out more it was clear that not everything was hunky dory between preds and prey in zootopia like the uploader had suggested.
In my perspective, when I first watched Frozen, I had the feeling that Hans would be the main villain because well no one is that perfect, it's like how Kristoff pretty much deconstructed the true love princess prince routine, they only met the guy just that day and don't really know who he is, may look nice but could actually be a jerk instead. For me, Mr. Waternoose caught me off guard at the twist because it explores more of his relationship with sully, a good boss and kind of like a father figure so when it's revealed he's in cahoots with Randall, that came as a surprise. Meanwhile Hans is just there.
Ngl, I did expect Lionheart to be the twist villain of Zootopia more than Bellwether because of how evil he would be (Bellwether wouldn’t be any better since she ruled Zootopia with an iron fist by darting animals with poison-berries alongside her men, but I think that’s something Lionheart would do with his personality that sounds akin to the World Economic Forum).
Good thing I’m not the only one who much prefers Zootopia (and pretty much other Walt Disney Animation Studios films (before Ralph Breaks the Internet came and started the era of WDAS being a shell of its former self except for Encanto being a Diamond in the rough when it comes to feature films and Short Circuit and Zenimation being very underrated series by the company that is… yet to improve in the mid-2020s (with Wish coming this late November like most recent WDAS movies, Zootopia 2 (or 2topia) and Frozen III???) over the Frozen duology for being a less jumbled and more politically relevant movie!
@@kieranstark7213 The politics were the weakest part of the movie in my opinion, I just enjoy Zootopia because the setting's fun and the leads are good characters. Unlike Frozen. I could rant about how Elsa's a despicable, self-centred bitch with a hideously overrated song (THIS is the situation right NOW, THIS is what I'm FEELING, *I'm going to spell everything out in the most insipid, tell-don't-show method imaginable because the song writers for these idiotic movies don't know how to write songs!* ) for hours.
Ok here’s an idea I’ve had for a fresh take on a twist villain The movie starts with no clear villain but throughout the movie the actions or mistakes of the main characters cause someone in the main cast to BECOME the villain Like you see a once good or neutral character’s slow downfall (which teaches morality) and it shows the heroes aren’t always perfect and how there are actual consequences for mistakes or how you treat others You get to be connected to the characters, you understand their motivations completely, and the emotional devastation would ACTUALLY be heartbreaking
There actually IS one good Disney twist villain who checks off the boxes: King Candy from Wreck it Ralph. I’ll go off the checklist too. 1: Motive. King Candy AKA Turbo has his motive explained when they talk about how he jumped games. He wants to be the most popular racer out there. 2: Realistic evil. There are plenty of people like him and Ernesto who would throw people under the bus to be popular, and memorable. 3: Reveal. The way Vanelope glitches him into showing his true form in the middle of a race is great because you see why he’s so good, and how far he’s willing to go to prevent Vanelope from winning. 4: Monologue. There is a bit of monologue, but it doesn’t halt the climax as it’s going on so it’s excusable. 5: Previous threat. The cybugs are definitely a good force of nature villain, and they even tie into King Candy getting a power up, and his own death/defeat. 6: Subtlety. His head shape matches up perfectly in both forms. And he’s shown to be the one to get rid of Vanelope from the game data which makes sense in retrospect as to why he’d do it. Also the fact that he makes himself King fits in with his narcissistic personality. 7: Time to be villainous. This is honestly the best part. You can see him manipulate Ralph into not letting Vanelope race and making it look like it’s for her own good, when it’s really for selfish reasons. He’s being villainous before it’s revealed he’s even the bad guy.
Turbo is actually far and away my personal favorite Disney Villain, but I would argue that these points go a little differently. If I may: 1) Motive: The setting’s premise is basically “Toy Story but video games” so one could say his motive is to be played. And to be the center of attention, which is _sortof_ played for comedy in his backstory, but still is an integral part of “to be played.” (And he does spend a lot of his time as King Candy *being* a mostly comedic villain, which definitely helps.) Solid first point. 2) Evil For The Sake Of It: I mean… yes but also not really? It almost reads to me as more like a personality disorder (insofar as an 80’s arcade character can have one, anyway). But you are correct in that there are real people like him and Ernesto who will go to extremes and throw people under the bus to get ahead. And like _I_ mentioned, he spends a lot of his time as King Candy being a mostly comedic villain, so “evil for the sake of it” is at least somewhat excusable, I think (especially for a character who, In-Universe, comes from the 80’s). Plus he clearly loses every remaining thread of his sanity after getting eaten by a Cy-Bug. I say he gets like a half point here. 3) Memorable Reveal: Here’s the thing: one could argue that he technically has multiple reveals - and it is one thing that made me fall in love with this movie, the fact that it kept me guessing. First is the reveal of what “going Turbo” even means (which is itself kind of memorable for the _wrong reasons,_ actually. Like if not for the music and intentionally nauseating camera angles, I might not have even realized it was meant to be a serious scene); then there’s the reveal that there actually is a reasonable and not inherently evil explanation for why Vanellope can’t be allowed to race (the jerk legit actually fooled me on my first watch and I was 17 years old at the time, I was like “wait. no. shit that actually makes a lot of sense, i didn’t even think about that gdi”), and that leads to probably the heaviest scene in the movie; then Sour Bill reveals the true extent of King Candy’s deception and we go forward from there; and finally, the big one, that Turbo and King Candy are the same person. It’s visually striking, it comes at an already intense moment, and the other characters are *very* shocked at this development. *Very* solid point. 4) Monologue: He gets in about two sentences while he’s having a villainous breakdown and actively in the middle of trying to murder Vanellope, but they say all that needs to be said, and he gets right back to business after that brief spiel. Solid point. 5) Previously Established Conflict: Personally, I would not argue in favor of the Cy-Bugs, because I honestly sometimes forget they’re even in the movie. But this is a bit of a tricky point regardless - the initial conflict comes from Ralph wanting to prove that he’s more than “just the bad guy who wrecks the building,” and to that end heading to another game to obtain superficial physical proof that he can do good, unthinkingly putting his own game in danger because he’s such an important part of it. Then he makes it his mission to help someone who has it even worse than he does (because at least Ralph can leave his game and talk to other people), and here’s where the conflicts overlap: King Candy is antagonistic towards Vanellope, and from the point Van and Ralph decide to team up (especially after they bond), antagonism towards Vanellope is antagonism towards Ralph. What makes this point tricky is that the big reveal isn’t that Turbo is the real villain, it’s that the “decoy villain” and the “true villain” are actually the same person. He’s _been_ the main antagonist who, by giving Ralph his medal, actively made the emotional conflict even worse, and when Sour Bill tells Ralph the truth about Vanellope, it’s really more of a confirmation that yes, King Candy is in fact the bad guy. All we’re missing now is the “why,” and being a usurper whose continued reign depends on Vanellope not racing is a good enough explanation that makes sense.* But I’ll still give him the point, because like I said, there was already an initial conflict even before he showed up, and even though he becomes the main antagonist pretty quickly after he does show up, the initial conflict (that he actively made worse) is still the emotional center of the movie. 6) Subtlety: Some people picked up on it on first watch, some people didn’t. That, to me, is proof enough that it was telegraphed enough to not feel like it came out of nowhere, but still subtle enough to be a compelling mystery that ends up rewarding attentive viewers while being a treat for people rewatching it to look for all the clues. I certainly didn’t see it coming, and - again - I was 17 at the time. Easy point. 7) Villainous Presence/Activity: This one’s kinda tricky, too, for the same reason as Point 5 - the big twist isn’t that Turbo’s the true villain, it’s that he and King Candy are the same person. He _has_ had a villainous (or at least antagonistic) presence throughout the movie, we just didn’t know the specifics of _why._ And, like Ernesto, he kind of already accomplished his goal (taking over another game so he can be the center of attention again) long before the events of the movie; his struggle is simply keeping it that way. But, unfortunately, after his big reveal, he almost immediately gets eaten by a Cy-Bug, and while King Candybug made for an awesome final boss, he still didn’t really do much other than be a visually stunning final obstacle not unlike Dragon!Maleficent. So, regrettably, I don’t think I can give him a full point. I’ll give him a half point for being very much the main villain from the moment Vanellope pays her entrance fee to the Random Roster Race and therefore very much the main villain for most of his screentime. But hey, 6/7 is nothing to sneeze at. 85% is still a good B. Like a different video said, King Candy and Turbo being the same person doesn’t make or break the plot, but it _does_ retroactively make both of them a lot more interesting, and for that reason I will always love him. Turbo-Tastic! 👍 *I do feel it’s worth mentioning that in earlier drafts of the movie, King Candy and Turbo actually _were_ separate characters, with KC getting a redemption arc (or at least forgiveness after Turbo’s defeat). Personally, I think making them the same character was a good call that definitely worked in _Wreck-It Ralph’s_ favor, even if it did unintentionally set a terrible precedent for the next three main Disney movies. Here’s hoping we can come back to traditional-style Disney villains sometime soon. 🤞❤
@@HannahBanina small correction, but King Candy Cybug is the one that makes the monologue as Ralph is trying to destroy mount Cola. I consider them the same character, because He has his memories, and personality. Which is why I gave a perfect 7
@@pistachiosforeveryone Cherry-picking does not a good argument make. In fact I would argue that, played right, acknowledging King Candy would have only strengthened your point: a curiosity showing that Disney, at one point, had at least _some_ idea of how to make a decent twist villain, only to not learn the right lessons from it, devolve into shock value that inevitably loses its punch, and leave themselves unable to even market their new villains without spoiling their movies. Even a brief analysis of how King Candy worked where his successors didn’t would have really thrown Hans’s, Yokai’s, and Bellwether’s shortcomings into sharp relief and -given me more excuse to gush over my favorite movie- driven home what a problem this villain-mishandling is. I kinda figured that was why you didn’t mention him, though. I don’t blame ya (I know I certainly don’t want to lump him in with those embarrassments). Just some attempt at constructive criticism for future videos. Have some candy! 🍬
One detail I also really liked with de la Cruz, was how, unlike Imelda when de la Cruz was giving his blessing, the marigold DIDN'T light up after he said blessing, like it did with Miguel's ACTUAL family members, pushing on the fact that de la Cruz wasn't his ACTUAL great great grandfather
An even better detail is they confirmed that you don't necessarily need to be blood related for it to work as long as you were genuinely 'family' in a sense so it doubly works because De La Cruz never accepted Miguel as legitimately his family but instead a prop he could showcase to make himself look better like "LOOK AT MY WONDERFULLY TALENTED GREAT GREAT GRANDSON IT RUNS IN THE BLOOD!"
Also that de la Cruz actually believed Miguel was his great great grandson too, or at least believed to some degree it was possible. And even if he wasn't sure to believe Miguel why not accept this living child everyone is talking about as my great great grandson? It certainely made him look good.
The twist with Han’s would have been far better if he kissed Anna and it didn’t break the curse causing him to panic and lead him down a downward spiral of desperation.
If only one thing could be changed about the scene, just have Hans commit to the kiss and let Anna realize herself that it ain't true love. Even with no other changes (keeping the monologue and all), that would have instantly made the scene ten times better, made Han's villain reveal more dramatic, further subvert multiple of the usual Disney tropes simultaneously, et cetera. Come on, the idea was right there, and it's not even just Hans as a character that would have been made better by having him do that.
I think you forgot one of the most important points; the audience’s connection to the villan. A good twist villan is someone who you liked or even rooted for -before- they where revealed. It needs to be not only suprise, but a feeling of betrayal. This person should also be someone the character feels close too.
yeah like my favourite character in the tangled series was that one kid turns out yeah he was evil i was like: NOOOOOO NOOOOOO HOW COULD YOU DO THIIISSSSSSSSS 😭😭😭😭 (i was like 12 when i watched it okay?)
For Hans - Weselton should've been replaced by one of Hans' older brothers: making fun of him for basically being a nobody, maybe manipulating him by saying maybe he could be a somebody if he married a princess and became king, and then telling Hans that his chance has come when Elsa takes off into the wild. It would've made you question Hans' motives the whole time, especially if he has negative reactions to his brother and positive actions helping Anna.
A common pitfall with Hans, Bellweather and Disney’s other twist villains is that when the twist happens, the friendly front they put on is revealed to be a complete act that doesn't represent at all what they're really like. So they're essentially two different characters, and the "real" one only shows up in the last third, so we never really get to know them. The only major exception to this is probably Lotso, but only because the twist/reveal happens much earlier in the film, so his real personality is more fleshed out than his fake one. But what makes most of Pixar's twist villains (Ernesto, Waternoose, Charles Muntz) work so well is that they’re not really _faking_ their charismatic demeanours from earlier. They’re genuinely hospitable and even friendly to the protagonists rather than manipulating or using them, but when the things they value are threatened, their more unhinged and cruel sides come to light. We’re not seeing the "real" them, we’re just seeing a different side to them that was there in plain sight the whole time. While the typical twist villains are probably easier for kids to process, I really appreciate the nuance in the idea that even people with sincerely good qualities can still be capable of committing atrocities, without even thinking that they’re wrong.
Syndrome works here too, since we never see him act like a "good guy" without prior knowledge. As a kid he won't take no for an answer and so messes up. As an adult we see him try to act like a good guy to the citizens, but we already know he is a villain before that. Mirage even acts as a front for his business, so we don't get bogged down with "CEO Buddy Pine" or something. We just hear about some mysterious benefactor and catch glimpses of his silhouette before the reveal. But then they went and did that anyway with the Screenslaver anyway...
That Hans is all a front is objectively shown in the movie. Look at his eyes before he starts running to stop the shooter, th-cam.com/video/afnhCvicqdI/w-d-xo.html, he knows where the chandelier is and the accident is an "accident" so he can look good saving Elsa. How can anyone suspect someone who does so much to save someone of wanting to kill them? And yet, if you interpret every scene he's in from Elsa gets outed he's clearly working towards being able to kill her and no one suspecting anything.
@@nielsjensen4185 I agree that Hans actually gets too much criticism. The way I've always viewed the movie is that when that one noble/royal assistant interrupts and says "You are all Arendelle has left" that's when he realizes "Oh crap, I can run this place!" While his personality shift is too quick and drastic to make much sense, both this and the scene where he captures Elsa and puts her in the dungeons are pretty good inklings that he's not the greatest guy. That and proposing on the literal first date
Apparently in one of the various dubs for Big Hero 6 (German dub, iirc), the line that is dubbed over "That was his mistake!" would translate to "I didn't ask him to save me!"
One of the reasons why I didn't have a problem with Callahan in the german version. He was right, Tadashi was plain stupid to walking into this burning building that was that much on fire that it looked like it was about to blow up.
I will point out that Frozen kind of has a character set up to be the villain before the twist, and that's Duke Wesselton. He doesn't like Elsa, and constantly expresses doubt and suspicion on her. However, as soon as Hans is revealed to be the real bad guy, he quietly disappears without another mention, which is weird for a supposed trade partner.
I mean his first introduction has him question what secrets lies behind the castle even the possibility of riches. There was so much potential in having Hans being a man who was trying to do what was right through a wrong method than being a villain.
@@johnathanholmes1297 like seriously though. Could you imagine how bone chilling it'd be to watch the kiss not work, and him coming to the realization that to save Anna, and the kingdom, he would have to kill Elsa? Like that would have been AMAZING, and instead we got that-
The Duke was underused, and his "punishment" - heck even Han's punishment was just a slap on the wrist - for trying to MURDER a queen 😮 I know it's for kids but seriously? Just shovel some horse poop and have trades cut off - bit light if you ask me 😂
I can think of a way in which Hans being a villain could have been salvaged, and in a way that doesn't even need to drastically alter the plot. If he went through with that kiss and both he and Anna were equally surprised Pikachu face that it didn't lift Elsa's curse, he started to realize that he doesn't actually love her and can't be enough to make things right, but he has another option. If he can't fix what happened to Anna and her people then he can still at least take the reins and make Arendelle his by leaving Anna for dead and going off to kill Elsa, seizing Arendelle as a place of his own as was his dream, and he announces all of this to her in a sort of deranged monologue so the rest of the plot pretty much functions as normal. Yeah, it would still be stupid of him to assume killing Elsa would un-plunge Arendelle from its eternal wintery nightmare but of what little we know of his backstory, he could be plausibly desperate enough to do something so unhinged as a spur-of-the-moment decision, rather than something pre-meditated with presumably enough time to rationally think over and realize why doing that would be a really bone-headed move on all fronts. You know, like what happened in the actual movie. Hans would go from a poorly written twist villain to a turncoat villain who was well-intentioned from the start despite a rough upbringing but due to unfortunate circumstances, he snapped, caved into his inner demons, and tried to enact a hostile takeover when the best opportunity presented itself to him and he felt he was left with no other realistic options anyway. He could have even served as a haunting cautionary tale about what envy and desperation can do to an otherwise good person IMO. Am I wrong? Would that be a good way to fix Hans into a more interesting villain?
Pixar just called, they want you to work for them. Okay seriously, that was actually a really good idea, I'm really intrigued... Have you ever thought about writing a story? I think you would do a great job with it!
Honestly, yes. That would be perfect. He'd be closer to an anti-hero than a villain. His crime is simply that he doesn't truly love her, just the idea of them together. He could even decide to go after Elsa to save her, and the kingdom at the same time. "Don't worry, just try to stay warm. I know what to do. I'll save you… and Arendelle." "But, how?" Sad look, "By doing what must be done." "What must be… no… You don't mean- Wait, STOP!" "You will forgive me, in time. Arendelle needs this. You need this," closes door. He could have a bit of a mini-redemption when he's caught and Elsa is about to expel him. "I know why it didn't work. When I was out there on the ice, thinking I wasn't going to find Elsa in time. It… it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Because I could still save Arendelle. I could still rule. I think I loved the idea of us, ruling together, more than I ever loved you." But hey, why make the villain sympathetic. If we do that kids might want to be villains!! *gasp*
@@Sylfa Like, maybe he could've even talked about how his aforementioned siblings found someone to rule with and how easy they all made it look, which would explain why he had such high expectations to experience a literal "true love at first sight" moment only to have that illusion of hope shatter to bits in an instant. It goes to show the potential Hans had as a character and how far it could've gone.
Ernesto was definitely a great twist. We are lead to believe this guy is the main characters relative only to see that he is nothing but power hungry and his personality never switched up like Hans
To me the only genuinely great twist villain Disney has done would be Turbo from Wreck-It Ralph. He already has such a great foundation with the actions of King Candy throughout, including having Turbo work as an excellent plot point for game hopping with his story being used as a cautionary tale throughout. And then we get the twist itself which while being a little unconventional works just as well as Waternoose imo, especially with his motivations being simple which works incredibly well when you remember he’s from a simple game. I also love that even after the reveal happens he still has plenty of agency to continue being a villain, and genuinely doesn’t feel out of character for his pre-twist actions Also this was really good video and I hope you get more attention!! Consider this a boost for the algorithm on top of general feedback
Honestly, I have no idea why Pistachios for Everyone skipped Turbo (and other twist villains, for that matter, like Tiberius Rourke in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Lotso in Toy Story 3, Doris in Meet the Robinsons, Miles Axelrod (I know the infamous sexual predator John Lasseter was the one to direct it even after doing a highly decent job with the first two Toy Story movies and Cars 1, but despite being a major disappointment because of Mater’s assassination (seriously, he’s even more like Lasseter than John Lassetire, the cartoon version of himself in that movie!) some great qualities like a strong soundtrack (seriously, “Polyrhythm” will never get out of our heads) and an unpredictable and threatening twist villain like Miles Axelrod) because of how great WIR really is (still waiting for GamingMagic13 to make “Why Ralph Breaks the Internet Wrecked Everything” like he promised in his Cars on the Road review)!
Cal bothers me so much more than the others just by merit of the fact that I love his aesthetic. Before the unmasking, he’s such a terrifying badass. If they just gave him a decent motivation and made him human, he could have been Syndrome tier.
@@sephirothcrescent5768 Having a motivation doesn’t mean it’s a good motivation. If I stubbed my toe and used it as justification to commit genocide, it’d be really obvious the toe stubbing wasn’t actually the reason. I’d just be off my rocker.
agreed! the mask was so cool and the chase scene with the microbots looked so high stakes. the unmasking ruined everything, he was just some lame guy with a thirst for revenge lmao
I honestly agree, I felt like if he had a better motivation (or at least tweaked the motivation a bit more if they wanted to keep the motivation. Either way make it a bit better) I think Cal would of been the Syndrome of Disney if not better (depending on how they did it) and plus I think he had some good things like the chase scene was god tier but it’s a shame that the villain’s modulation didn’t live up to it.
Cal's motivation should have been that he wanted to open the portal so he could go search for his daughter. Maybe he feels sorry that Tadashi died in the fire, but if he had to choose between his student's life and his daughter's life, of course he's gonna choose the daughter. Going to such evil extremes just to get revenge on a guy is inhumane.
@@luluzin5022 If it were me, I would've combined the two motivations together. Have him want to open the portal to rescue his daughter AND to trap Cray in there to "teach him a lesson". Add on a hint of remorse, or at least sympathy, for Tadashi, take out the part where the characters "figure out" that the villain is Cray, add in some more subtle hints to strengthen Cray's red herring qualities and some even subtler hints towards Callaghan's villainy, and you've got yourself a golden twist villain right there.
I remember hearing this about Zootopia and I think it’s quite accurate. The movie is about racism but you can’t solve racism, so they put in a twist villain to have a climax and an ending without it feeling “empty”
I'm glad that you didn't talk about Syndrome really. I've seen so many people say he's a twist villain but I don't think he is. He's a villain, with a twist, but he's not a twist villain. There is no reveal of "I was evil all along" his reveal is "I have a motivation you saw earlier" it's like calling Darth Vader a twist villain because he goes "I am your father" even though we've known he's the villain the whole time.
I think Meet the Robinsons is often forgotten when people talk about Twist Villains. Bowlet Hat Guy and DOR15 are both introduced as villains from the start of the movie, but have their own twists - With Bowler Hat Guy being sort of a reverse Twist Villain in a way since he's introduces as a villain and its later revealed he used to be friendsw ith the main character and with DOR15 being that her plans go way beyond Petty Revenge to the point of double-crossing Bowler Hat Guy. They're not traditional Twist Villains but imo the way they're integrated into the plot works really well
So… would Bellwether have been a better twist villain if, say, she not only had more screentime, but also a bit more of a motive? I couldn’t help but notice that she was pretty supportive of Judy as she was raising up in the ranks of the police department and how everyone else seemed to belittle them both for being small and cute critters. I could easily see Bellwether’s role being more effective if she were subtly manipulating Judy’s investigation to ruin the mayor’s reputation and have her bias towards predators stem from her and Judy’s past experiences with being victims of discrimination - the difference being that Judy realizes her mistake and tries to rectify it while Bellwether chooses to cling onto her victimhood since it’s the only thing she’s known. I ask since I’ve heard plenty of people say that the film didn’t need a villain, to which I beg to differ. The whole premise of the film was centered around a criminal master plot with coverups and everything, so there being no villain wouldn’t make sense.
I thought she had plenty of motive: political power -with which comes money and fame. Part of the point of the movie is that predjudice against preds existed the entire time and used to be worse in the past. That's Nick's entire backstory. Bellweather is taking advantage of a preexisting problem in society to give herself an advantage. She's weaponizing her own victimhood as a small cute prey animal against other people who don't have the same privileges. Or, broadly, Zootopia is about the intersection of racism and sexism, and Bellweather is the white lady who called the cops on a black man who asked her to leash her dog in accordance with local laws.
... She has a motive. She's a complete and utter narcissist who thrives on causing drama, acts nice, friendly and put upon in public but goes psycho behind closed doors, gets off on having people at her complete and utter mercy, and has an uncanny ability to walk away from the fireworks she set off smelling like roses instead of smelling of powder. I mean, compare Bellwether's rant to #AmberTurd's rant. For such a "motiveless, unrealistic character", she's acting uncannily similar to a real person we have real footage of. Bellwether just happens to have a convenient berserk-inducing toxin ready to be deployed at a moment's notice, which, in the hands of a narcissist, is pretty much the equivalent of "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A".
@@Camphorous exactly what i thought. The whole idea of zootopia is that she is a racist in power, that the whole idea of "preds are evil and strong" is supposed to represent racism while the whole "prey are weak and cute" thing is a callback to sexism since judy also experiences it. It's a 2 in 1 basically lol and just shows the struggles people face because of stereotypes. Racism and sexism aren't reasonable, that's the whole deal. You can have no real motive at all, no bad experience, to be racist if it was drilled into you as a kid.
For Hans #6, foreshadowing, the way he mentioned his brothers worked for me. When he and Anna were talking and he mentioned the fact that he had 12 older brothers, it seemed natural that they would be bonding over stories about their siblings since Anna and Elsa's relationship was central to the plot. When his motivation was revealed, the fact that he had 12 older brothers took on a new meaning. That's when I realized how frustrating his position could feel to a person; as the son of the king he was so close to the throne, while at the same time as brother #13 he was so far down the line that he had no hope of ever reaching it. The idea of him letting Anna die didn't make sense to me though. He was basing his claim to the throne on everybody taking his word that he and Anna had gotten married right before she died, apparently in a ceremony with nobody else present which throws the legality of the whole thing into doubt even if everybody does believe him. Not only that, he hadn't even gotten rid of Elsa yet. Sure, he was planning on killing her soon, but he couldn't have waited until he was sure that had been taken care of first? What was the point exactly? An explanation could be that he knew the kiss wouldn't work; but if that were the case he could at least try to come up with some kind of explanation. No, he wanted her dead then and there and didn't care that he blew his cover in the process. It wasn't as if he couldn't stand the idea of being married to Anna even for a short time, since that seemed to be his original plan anyway. Even if he did want to get rid of Anna eventually, for some reason he had to do it the first chance he got, even though that meant taking her out while he was still in the middle of pulling off the plan? Why not wait few months, when everything had calmed down and he was securely on the throne? It felt so much like the only reason he turned when he did was that the movie needed him to start openly acting as the antagonist at that point.
I think its partially because the writers and animators themselves had planned for Elsa to be the villain during the creation of the film, and suddenly changed their mind when much of the movie was already made, which caused some issues.
There's also the fact that the song Anna sings with him doesn't match up (the sandwiches thing), but that only proves he was pretending in front of her. His plan was pointlessly rushed.
@@darleneandrews3030 do you have a source for that or is this an exaggeration of elsa’s very early concept art? because they released rejected song demos that were very clear about elsa not being a villain, so it can’t have been that late into production.
I think Elsa would have made a great redemption villian. Starting out cold (pun intended) but gradually warming up (2nd pun intended) revealing that her villainous acts were a result of her personal fear. Granted, that is what kind of happened in the film but by making her a good guy and the parents look horrible just made it feel rushed and Elsa kind of flat as a character. 😊
I think their song together foreshadows Hans' personality - he sings he's been looking to find his own PLACE - and that right there tells you he doesn't care much about love, only a place to rule, which as a prince he's been raised to believe is the only way to prove himself, the only proper life. Go back and listen, it's chilling.
Another pretty good twist villain that’s slept on is Rourke from Atlantis: the lost empire. He gave hints throughout the whole time, and seemed like a legitimate threat especially physically where he was basically throwing Milo around like a toy. Great video, cheers.
Atlantis is such a slept on movie cause of its rocky release being a pure action movie in the Disney age of princess movies, it my favourite classic Disney movie by leagues, and Rourke is an amazing twist villain at first you just think he is a bit of a stuck up meathead army man, with some of evilish blunt statements he makes which on re-watches you can directly tie to the twist reveal of his true nature but at first watch you attribute it to him being a soldier
Fred flat out saying the villain was Callaghan is actually genius. It's that obviousness that makes you think it can't be him. Prime example of reverse psychology
what's even better about waternoose is that he not only was designed to look more scary then sully, with him being a literal monster spider person whilst sully is the equivalent to a cute teddy bear, but he could also easily come off as some sort of friendly grandpa of sorts who is constantly seen as calm, collected, has fun and cares for his employees. He's a veteran who has seen it all and relates to those under him and that's what makes him such an unexpected twist villain even when his designs should seem absolutely obvious. like waternoose is a literal giant, creepy looking spider monster, yet due to him being surrounded by other monsters he never stood out and with randall being there he even looked less suspicious, to the point where everyone considered him to be a secondary character until the moment he became the big bad all along.
Waternoose doesn’t monologue because he’s well set up enough that he doesn’t need to. You get the idea that he cares deeply about his company well before the twist. When it’s revealed, all you need is a quick two sentences about him doing whatever it takes to keep things going. He’s the anti-Bellweather in that sense. That being said, despite the monologuing, Syndrome is my favorite twist villain. Creative and appropriate motive for the story, flashy reveal, and still fun to watch and threatening after his reveal.
One clue that Waternoose is the villian is Randall having a secret lair in the company building. Not just some closet with folders of evil plans but a huge set up with machinery and utility access all behind a secret panel. We don't question how Randall has this big lair within the workplace because we expect every villain has an evil lair. But when you learn Waternoose is a collaborator in the plan to kidnap children, the lair makes much more sense. He probably commissioned it (off the books) and set Randall up in there as a workshop space to develop the extractor.
I think Ernesto is THE best twist villain on the list. We know of him, grow to like him, are made to think he's the grandfather. And then he betrays our feelings, and it was a DAMN good betrayal. As for the others, I haven't watched Monster's Inc or Toy Story in a while. But if I recall, I didn't take too much interest in Waternoose or Pete.
Yeah I love Waternoose as a twist villain, but I think his only flaw (at least compared to Ernesto, in this one regard) is that while Sully likes Waternoose, the audience probably doesn't care about him too much. Maybe feel sympathy for his company going down, but that's about it. His betrayal is shocking to both the characters and the audience, but he only betrays Sully, not the audience. But that's a hard thing to pull off, and not necessary for a good twist villain. I just think it's bonus points if the twist villain is one where both the characters and the audience feel stabbed in the back, because you really felt like you liked the villain. I mean, Waternoose already looks really scary. It works great for when he's revealed evil and chasing down Sully, but not so much for garnering appeal, especially from kids Anyways I'm rambling but I *love* Monsters Inc, it was that one movie I constantly watched and rewatched as a kid, so I'll jump at any chance to talk about it lol
@@bigbadgammagnome I'll explain it this way. From a kid's standpoint, think of Sully as your dad. That would make Waternoose your dad's boss. I don't think kids really care who their parents work for. They just care about their parents. As such, Waternoose is already a character removed from the concern of the audience because of the role he plays. As a kid, I don't think I grasped the urgency of a company failing. I only understood that Boo had to go home. Course, I'm saying this as someone who hasn't seen the movie in a while. As for Ernesto, he's a celebrity. You're introduced to him first. Migel loves him, emulates him, and clearly worships him. We've all had celebrities in our lives that we worshipped. For me, it was Yugi Moto. So, the audience is made to care about Ernesto because of Migel's affection towards him. Then when we think he might be the kid's great great grandfather. Then we see how many obstacles he goes on to get to the guy. I actually shed a tear seeing the kid hug the man's skull. I'm sorry but I'm still rooting for Ernesto. I mean, imagine finding out that your hero, who you think you're related to, killed a man to get to where he is. And then he decides to kill you to keep his secret. THAT IS MESSED UP! Sure, a ceo doing illegal things to maintain their company is really bad. Ernesto's betrayal was just personal.
The interesting parts are the first hints and red flags we get about Ernesto: Miguel wanting to be just like him after saying that he got crushed by the bell. The other part being that as an adult, you could see early enough that "do whatever it takes to seize your moment" could have dark implications too. Then the way Frida and Hector talked about Ernesto, Frida saying that Ernesto doesn't rehearse and Hector saying that he taught him everything. The interesting part in this is that Hector was lying in various moments on screen, making him unreliable since we don't know when he actually lies (he's still surprisingly honest though, admitting to his faults) The actual big hint was when Ernesto was confused about having descendents - if he had been the 2x great gramp, he wouldn't have been surprised that his kid had children of her own etc. It's suggested that he also had many flings, so the only reason why he would believe Miguel would be that he could have had a kid out of an affair and they continued the legacy. And the next big and final one before the reveal was when Ernesto holds the petal and tries to send Miguel home. The petal didn't glow, while it did for Imelda and Hector later immediately. The next ones before the reveal are smaller, Ernesto recognizing Hector and not denying that they played together confirms Hector's words and discredits him as a liar, especially when we get the reveal of Hectors reason why he wants to cross the bridge. Also several hints at Hector being the true ancestor came in their similarities - both he and Miguel have a dimple, are scrawny and share a similar hair cut. They both tend to impulsively lie but be honest about it later on.
I actually wasn't shocked that Ernesto turned out to be a twist villain, just because of how Disney/Pixar overused them so much. The moment where Miguel thought that Ernesto was his grandpa, I thought "oh it's not going to be him, so he's the villain?", solely on the fact that these two companies can't leave this trope alone. They try to do this so the movies "aren't predictable", but they just become even more predictable. Ernesto's reveal was really good tho, the flashback is heartbreaking, especially when you think of the effects it had on Miguel's family
As much i enjoyed big hero six, him being the villain was seriously one of those 'oh, there was no way *ANYONE* could have seen that twist coming' because there wasnt a single clue for it. Like at all.
The twist could have worked if the story was changed. 1st have it mentioned at the start of the film that a natural disaster or some sort of accident killed many people instead of the portal one. Have Mr. Callahan's motivation not getting over the loss of his daughter to the point of wanting to bring her back just like Hiro except not except that she's gone. Finally, show that Mr. Callahan's daughter is dead and confirm it and have Mr. Callahan accept it. That way it mirrors Hiro and to a certain extent redeems him.
It's unfortunate that some writers (especially at Disney) think villains wanting power for the sake of wanting power is something that works for twist villains as well as it does for non complex super obvious villains when in reality there is a reason why it only works in the category of obvious villains
For the Bellweather thing, I think the idea was supposed to be that predators occupy many positions of authority, and she was tired of it (like what happened with Judy at her police training academy).
@@sallyjrwjrw6766 I agree but this was actually indicated really early on with both Judy's ordeal and the mayor clearly loading a lot of work into Bellwether. You can also tell that most of the characters met at Judy's workplace are predators. This isn't actually subtle, it's overt, it's just easy to miss if you aren't used to how systematic racism plays out in real life. POC very easily notice when a police station is almost entirely white people. The movie actually didn't need to make this that much more explicit, they needed at most one more line to point it out to viewers that weren't paying attention but other than that they were on the nose.
It's even simpler than that. Judy and Bellwether were both bullied by predators. Judy by Gideon; Bellwether by Lionheart (and probably others in her childhood). Judy chose to move past this, and went on to make the world a better place. Bellwether didn't let go of her resentment, and blamed an entire race in her society for the actions of individuals. When victims become abusers, they will not see themselves as abusers; it is always because they see the targets of their abuse as threats. For Bellwether, she's a coward, so she wanted other people to do her dirty work for her. That meant fearmongering to make the prey turn against the predators. She wanted everyone else to share her prejudice. This video is unbelievably naive in thinking her motivation is bad. Zootopia is astonishingly insightful into the nature of prejudice, resentment, and forgiveness.
The reveal of Mr Waternoose is honestly chilling but genius, how Mike says that the door he is showing is not Boo's door but then Randal comes in and Waternoose says "Its your's" is legitimately scary.
I think of Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger as an underrated twist villain. Like, I know it's obvious he was the bad guy, but I don't think anybody expected him to be a toon. That twist was pretty neat. And kind of nightmare-inducing.
Agreed. His shuffling back from the DIP was a bit of a foreshadowing on what his true self and what his final fate would be was pretty well made and clever back then
My theory on why Hans doesn't work with most people is because...he was just damn too likeable throughout the first half of the movie, with very little foreshadowing to show to the audience that something was off. Hans was basically Prince Edward from Enchanted but more capable and was one of the old school "Prince Charming", types with an actual personality. Bellwether, again, she was just some random "cute" sheep, during the first half with very little foreshadowing. It's very difficult to take her seriously. Callaghan, okay, yeah he was straight up dumb. I get what Disney is trying to do though, they're trying to show that villains don't always look and act like Jafar, Maleficent or Ursula. Sometimes they look and act your friend. But it never comes off naturally, like it does with Pixar.
lol, yeah Hans's villain twist just feels like Disney realized they needed some way to end the film at the last minute and just pulled it out of their ass. That or the most ham-fisted way to resolve a love triangle between Anna and her two equally charismatic suitors.
So Ernesto didn’t get the existing villain point despite there being the conflict between Miguel and his family but Hans gets it for the conflict between Anna and Elsa and Stinky Pete got it for Woody’s conflict?
@@pistachiosforeveryone Yeah, but you make up for it by giving Ernesto the motivation point (to be famous - really?) and not giving that point to Hans. Wanting power when you've lived your whole life feeling powerless because of your older brothers seems to me a much better motivation than simply wanting to be famous.
OKay Bellweather may be a weak villain, but the fact that she's trying to start a race war despite predators not being bad or doing anything personally to her is the point. She's racist, or speciest. Racists usually don't have a rational reason why they would hate someone or spread lies about an ethnic group other than bigotry. I don't see why she needs motivation or a sob story to be a good villain for this kind of story. She needs better setup and hints for this twist to make sense on rewatch. Maybe if throughout the movie she said some off colored things about predators, yeah that would be kinda believable.
I’m gonna have to disagree with racists lacking a reason to hate people. It can be a stupid reason. It can be a valid reason for an individual or group of individuals then illogically applied to a whole ethnicity. However, there’s ALWAYS a reason (you can call it an excuse, but it’s not nothing). If there were no reason at all, the person would be indifferent. As I said, that doesn’t mean the reason has to make much or even any real sense from an outsider’s perspective. It doesn’t even have to be the real reason for the hatred (a person might not even consciously realize the actual reason) But reducing racism (or speciesism in Zootopia’s case) to a vague declaration of “bigotry” results in a very cartoonish portrayal of the concept.
@@John-fk2ky in zootopia there is a reason for the speciesism against predator : they ate prey in the past, which is a lot more solid reason than for any form of racisme that exist in real life (even if it still isn't a good justification).
@@John-fk2ky Frankly, since Bellweather was a politician, the easiest reason they could have put would be that she herself may not have believed in the prejudice, but she knows it exists. That prey are easily scared with enough incentive and that they will rally to anyone who can provide a solution. A level head in the madness. Someone who looks out for the little guy. What better image than someone who appears demure and little herself who can take action when she needs to? The motives? Money and power in a fast and immediate way. Of course, that would also dip into how capitalism influences politics but I don’t think Disney of all corporations would go that far.
Nah politicians can put on a sweet face all the time for the public perception. Bellweather is just perfect, she does not need to be foreshadowed more.
@@ca-ke9493 Exactly. I think it’s just because we’re used to the politicians who do try and encourage discrimination as being loud, angry and cartoonishly evil.
I will never forgive Disney for doing Hans so dirty. He was actually really sweet and charming and a potential partner for Anna. Like, look at how he smiles when he first met her during the boat scene. No way that was a smile of a man with ill intentions. Btw, kinda surprised thar Professor Marmalade from The Bad Guys wasn;t given an honorable mention in this video Edit: lol i forgot that the bad guys are from dreamworks nvm
@@partypoison8476 I know, right? It makes his completely random "hehe I'm evil" reveal so much better Bonus points if he knows that's not what he wants, knows he still cares for Anna, and yet is forced by some strange urge to be evil. That's the good stuff.
Eh, when it came to the Marmalade twist thing, JP Sans admit that they were kind of making it obvious from the start on Marmalade being antagonist and I thought it would've been obvious too prior to learning this.
Disney actually did have one good twist villain, unfortunately it’s from one of their forgotten films. Atlantas The Lost Empire. The villain, Rourke, was a fantastic twist villain. Another TH-camr made a video about him explaining why he’s the best. You should see it.
As far as I know, Disney started twist villains since Atlantis: the lost empire. That movie has one of Disney’s best twist villains that they ever made. And since that was successful, they continued that formula, only to disappoint us…
Which is funny because Atlantis WASN'T successful at the box office. Sadly the films with these poorly written twist villains ARE and they'll keep doing it.
There is one Disney movie that had a great twist villain which I really liked and that is Rourke from Atlantis: The Lost Empire voiced by the legendary James Garner. The one cool thing about him is that he starts out with a father figure persona until about at least halfway or almost close to the end where he turns around and it is found out that he was in the expedition for the money. Personally, Atlantis: The Lost Empire's been underrated by most people but, again, has a great twist villain.
3:27, 1) having an understandable motivation 2) Not being evil because of pleasure or enjoyment 3) Having the reveal be a well done scene 4) Not monologuing
To help out aspiring writers a bit, here's a couple of simple questions you can ask yourself over and over to make sure you're hitting most of these points. Question 1: Is your twist character's goal the exact same both before and after the twist? If done well, this should be an easy Yes. Make absolutely sure they're never working against their later-revealed plan by playing along with the heroes. They may have to make some concessions, depending on the exact circumstances, but if so, the fact that they didn't want to do that and tried their best to get around doing that should be readily apparent on reread. In fact little things like that can serve as good breadcrumb-hints, for Point 6. Question 2: Let your twist villain be evil BEFORE the reveal. That isn't a question but good writers do it anyway. When reading through the second time around, there should really be a few moments where you realize "oh, this thing that looked innocent enough before seems really kinda bad now that I know what I know." If even on the reread your character seems innocent/heroic until the big reveal, you've failed. No matter how many of the other six points you've done right. So it is with Hans, with that little smile that has no right to be there. So it is with Dollhouse, whose twist character is so atrociously bad that I straight-up reject it. My preferred hint style is breadcrumbs of increasing size, until such a time as it leads you to the entire loaf. From start to finish there are little details that don't add up, moments that might make you stop and wonder why, if you happen to notice something's off. These start at "virtually invisible" in the early stages of the story, and slowly scale upwards through "makes sense for a hero or a villain", "a little weird but not outright suspicious", "big hint if you think through the ramifications, otherwise easy to miss", and then save the biggest hints for within a chapter or so of the big reveal. And always, always, always, these hints all carry new meaning on the reread for those who didn't pick up on them at first. Even the "virtually invisible" ones should be little slaps in the face of "well THAT makes way more sense now." If you REALLY wanna excel, you can go the "solvable mystery" approach. Such that if someone were to stop reading just before the actual reveal, and review everything they've learned and try putting them all together, they should be able to put together the correct conclusion on their own, and successfully answer all of the following questions: WHO is the true villain? WHAT have they done so far and WHAT do they plan to do next? WHY are they doing what they're doing? If all of those can be answered by an astute reader, and missed by those who don't give it any deliberate thought, then you've gone above and beyond in making a truly great mystery. ...Most likely, anyway. There are probably ways to get this right but fail elsewhere, but whatever, I trust you :P
The movie already did try that. Both lost a family member close to them and their immediate reaction to the person responsible is to get revenge and kill them. The movie did want to make a statement that Hiro realized that focusing on revenge was not the solution to overcoming his grief. The problem is Callaghan is too weak of a villain for all the reasons Pistachio described that it overshadows the intended message of the story.
Suggestion: Callahan tries to bring back his daughter, rebuilding the portal and risking his life in a form of suicide mission. When attacking the students in his kabuki mask, he never tries to kill them, but scare them off instead. He tries to frame and point towards krei being responsible. First hints would be the gang actually capturing krei and trying to get answers, with some questions answered but the gang getting in trouble with krei and his lawyers. Then they find some docs from Callahan, realize it was his writing on previous incriminating evidence but then question how Callahan is alive When Hiro goes all "Tadashi died because of you" rage, Callahan could look shocked because he didn't know that Tadashi would have tried to help him, when it was likely "he would die". Hiro still attacks him There is one post that depicts Tadashi as the kabuki mask wearer - and I like that idea. Suggestion number two: Tadashi gets saved by Callahan in the fire, but has extreme burns and scars. Tadashi himself has history with krei (maybe Tadashis and Hiros parents worked for krei and invented something; krei took the credit from them and when legal issues started to get serious, krei tampered with their car which caused their deaths.) So a younger and more agile Tadashi would be able to perform in the action, to ruin krei and help Callahan rescue his daughter. Would be also another good "bad guy doesn't attack the good guys he knows" reason. Other than that, the only thing I would do is maybe not have the group be solo Tadashi friends who become Hiros gang with much of a connection, but some of his own friends too. Like Hiro is longer in university and we see him actually do stuff there instead of just being all over. He would start going there after finding out that the fire wasn't an accident. Would also be cool if some of his friends were still in high school, while others are in the college and therefore older
my favorite Disney twist villain is usually one that people forget about; King Candy the twist isn’t necessarily that he’s a villain, but that he’s MUCH more of a threat than we ever considered him to be. first we find out he literally deleted Vanelope out of the game, then that he’s Turbo, and then we even get a (kind of) fake-out death that leads to him becoming a literal boss battle! he goes from a threat/mild annoyance to a true villain, and it’s done beautifully.
I feel like a slight fix for Callaghan's motives and overall plan could be that, instead of him wanting to just get revenge, he didn't assume his daughter was dead and was driven to get her back, even if it meant re-constructing that extremely dangerous and destructive portal (or whatever it was called) that can still cause major chaos in the city during the whole final battle and everything. And for him 'accidentally' getting Tadashi killed, it could haven been highlighted that he did feel at least some level of guilt or remorse for Tadashi's death, but he convinced himself that it had to be done, and maybe his decision to save only himself in the fire either could be a quick rash choice, only to realize what happened after the fact, or something that he hesitated a bit doing before hardening up and going through with it. idk, still might not have been a good twist villain, or that good of a villain overall, but maybe it wouldn't had been as lame lol
a little rainbow thingy appeared around the sub button when you said "im gonna need you to subscribe" which is so cool. i ended up subbing bc ur so underrated, only 6k subs????!!!
@@bigbadgammagnome because they initially just wanted to get boo home and get back to scaring kids for energy, and might have gone along with the scream extractor plan if they hadn't gotten attached to her
@@glowstickspinalfluid yeah, I never really thought of it that way. However, considering how Waternoose and Randall did the scream extractor plan in secret, and banished Sully and Mike to keep that information from getting out, I got the impression that what they were doing was illegal. The monster world might be scared of children touching them (mistakingly thinking they were toxic) but if they were so gung-ho on killing children then it wouldn't have needed to be a secret. I don't think Mike and Sully would have ever been ok with the scream extractor, but I do agree that without Boo neither would've realised that human children aren't the "monsters" they were made out to be
Waternoose while going WAY too far is not otherwise an ass and was doing it out of desperation to solve the energy crisis, he didn't know laughter was a more powerful fuel source and was faced with a possible collapse of monster society.
Just wanna say that this video was really entertaining, plus I learned a lot about what makes twist villains good or bad and how to make better ones. Sounds like a fake ass comment but it's true, i've been interested in figuring out what makes stories good or bad and villains are definitely a big part of it. I was surprised you didn't have as much views and likes as I thought you would so here's a like cuz i genuinely really enjoyed watching this video, and i'm subscribing cuz I wanna see more from you :>
I tried rewriting cable's motivation and I got this. 1) Cray started the fire after failing to steal the microbots, thanks to Callaghan. 2) Callaghan uses the bots to survive, after escaping finds out about Tadashi's death. 3) Feeling responsible for Tadashi's death, he also blames Cray not only for the loss of his daughter but also for Tadashi, seeing it as Cray destroying another family. 4) Callaghan doesn't fake his death, take leave from teaching & tries reach out to Hiro, since he can relate. 5) He just uses the microbots, he get the portal in order to sell its parts, to help make more bots.
This was great, though I am disappointed the villain in The Lost City Of Atlantis wasn't mentioned. There are plenty of times where it is foreshadowed that he isn't in the adventure for knowledge, and it has a good twist. He doesn't act like a whole other character afterwards, more like he's just being more open about it, and if you watch it a second time, you can definitely catch it coming. Also, he has a good amount of time to be openly evil, which is great. Anywho, great video!
i agree with all your points here but i feel like its also important to note that these are rules of thumb. good writing isnt as easy as a checklist, if you have "x/y things then you have a good story, the end" is sort of shallow as a statement, and you cant really judge writing based on this criteria. i think whats more important is how each individual point is handled, if the motivation is solid, if the build-up is worth it, etc. and i think youd agree because you spent a lot of time explaining each of these things in-depth for all the villains! moreso for the audience i think its important to clarify that this isnt a numbers game, and that simply checking enough things off a list wont make something well-written, but to actually put care and thought into those things does! you get what i mean
I’d like to point out my one favorite tells that Ernesto wasn’t his great great great grandfather was that the blessing can only be given by a family member, he isn’t one. We saw earlier in the film that when a family member gives a blessing the petal glows, but when Ernesto starts to give his blessing the petal doesn’t glow at all. The first watch could be dismissed as “oh he was cut off,” but if you know the twist then you know it didn’t glow because he isn’t family.
Good video man and well put together! Loved the editing and the points for each twist villain. I'd say if I had to put any constructive criticism, if you have any extra time you're willing to put in, (I know we all get busy, not saying it's necessary), but maybe throw in some title cards or some showable text between topics and when you name a numbered point. Not necessary but I always feel it shows more professionalism and effort put into a video. Again it's already good, just offering some criticism because would love to see you grow more! Again good job!
one of the best twist villains imo is rork from atlantis the lost empire. from his first scene he tells you he's greedy in an underhanded way. the mc milo is talking to the "quest giver" about how much of a learning experience it will be for humanity as a whole and rork chimes in with "I'm sure this will be enriching for us all" and there are so many other lines or scenes that show just how self centered he is it's perfect
I always thought Hans’s twist villain reveal was less about the thrill of twist villainy and more about subverting fairytale cliches, like they subverted the true love’s kiss thing. I saw Hans being the villain as them twisting the whole Prince Charming being the hero thing and “love at first sight always works in stories”.
That's a pretty good set of rules that all make sense. Watching this made me realize that Hans would have been a better villain if he had actually been more present throughout the story. Let's say instead of Kristoff existing, Hans went with Anna to go bring back Elsa. During their troubles, maybe he would check to see if Anna was physically okay, but never how she was really feeling, a more subtle way of showing that he does not really care about or love her. Perhaps when Olaf is joking around, he's more stern and focused on their mission at hand, and if Anna tells him to lighten up he'd merely brush her off.
@@pistachiosforeveryone he has many traits of an abuser and sociopath. Such as when Ana is complaining about Elsa during Love is and Open door, instead of comforting her, he says HE would never shut her out, HE will be there for her. This is a way to isolate her from her support. I think if he got more screentime, they could have expanded on this. Add more of this stuff. Don't monologue, but you can do the "if only there was someone who loved you" line because it's iconic. Just have him say that and leave!
For me it was only through meta gaming. They were setting Christoff with Anna so Hans had to either get a different girlfriend or turn evil by movie logic. Him being a decent guy but just not the right guy is just not how Disney writes their movies. I still would like a redemption arc for Hans since they messed up his character.
The movie was making such a big deal about how Anna shouldn't marry a man she just met, highlighting how she didn't know him very well and he might turn out to not be as great as he first appeared, I figured Hans would turn out to be evil just to conclude the "don't marry someone you just met" moral. Of course, they could have had him still be nice, but just not a good match with Anna, or some other nuanced situation, but him being evil seemed more likely because it seemed more consistent with Disney's style.
Applying your criteria in other Disney and Pixar films then we have Rourke from Atlantis: The Lost Empire 1) Understandable motivation. It’s about money, that’s understandable. 1/1 2) Not enjoying evil. He definitely enjoys his evil. 1/2 3) Well-done reveal scene. He has that. 2/3 4) Not monologuing. He doesn’t really tend to monologue, it’s more the heroic Thatch who does that. 3/4 5) Subtle foreshadowing. His villainy is foreshadowed but it’s not all that subtle. 3/5 6) Red herring. No he doesn’t really have that. 3/6 7) ample screen time. Yeah, he has that. 4/7 Warp Darkmatter from the Buzz Lightyear movie 1) Understandable motivation. He was paid off by Zurg. It’s about money. That works 1/1 2) Doesn’t enjoy being evil. “Evil was just more profitable. And more fun”. He definitely enjoys being evil. 1/2 3) Well-done reveal scene. “Welcome to the team partner” he has that. 2/3 4)Not monologuing. He leaves that to Zurg. 3/4 5) Subtle foreshadowing. He’s foreshadowed but not subtly. 3/5 6) Red herrings. He doesn’t have that. 3/6 7) Ample screen time. He has that in spades 4/7 Turbo from Wreck it Ralph. 1) Understandable motivation. His fifteen minutes of fame are over and he wants them back. That works. 1/1 2) Not enjoying being evil. King Candy definitely enjoys being evil. 1/2 3) Well-done reveal scene “turbo-tastic” 2/3 4) Not monologuing. King Candy does monologue to Ralph to trick him about his motivations but then he’s lying. I’ll grant him this one. 3/4 5) Subtle foreshadowing. He definitely had that. 4/5 6) Red herrings. King Candy was the red herring villain. The plot twist was that King Candy was actually Turbo. I’m not going to grant this one. 4/6 7) Ample screentime. He has that. 5/7 while Lotso in Toy Story 3 1) Understandable motivations. More or less the same as The Prospector’s. 1/1 2) Doesn’t enjoy being evil. He’s not exactly consistent with that. 1/2 3) Good reveal scene. 2/3 4) Not monologuing. I’ll grant him that. 3/4 5) Subtle foreshadowing. It’s not really foreshadowed before the scene where he reveals his true colours. 3/5 6) Red herrings. Non-existent. 3/6 7) Ample screentime. He has that. 4/7.
I was confused when you said Warp from the Buzz Lightyear Movie until i realized you were talking about the cartoon movie with the series, not the more recent movie.
@@Mabra51 Yeah. In the straight to VCR movie Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins used as the pilot for the show Warp Darkmatter is a plot twist villain
@@Mabra51 In the CGI remake (which was vastly inferior to the original cartoon) there is a plot twist that Zurg is actually Buzz making Buzz into a twist villain. And I’m willing to apply the criteria to him as well 1) Understandable motivations. Evil future Buzz wants to fix his mistakes and ease his guilt. He gets the point. 1/1 2) Not enjoying evil. He doesn’t enjoy being Zurg all that much so he gets the point there. 2/2 3) A good reveal scene. All he does is take off his mask. 2/3 4) Not monologuing. He monologues. 2/4 5) Subtle foreshadowing. As Zurg recognized Buzz by name there was an implication of prior familiarity with him and Buzz had earlier commented that what he needed was a Time Machine so it is subtly foreshadowed. 3/5 6)Red herring. There isn’t one. 3/6 7) Ample screen time. He doesn’t really have that. 3/7
This was incredibly helpful! I'm definitely screenshotting the list at the end, and I'll keep these general guidelines in mind for my novel writing, this has already given me plenty of ideas on how to make my twist villains the best they can be. Thank you for the great content!
De la Cruz is one of my favorite twist villains. Ever. Literally ever in the history of ever. The first time I watched this movie, it got me. And it made me love Hector all the more. Coco is so good please god it's so good
Hans's motive was that, being 13th in line for the throne, there's no way he'd ever really inherit. So, he planned to marry into the throne of a separate kingdom.
MAN, I enjoyed your video. It was authentic and yet made me laugh constantly; you made some really good points.In other words, you are cleverly witty, and great with sacrasm.
hii, idk what to say but i've been writing a villain with a fake redemption arc and this is helping a lot honestly!! he only has like 4 and a half of the points you listed in this video so i'm working on him more!! great video it was super entertaining as well
I remember a comment from another video that provided a good element on how twist villains work. A poor twist villain makes you say "I didn't see that coming." A good twist villain makes you say "I should've seen that coming!"
Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of new people.
Gotta be honest, I was expecting like 500 views on this video, and it’s already at like 3500, and that’s pretty cool
I don’t really know what to say now so welcome to the cult I guess :)
You've been blessed by the algorithm. Plus I like your vibes and takes
Enjoyed the video. Though I noticed that throughout the video, you seem to keep mentioning that kids are stupid. I would like to argue that they are a lot smarter than you give 'em credit for. Sure, they make stupid decisions, but that's because they just don't know the world yet and are still learning. I guess I'm a bit bias because, I'm 17 years old, so I'm still a child, but yeah, just wanted to point that out.
I shall now subscribe
Congrats for getting so many views bro!
It’s the Schaffrilas-esque Thumbnail.
"Hans is literally willing to run a sword through an innocent and distraught woman and then let her sister die from like cardiac hypothermia just to be in charge of a 19th century Scandinavian city-state for like 10 years before someone usurps him." I'm not a history professor, but I feel pretty confident that real people have done worse things for less.
Hans is probably the least deadly villain in the 19 century. He actually had a reason why. But yeah, he could have use more work.
It's true but it's hard to imagine them coming off all convincingly charming and singing like Hans.
Yep. The flaw is that Hans was a perfectly good supportive male character until that exact moment.
I think he's an awful character as well, but, like, from a *historical* point of view, his motivation makes sense. He's a prince who has older brothers and will never inherit his parent's kingdom. He needs to marry a princess so he can have one, and he just happened to pick Arendelle. And yeah, people in history have done stuff like that. I still hate how the Hans before the reveal and after the reveal are literally two completely different characters. There is a freaking theory that the trolls cursed him to control his mind and make sure Anna would end up with Kristoff and that explains why he's suddenly a different person.
@@tarniabook3076 thats an interesting theory. But what are the chances that it actually hit Hans? (He was like, VERY FAR AWAY from where the trolls live.)
I think, for me, what makes the twist with Ernesto even better, is the audience’s realization that outed as a murder or not… he won. He killed an innocent man, stole his life’s work, lived the high life basking in adoration until his untimely death. His successful murder indirectly convinced a family that his victim abandoned them for fame and fortune, nearly leading to the man being forever forgotten in the afterlife.
A perfect way to explain just how good he was as a villan.
Also its kinda ironic that his "survival" in the afterlife is pretty much guaranteed even after his crimes were revealed to the living world. I mean he still remained famous (or actually infamous) but as a killer and a fraud, therefore he doesnt have a risk of being forgotten
@@fizzy69o.0yeah
and probably they thought at some point that he probably also had another family if you think , hector my boy suffered even after death :(
@@fizzy69o.0 Well... who's going to really care about getting him out from under that bell, though? As far as the movie shows, Ernesto is spending the rest of his afterlife trapped underneath an airtight iron prison in pitch dark until one day (maybe centuries later) the last person finally forgets about the hack musician who once stole the famous Hector Rivera's songs.
I will never not be disappointed that Frozen didn't give Hans a dark reprise of "Love Is an Open Door" like Mother Gothel got for her song in Tangled.
Oh that could have been awesome
That is the only song I don’t like from Frozen but your idea would have made it a lot better. Especially if they made it like Jafar’s mocking reprise of “Prince Ali”.
"Hate Is a Closed Door"
@@doctorchoicetheunchainedx7523Oh absolutely. Jafar definitely isn’t a twist but him just intensely mocking and outting Aladdin in front of everyone is always great. He’s one of the few villains that genuinely seem like a force to reckon with.
@@frostbitetheannunakiiceind6574 "A lust for power opens a heart"
Hans didn’t even NEED to be a twist villain. I honest-to-God thought they were going for him being a decent guy, but that the kiss wouldn’t work because a crush or infatuation isn’t *true love.* They could have literally gone with the exact same end point of love between the two sisters, but without this weird… distraction.
That would have been an honestly better twist.
An interesting twist is if he had genuine motivation for usurping power from that kingdom. Like, say that kingdom was aggressive and he was trying to stop them, or his own kingdom was dying and he needed their resources or land to rejuvenate it. You could have even made him something of a tragic character, like he knew what he was doing was wrong, didn't like what he was doing, and maybe even genuinely fell for Anna and hated that he had to eventually kill her but felt there was no other way. You could have had great foreshadowing like where he smiles at her under the boat: have after that smile he very briefly gets a really sad or scared look on his face, like that's the point he realized he loved this woman he needs to kill. Have a moment where he "tries and fails" to rescue her and she rescues herself instead, and so on rewatch you realize that was him hoping she'd die so he didn't have to do it. Stuff like that.
I never understood why Hans didn't just kiss Anna, KNOWING that it wouldn't save her because he doesn't love her.
Then he'd get to watch her surprise and horror when it doesn't work, and she dies anyway.
Like if you're gonna go for it, go for it
@@Whatsit_1121 I think it's because the audience might be pissed off if a villain gets the princess' first kiss instead of the hero.
But yeah. In-universe, his actions make no sense.
@@joaomarcoscosta4647 That's a great point, I hadn't thought of that!
I believe the “that was his mistake” line could be better if he looked like he was sad or trying to avoid eye contact with Hiro because his prized student died in an accident he caused on purpose as if he was deflecting the guilt but deep down knows the truth, but unfortunately they made him plain and simple angry completely shifting blame without internalizing at least one bit
I kind of took it as Robbert’s version of Hiro taking Baymax’s health care chip out and telling him to destroy Robert. He said it mostly because his emotions of pain and anger were in control and not letting him think straight.
Your right, that sounds more sad and impactful. What we have now is a freakin Meme😂😂😂.
@@kaitlinowens2714 bro's just a sociopath
That’s fair
Yeah
you're missing a point. A good twist villain needs to keep the same personality. When the villain is like "welp I'm busted might as well act insane now" they're less convincing. When they're like waternoose and regret some of the things they had to do to reach their goal that they're still completely serious about, that almost makes them scarier.
This really reminded me of the first Danganronpa game's third murder mystery and why people didn't like it.
@@yuri-sama.questionmarko you mean second game? Because that's the one where the character's entire personality flips (and for a pretty stupid reason)
Whereas in the first game, the character has many moments of slipping up and accidentally revealing some of their "true" personality before the reveal.
I think the reason people don't like it (or at least in my case) is that it's so bloody obvious that it's them and it could literally not be anyone else so it's frustrating to have to wait for the characters to figure it out. Because the point of dramatic irony is that we the audience have information the characters don't, but since the player and Makoto share the same info, neither him nor the other smart characters realizing for so long makes that whole trial annoying.
Edit: as long as we're taking danganronpa I just wanted to say that the third game's third trial is my least favourite example of this. Like it takes everything I didn't like about the other game's chapter 3's, removes anything I did like, and adds incest for some fucking reason.
Urgh. Hate that third trial so much. I can't understand why DR can't do third trials right to save themselves
@@bigbadgammagnome Oh the second game too. I said the first game since they built up the murderer to be the ultimate liar since she is a gambler after all. But I get where you're coming from since maybe it is part of her personality, either she let all the anger she stored out or she wasn't used to having things not go her way that she threw a tantrum.
The second game, I almost forgot. Because it was so bad. And they didn't have to do Mikan like that. The second game for me is the game with the most missed opportunities. And damn, I don't know anymore because the "twist" was just so bad and forced.
Also. We don't talk about the 3rd game's 3rd case.
@@yuri-sama.questionmark Eh, honestly, Mikan being the killer in the second game was a pretty obvious one but I did like it for two reasons; the first two murderers were somewhat sympathetic after doing all they could to be disliked. Mikan is the inverse, starting off as a person who definitely needed help but was a great ally to the others but getting to be this absolute monster, foreshadowing the events of the finale, and proving that yes, they’re all in this together but murders are still being committed. Less frustrating than Gundham for me.
For the third game, again, we kind of guessed Kiyo was going to be a murderer but the real story was about Himiko becoming a main character, overcoming her grief and compulsive apathy to see the case through and Shuuji helping her with that.
It was nice overall.
I think you’re onto something with this point, but not quite there. Keeping the same personality helps in a lot of cases, but I wouldn’t make it a hardline rule or even a hardline positive, because sometimes a character having been putting on an act is what works for the story. However, what I do think you generally need for a twist villain to be convincing is for their actions before the reveal to still make sense with their true motivations. In fact, I’d say probably the best examples are ones where the villain’s actions seem occasionally strange or slightly at odds with their stated goals before the reveal, but are entirely consistent with their true motives.
Thanks for acknowledging that Ernesto de la Cruz is an actually good twist villain 😊
I agree. I’m sick of people acting like Coco in general is overrated (looking at you, NitPix! Pixar isn’t dead (not yet, anyways. But sometimes they can massively disappoint like in the early 2010s (2011-12) with Cars 2 and Brave, the same decade but a lot later (2018-19) with Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 of the Sequel Era of both Disney Animation and Pixar) and Lightyear)! I know most people love it, but then there will always be a certain crowd of people who would love to hate on good things to make anything inferior look more slept on like, take for instance, Nickelodeon/Paramount+/Viacom/the current state of Disney via Disney+ originals) by making AniMat look bad for all (or most of) the films he gave the Seal of Approval including this film (I know he has his faults, but having honest reviews/making valid points (except for his left-wing politics) a lot of the time is not one of them.
@@kieranstark7213 I didn’t know there was a crowd that disliked Coco. It’s my favorite since the old days of Pixar. Yes that good
It just goes to show that even popular stuff can have people making up criticisms (or pointing out that they exist, which wouldn’t have been invalidated if they were treated like they ruin the movies) just to make them look like 3/5s at best or 0/5s at worst. Opinions are opinions, but facts are also facts.
@Kieran Stark but what happens if someone has a negative opinion over a fact
so true :D
I rewrote Hans for the better, just for fun, once. All you have to do is change the true love's kiss scene to change his entire character into something that's actually believable and interesting. (it's been a while since I've watched frozen) So, Anna comes in, freezing and dying. She explains to Hans that Elsa froze her heart and only an act of true love, true love's kiss can save her. Hans leans in and. . . actually, kisses her. They could both be confused as to why it doesn't work, because Hans really likes Anna, but he's only known her one night and like does not equal love, especially true love. Hans puts two and two together. Elsa is the source of this, I'll go to her, and he'll promise Anna that he's going to go and save her. So, he goes down into the dungeon where Elsa is, tells her the whole kingdom is suffering and Anna is dying, and Elsa is the only one who can stop it. The rest of the movie pretty much happens the same as Hans tries to kill Elsa because he thinks it's the only way to save Anna and her kingdom, Anna saves Elsa and unfreezes herself. Same movie, basically, except Hans is still trying to do what's right because it's the right thing to do and not just, "My brothers bullied me my whole life so, mwah ha ha ha, I'm the bad guy now."
Also, good seven points. I love the, subtlety is good, but only so long as it makes sense in the end point, for twist villains and twists of all kinds.
True love is also fake
@@hurou Why do you think that?
@@gracekatherineTLoV because its a thing people made up to think there is one true love for them out there
@@hurou Who hurt you?
@@tomboyjessie1352 nobody, I'm just saying true love is an ideal and its not really real so you should make due with what you have
in Big Hero 6, there is aa VERY easy way to fix the villain: make him want to confirm if his daughter is still in the portal and alive, thus having the portal remade and wreaking havoc. it would still allow for the finale (albeit changed) and still have a twist villain.
Yeah. I wish it was made like that.
You can even keep the revenge aspect by having him force the guy who sent his daughter through to go through himself to rescue her.
That was disneys mistake!
@@Pixelusually*Surprised **-Pikachu-** Hiro face*
One thing I will say about de la cruz is that while there wasn't already a villain in Coco, there was a CONFLICT. Miguel was trying to get out of the land of the dead, and be able to play music despite his family's hatred of it. I believe that conflict somewhat draws attention away from de la cruz, which if you aren't paying attention, you wouldn't even consider him to be the big bad of the story. At least that's how it was for me when I first watch Coco.
I was thinking the same thing. It would line up with his earlier observation about Toy Story. Sometimes it's the situation itself that drives the story without needed a traditional villain. The first time watching it I wasn't sure what to expect, and for a while was thinking that maybe it would be about how Ernesto's mistake was that he thought abandoning his family was an acceptable price to pay for doing what he loved and that he would have a redemption arc.
20:55 you know what would have been cool? If Callaghan was convinced that somehow, his daughter was alive. And his entire motivation was to reactivate the portal that was already established to be very dangerous, in order to attempt to save her. But she’s already gone. He’s just so unwilling to move on from his loss that he doesn’t care who he hurts, which could fit in with Hiro trying to get Baymax to kill Callaghan. While Hiro would be unwilling to let go of their anger, Callaghan would be unwilling to let go of his sorrow.
The idea of him being convinced that she was still alive sounds like it would be a really cool way to fit in a “mastermind” behind it all, with his own motives involved. It would also be a smart way to tease a sequel at the end.
Permanently on the stage of "Denial"
another comment got me thinking about that, but I do think a plot like that would have been the right way to go, rather than just straight up revenge.
This is why Callaghan is just a MUCH worse rip-off of Mr Freeze.
I like this idea a lot. It takes his motivation from being a hackneyed revenge plot that makes him a two-faced psychopath to actually giving the whole movie a strong overarching theme. Honestly this one change could fix and strengthen the entire movie.
In this version, Callaghan would serve as a sort of "what could be" for Hiro, showing him how bad you can become when you won't let go of the past. Maybe he's mad because the company shut down the program after they lost his daughter, because the portal was extremely dangerous and started destroying everything. He's tried for years to make his own portal but lacks the resources to do it, when he sees Hiro's nanobots and realizes they're perfectly suited for the task.
Additionally, he should genuinely feel terrible that he got Hiro's brother killed, but it still doesn't stop him. He's too focused on getting what he wants that he's willing to hurt anybody who gets in his way.
Bellwether could have been done better so easily.
Like for the motivation.
In her introductory scene you can have the lion say something like “you know she ran against me during the last vote? This shows she has ambition. So as a sign of good faith (and to get the sheep vote) I hired her as my assistant and VP”
Frame the scene as the lion trying to show off how great and full of himself he is, typical villain traits and it would work fine as baby’s first twist.
It would also strengthen Bellweathers motivation. Since it establishes a rivalry between her and the lion. And overthrowing him is her end goal.
Would it be a bit obvious and on the nose?
Sure, but an on the nose villain is better than a nonsensical one.
Yeah unlike Pixar Disney don't give us any foreshadowing on their twist villains, Bellwether sounds like Hans a last minutes villain putted in a movie that could have worked better without a bad guy, it's like Disney is lazy and they are afraid to create a cool villain in these days
@@RayManiac90 I think it’s more that they are afraid of overshadowing their protagonists again.
One of the most popular criticisms of the 1900s Disney films is that their protagonists are relatively boring, especially when pitted next to their villains that always stole the show.
So, in an attempt to course correct they started to over compensate, leaving their villains as forgettable last minute inclusions. To the point where they write the story, without a clear bad guy in mind. Leading to then writing mostly bad guy-less stories with a crappy villain reveal for the climax
@@frankwest5388 yeah they need to stop to listen to these types of criticisms, because it's cool when a cool villain can steal a show, just watch at Puss in Boots 2
@@frankwest5388Huh, I never actually thought about it like that, but you're right. That's so weird.
Funnily enough when trying to think of a Disney movie with memorable protagonists AND villains, my first thought was Emperor's New Groove.
Seriously, all of them are so iconic and have very distinct personalities. This is probably helped by the movie being very zany and a comedy, but it has its heartwarming moments too, which are further elevated by the characters not being bland and one note.
honestly even if she is a stupid twist villain her reasons are not that farfetched given that worse has been done for less power
I'd argue that bellwether is better than Hans because after the lion was arrested you'd naturally assume she was the twist villain. There was no inkling that Hans would be the villain at all. It was a complete rug pull, especially since the Duke of wesselton was right there and could have easily been the antagonist. They even admitted to rewriting the story late into production which explains why the "twist" was so jarring.
Plus she supported making judy he face of the zpd. On the surface seemigly reasonable she had just exposed major corruption but also would serve to add credibility to Judy's biological component comment. Bellweather was the strongest of the three imo. Edit: also wanted to that I still agree her motivation could have been fleshed out more it was clear that not everything was hunky dory between preds and prey in zootopia like the uploader had suggested.
In my perspective, when I first watched Frozen, I had the feeling that Hans would be the main villain because well no one is that perfect, it's like how Kristoff pretty much deconstructed the true love princess prince routine, they only met the guy just that day and don't really know who he is, may look nice but could actually be a jerk instead.
For me, Mr. Waternoose caught me off guard at the twist because it explores more of his relationship with sully, a good boss and kind of like a father figure so when it's revealed he's in cahoots with Randall, that came as a surprise. Meanwhile Hans is just there.
Ngl, I did expect Lionheart to be the twist villain of Zootopia more than Bellwether because of how evil he would be (Bellwether wouldn’t be any better since she ruled Zootopia with an iron fist by darting animals with poison-berries alongside her men, but I think that’s something Lionheart would do with his personality that sounds akin to the World Economic Forum).
Good thing I’m not the only one who much prefers Zootopia (and pretty much other Walt Disney Animation Studios films (before Ralph Breaks the Internet came and started the era of WDAS being a shell of its former self except for Encanto being a Diamond in the rough when it comes to feature films and Short Circuit and Zenimation being very underrated series by the company that is… yet to improve in the mid-2020s (with Wish coming this late November like most recent WDAS movies, Zootopia 2 (or 2topia) and Frozen III???) over the Frozen duology for being a less jumbled and more politically relevant movie!
@@kieranstark7213 The politics were the weakest part of the movie in my opinion, I just enjoy Zootopia because the setting's fun and the leads are good characters.
Unlike Frozen. I could rant about how Elsa's a despicable, self-centred bitch with a hideously overrated song (THIS is the situation right NOW, THIS is what I'm FEELING, *I'm going to spell everything out in the most insipid, tell-don't-show method imaginable because the song writers for these idiotic movies don't know how to write songs!* ) for hours.
Hans: i want power
Callaghan: you killed my daughter
Bellwether: R A C I S M
Ok here’s an idea I’ve had for a fresh take on a twist villain
The movie starts with no clear villain but throughout the movie the actions or mistakes of the main characters cause someone in the main cast to BECOME the villain
Like you see a once good or neutral character’s slow downfall (which teaches morality) and it shows the heroes aren’t always perfect and how there are actual consequences for mistakes or how you treat others
You get to be connected to the characters, you understand their motivations completely, and the emotional devastation would ACTUALLY be heartbreaking
The incredibles maybe?
Actually there are characters who became villains. They're even made by Disney.
I'm talking about Varian and Cassandra from Tangled (series).
The movie Chronical is kind of like that if I remember correctly
Megamind? It starts with a villain but he's not really a villain
this actually reminds of Morgana's character development in BBC's "Merlin" (that show had me in a chokehold)
There actually IS one good Disney twist villain who checks off the boxes: King Candy from Wreck it Ralph. I’ll go off the checklist too.
1: Motive. King Candy AKA Turbo has his motive explained when they talk about how he jumped games. He wants to be the most popular racer out there.
2: Realistic evil. There are plenty of people like him and Ernesto who would throw people under the bus to be popular, and memorable.
3: Reveal. The way Vanelope glitches him into showing his true form in the middle of a race is great because you see why he’s so good, and how far he’s willing to go to prevent Vanelope from winning.
4: Monologue. There is a bit of monologue, but it doesn’t halt the climax as it’s going on so it’s excusable.
5: Previous threat. The cybugs are definitely a good force of nature villain, and they even tie into King Candy getting a power up, and his own death/defeat.
6: Subtlety. His head shape matches up perfectly in both forms. And he’s shown to be the one to get rid of Vanelope from the game data which makes sense in retrospect as to why he’d do it. Also the fact that he makes himself King fits in with his narcissistic personality.
7: Time to be villainous. This is honestly the best part. You can see him manipulate Ralph into not letting Vanelope race and making it look like it’s for her own good, when it’s really for selfish reasons. He’s being villainous before it’s revealed he’s even the bad guy.
yeah, I tried to avoid mentioning him because I knew it wouldn’t help prove my point lmao
@@pistachiosforeveryone Eh, I don’t think that one good twist villain from Disney nullifies the point that Pixar has MORE good twist villains
Turbo is actually far and away my personal favorite Disney Villain, but I would argue that these points go a little differently. If I may:
1) Motive: The setting’s premise is basically “Toy Story but video games” so one could say his motive is to be played. And to be the center of attention, which is _sortof_ played for comedy in his backstory, but still is an integral part of “to be played.” (And he does spend a lot of his time as King Candy *being* a mostly comedic villain, which definitely helps.) Solid first point.
2) Evil For The Sake Of It: I mean… yes but also not really? It almost reads to me as more like a personality disorder (insofar as an 80’s arcade character can have one, anyway). But you are correct in that there are real people like him and Ernesto who will go to extremes and throw people under the bus to get ahead. And like _I_ mentioned, he spends a lot of his time as King Candy being a mostly comedic villain, so “evil for the sake of it” is at least somewhat excusable, I think (especially for a character who, In-Universe, comes from the 80’s). Plus he clearly loses every remaining thread of his sanity after getting eaten by a Cy-Bug. I say he gets like a half point here.
3) Memorable Reveal: Here’s the thing: one could argue that he technically has multiple reveals - and it is one thing that made me fall in love with this movie, the fact that it kept me guessing. First is the reveal of what “going Turbo” even means (which is itself kind of memorable for the _wrong reasons,_ actually. Like if not for the music and intentionally nauseating camera angles, I might not have even realized it was meant to be a serious scene); then there’s the reveal that there actually is a reasonable and not inherently evil explanation for why Vanellope can’t be allowed to race (the jerk legit actually fooled me on my first watch and I was 17 years old at the time, I was like “wait. no. shit that actually makes a lot of sense, i didn’t even think about that gdi”), and that leads to probably the heaviest scene in the movie; then Sour Bill reveals the true extent of King Candy’s deception and we go forward from there; and finally, the big one, that Turbo and King Candy are the same person. It’s visually striking, it comes at an already intense moment, and the other characters are *very* shocked at this development. *Very* solid point.
4) Monologue: He gets in about two sentences while he’s having a villainous breakdown and actively in the middle of trying to murder Vanellope, but they say all that needs to be said, and he gets right back to business after that brief spiel. Solid point.
5) Previously Established Conflict: Personally, I would not argue in favor of the Cy-Bugs, because I honestly sometimes forget they’re even in the movie. But this is a bit of a tricky point regardless - the initial conflict comes from Ralph wanting to prove that he’s more than “just the bad guy who wrecks the building,” and to that end heading to another game to obtain superficial physical proof that he can do good, unthinkingly putting his own game in danger because he’s such an important part of it. Then he makes it his mission to help someone who has it even worse than he does (because at least Ralph can leave his game and talk to other people), and here’s where the conflicts overlap: King Candy is antagonistic towards Vanellope, and from the point Van and Ralph decide to team up (especially after they bond), antagonism towards Vanellope is antagonism towards Ralph. What makes this point tricky is that the big reveal isn’t that Turbo is the real villain, it’s that the “decoy villain” and the “true villain” are actually the same person. He’s _been_ the main antagonist who, by giving Ralph his medal, actively made the emotional conflict even worse, and when Sour Bill tells Ralph the truth about Vanellope, it’s really more of a confirmation that yes, King Candy is in fact the bad guy. All we’re missing now is the “why,” and being a usurper whose continued reign depends on Vanellope not racing is a good enough explanation that makes sense.*
But I’ll still give him the point, because like I said, there was already an initial conflict even before he showed up, and even though he becomes the main antagonist pretty quickly after he does show up, the initial conflict (that he actively made worse) is still the emotional center of the movie.
6) Subtlety: Some people picked up on it on first watch, some people didn’t. That, to me, is proof enough that it was telegraphed enough to not feel like it came out of nowhere, but still subtle enough to be a compelling mystery that ends up rewarding attentive viewers while being a treat for people rewatching it to look for all the clues. I certainly didn’t see it coming, and - again - I was 17 at the time. Easy point.
7) Villainous Presence/Activity: This one’s kinda tricky, too, for the same reason as Point 5 - the big twist isn’t that Turbo’s the true villain, it’s that he and King Candy are the same person. He _has_ had a villainous (or at least antagonistic) presence throughout the movie, we just didn’t know the specifics of _why._ And, like Ernesto, he kind of already accomplished his goal (taking over another game so he can be the center of attention again) long before the events of the movie; his struggle is simply keeping it that way. But, unfortunately, after his big reveal, he almost immediately gets eaten by a Cy-Bug, and while King Candybug made for an awesome final boss, he still didn’t really do much other than be a visually stunning final obstacle not unlike Dragon!Maleficent. So, regrettably, I don’t think I can give him a full point. I’ll give him a half point for being very much the main villain from the moment Vanellope pays her entrance fee to the Random Roster Race and therefore very much the main villain for most of his screentime.
But hey, 6/7 is nothing to sneeze at. 85% is still a good B. Like a different video said, King Candy and Turbo being the same person doesn’t make or break the plot, but it _does_ retroactively make both of them a lot more interesting, and for that reason I will always love him. Turbo-Tastic! 👍
*I do feel it’s worth mentioning that in earlier drafts of the movie, King Candy and Turbo actually _were_ separate characters, with KC getting a redemption arc (or at least forgiveness after Turbo’s defeat). Personally, I think making them the same character was a good call that definitely worked in _Wreck-It Ralph’s_ favor, even if it did unintentionally set a terrible precedent for the next three main Disney movies. Here’s hoping we can come back to traditional-style Disney villains sometime soon. 🤞❤
@@HannahBanina small correction, but King Candy Cybug is the one that makes the monologue as Ralph is trying to destroy mount Cola. I consider them the same character, because He has his memories, and personality. Which is why I gave a perfect 7
@@pistachiosforeveryone Cherry-picking does not a good argument make. In fact I would argue that, played right, acknowledging King Candy would have only strengthened your point: a curiosity showing that Disney, at one point, had at least _some_ idea of how to make a decent twist villain, only to not learn the right lessons from it, devolve into shock value that inevitably loses its punch, and leave themselves unable to even market their new villains without spoiling their movies. Even a brief analysis of how King Candy worked where his successors didn’t would have really thrown Hans’s, Yokai’s, and Bellwether’s shortcomings into sharp relief and -given me more excuse to gush over my favorite movie- driven home what a problem this villain-mishandling is.
I kinda figured that was why you didn’t mention him, though. I don’t blame ya (I know I certainly don’t want to lump him in with those embarrassments). Just some attempt at constructive criticism for future videos. Have some candy! 🍬
One detail I also really liked with de la Cruz, was how, unlike Imelda when de la Cruz was giving his blessing, the marigold DIDN'T light up after he said blessing, like it did with Miguel's ACTUAL family members, pushing on the fact that de la Cruz wasn't his ACTUAL great great grandfather
ig thats why he turned around and called guards on Miguel too, since it wouldnt have worked anyway
@@sarah12232even if ir had, he was afraid Miguel would find a way to exposs him
An even better detail is they confirmed that you don't necessarily need to be blood related for it to work as long as you were genuinely 'family' in a sense so it doubly works because De La Cruz never accepted Miguel as legitimately his family but instead a prop he could showcase to make himself look better like "LOOK AT MY WONDERFULLY TALENTED GREAT GREAT GRANDSON IT RUNS IN THE BLOOD!"
@@ZLScratch Where did they show the part where you don't have to be blood-related?
Also that de la Cruz actually believed Miguel was his great great grandson too, or at least believed to some degree it was possible. And even if he wasn't sure to believe Miguel why not accept this living child everyone is talking about as my great great grandson? It certainely made him look good.
The twist with Han’s would have been far better if he kissed Anna and it didn’t break the curse causing him to panic and lead him down a downward spiral of desperation.
THIS
The first live-action Maleficent did something close to that.
True but I controversially still like it like it is. Good old fashioned villainy
If only one thing could be changed about the scene, just have Hans commit to the kiss and let Anna realize herself that it ain't true love. Even with no other changes (keeping the monologue and all), that would have instantly made the scene ten times better, made Han's villain reveal more dramatic, further subvert multiple of the usual Disney tropes simultaneously, et cetera.
Come on, the idea was right there, and it's not even just Hans as a character that would have been made better by having him do that.
I think you forgot one of the most important points; the audience’s connection to the villan. A good twist villan is someone who you liked or even rooted for -before- they where revealed. It needs to be not only suprise, but a feeling of betrayal. This person should also be someone the character feels close too.
yeah like my favourite character in the tangled series
was that one kid
turns out
yeah he was evil
i was like: NOOOOOO NOOOOOO HOW COULD YOU DO THIIISSSSSSSSS 😭😭😭😭
(i was like 12 when i watched it okay?)
Like Luke Castellan (iykyk)
For Hans - Weselton should've been replaced by one of Hans' older brothers: making fun of him for basically being a nobody, maybe manipulating him by saying maybe he could be a somebody if he married a princess and became king, and then telling Hans that his chance has come when Elsa takes off into the wild. It would've made you question Hans' motives the whole time, especially if he has negative reactions to his brother and positive actions helping Anna.
That’s a good idea.
A common pitfall with Hans, Bellweather and Disney’s other twist villains is that when the twist happens, the friendly front they put on is revealed to be a complete act that doesn't represent at all what they're really like. So they're essentially two different characters, and the "real" one only shows up in the last third, so we never really get to know them. The only major exception to this is probably Lotso, but only because the twist/reveal happens much earlier in the film, so his real personality is more fleshed out than his fake one.
But what makes most of Pixar's twist villains (Ernesto, Waternoose, Charles Muntz) work so well is that they’re not really _faking_ their charismatic demeanours from earlier. They’re genuinely hospitable and even friendly to the protagonists rather than manipulating or using them, but when the things they value are threatened, their more unhinged and cruel sides come to light. We’re not seeing the "real" them, we’re just seeing a different side to them that was there in plain sight the whole time.
While the typical twist villains are probably easier for kids to process, I really appreciate the nuance in the idea that even people with sincerely good qualities can still be capable of committing atrocities, without even thinking that they’re wrong.
I've met/worked with people like that. Bellweather is VERY real, especially in politics.
Syndrome works here too, since we never see him act like a "good guy" without prior knowledge.
As a kid he won't take no for an answer and so messes up. As an adult we see him try to act like a good guy to the citizens, but we already know he is a villain before that.
Mirage even acts as a front for his business, so we don't get bogged down with "CEO Buddy Pine" or something. We just hear about some mysterious benefactor and catch glimpses of his silhouette before the reveal.
But then they went and did that anyway with the Screenslaver anyway...
Lotso is also from Pixar though.
That Hans is all a front is objectively shown in the movie. Look at his eyes before he starts running to stop the shooter, th-cam.com/video/afnhCvicqdI/w-d-xo.html, he knows where the chandelier is and the accident is an "accident" so he can look good saving Elsa. How can anyone suspect someone who does so much to save someone of wanting to kill them? And yet, if you interpret every scene he's in from Elsa gets outed he's clearly working towards being able to kill her and no one suspecting anything.
@@nielsjensen4185 I agree that Hans actually gets too much criticism. The way I've always viewed the movie is that when that one noble/royal assistant interrupts and says "You are all Arendelle has left" that's when he realizes "Oh crap, I can run this place!"
While his personality shift is too quick and drastic to make much sense, both this and the scene where he captures Elsa and puts her in the dungeons are pretty good inklings that he's not the greatest guy. That and proposing on the literal first date
Apparently in one of the various dubs for Big Hero 6 (German dub, iirc), the line that is dubbed over "That was his mistake!" would translate to "I didn't ask him to save me!"
One of the reasons why I didn't have a problem with Callahan in the german version. He was right, Tadashi was plain stupid to walking into this burning building that was that much on fire that it looked like it was about to blow up.
In portuguese brazil was "ele foi porque quis" it's tadashi goes to save him because he wants. But tadashi didn't know
Same in russian dub he simply said "I didn't ask him".
I will point out that Frozen kind of has a character set up to be the villain before the twist, and that's Duke Wesselton. He doesn't like Elsa, and constantly expresses doubt and suspicion on her. However, as soon as Hans is revealed to be the real bad guy, he quietly disappears without another mention, which is weird for a supposed trade partner.
I mean his first introduction has him question what secrets lies behind the castle even the possibility of riches.
There was so much potential in having Hans being a man who was trying to do what was right through a wrong method than being a villain.
Actually, it was revealed that the kingdom of Arendelle had cut ties with Weaseltown and the duke was pretty mad about it.
@@johnathanholmes1297 like seriously though. Could you imagine how bone chilling it'd be to watch the kiss not work, and him coming to the realization that to save Anna, and the kingdom, he would have to kill Elsa? Like that would have been AMAZING, and instead we got that-
The Duke was underused, and his "punishment" - heck even Han's punishment was just a slap on the wrist - for trying to MURDER a queen 😮 I know it's for kids but seriously? Just shovel some horse poop and have trades cut off - bit light if you ask me 😂
The movie shows him being "escorted" aboard a ship at the end.
I can think of a way in which Hans being a villain could have been salvaged, and in a way that doesn't even need to drastically alter the plot.
If he went through with that kiss and both he and Anna were equally surprised Pikachu face that it didn't lift Elsa's curse, he started to realize that he doesn't actually love her and can't be enough to make things right, but he has another option. If he can't fix what happened to Anna and her people then he can still at least take the reins and make Arendelle his by leaving Anna for dead and going off to kill Elsa, seizing Arendelle as a place of his own as was his dream, and he announces all of this to her in a sort of deranged monologue so the rest of the plot pretty much functions as normal.
Yeah, it would still be stupid of him to assume killing Elsa would un-plunge Arendelle from its eternal wintery nightmare but of what little we know of his backstory, he could be plausibly desperate enough to do something so unhinged as a spur-of-the-moment decision, rather than something pre-meditated with presumably enough time to rationally think over and realize why doing that would be a really bone-headed move on all fronts. You know, like what happened in the actual movie.
Hans would go from a poorly written twist villain to a turncoat villain who was well-intentioned from the start despite a rough upbringing but due to unfortunate circumstances, he snapped, caved into his inner demons, and tried to enact a hostile takeover when the best opportunity presented itself to him and he felt he was left with no other realistic options anyway. He could have even served as a haunting cautionary tale about what envy and desperation can do to an otherwise good person IMO. Am I wrong? Would that be a good way to fix Hans into a more interesting villain?
That would be a great idea.
Pixar just called, they want you to work for them.
Okay seriously, that was actually a really good idea, I'm really intrigued... Have you ever thought about writing a story? I think you would do a great job with it!
Honestly, yes. That would be perfect. He'd be closer to an anti-hero than a villain. His crime is simply that he doesn't truly love her, just the idea of them together.
He could even decide to go after Elsa to save her, and the kingdom at the same time.
"Don't worry, just try to stay warm. I know what to do. I'll save you… and Arendelle."
"But, how?"
Sad look, "By doing what must be done."
"What must be… no… You don't mean- Wait, STOP!"
"You will forgive me, in time. Arendelle needs this. You need this," closes door.
He could have a bit of a mini-redemption when he's caught and Elsa is about to expel him.
"I know why it didn't work. When I was out there on the ice, thinking I wasn't going to find Elsa in time. It… it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Because I could still save Arendelle. I could still rule. I think I loved the idea of us, ruling together, more than I ever loved you."
But hey, why make the villain sympathetic. If we do that kids might want to be villains!! *gasp*
Oh, and I only spent a couple minutes writing that dialogue. Just as an example to the direction they could've taken it.
@@Sylfa Like, maybe he could've even talked about how his aforementioned siblings found someone to rule with and how easy they all made it look, which would explain why he had such high expectations to experience a literal "true love at first sight" moment only to have that illusion of hope shatter to bits in an instant. It goes to show the potential Hans had as a character and how far it could've gone.
Ernesto was definitely a great twist. We are lead to believe this guy is the main characters relative only to see that he is nothing but power hungry and his personality never switched up like Hans
I like how even when we know his secret he still acts the same in front of a camera at the end.
To me the only genuinely great twist villain Disney has done would be Turbo from Wreck-It Ralph.
He already has such a great foundation with the actions of King Candy throughout, including having Turbo work as an excellent plot point for game hopping with his story being used as a cautionary tale throughout.
And then we get the twist itself which while being a little unconventional works just as well as Waternoose imo, especially with his motivations being simple which works incredibly well when you remember he’s from a simple game.
I also love that even after the reveal happens he still has plenty of agency to continue being a villain, and genuinely doesn’t feel out of character for his pre-twist actions
Also this was really good video and I hope you get more attention!! Consider this a boost for the algorithm on top of general feedback
Honestly, I have no idea why Pistachios for Everyone skipped Turbo (and other twist villains, for that matter, like Tiberius Rourke in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Lotso in Toy Story 3, Doris in Meet the Robinsons, Miles Axelrod (I know the infamous sexual predator John Lasseter was the one to direct it even after doing a highly decent job with the first two Toy Story movies and Cars 1, but despite being a major disappointment because of Mater’s assassination (seriously, he’s even more like Lasseter than John Lassetire, the cartoon version of himself in that movie!) some great qualities like a strong soundtrack (seriously, “Polyrhythm” will never get out of our heads) and an unpredictable and threatening twist villain like Miles Axelrod) because of how great WIR really is (still waiting for GamingMagic13 to make “Why Ralph Breaks the Internet Wrecked Everything” like he promised in his Cars on the Road review)!
@@kieranstark7213 he said in other comments that he actively avoided it because he thinks it wouldn’t help prove his point
No Disney twist villain can top Turbo
You might as well throw in Lyle Rourke from Atlantis (2001), we didn’t expect him at all to be the bad guy.
@@Midnight_Afton645Lyle Rourke created the recipe of Disney (Not Disney-Pixar) Twist Villains.
Cal bothers me so much more than the others just by merit of the fact that I love his aesthetic. Before the unmasking, he’s such a terrifying badass. If they just gave him a decent motivation and made him human, he could have been Syndrome tier.
@@sephirothcrescent5768 Having a motivation doesn’t mean it’s a good motivation. If I stubbed my toe and used it as justification to commit genocide, it’d be really obvious the toe stubbing wasn’t actually the reason. I’d just be off my rocker.
agreed! the mask was so cool and the chase scene with the microbots looked so high stakes. the unmasking ruined everything, he was just some lame guy with a thirst for revenge lmao
I honestly agree, I felt like if he had a better motivation (or at least tweaked the motivation a bit more if they wanted to keep the motivation. Either way make it a bit better) I think Cal would of been the Syndrome of Disney if not better (depending on how they did it) and plus I think he had some good things like the chase scene was god tier but it’s a shame that the villain’s modulation didn’t live up to it.
Cal's motivation should have been that he wanted to open the portal so he could go search for his daughter. Maybe he feels sorry that Tadashi died in the fire, but if he had to choose between his student's life and his daughter's life, of course he's gonna choose the daughter. Going to such evil extremes just to get revenge on a guy is inhumane.
@@luluzin5022 If it were me, I would've combined the two motivations together. Have him want to open the portal to rescue his daughter AND to trap Cray in there to "teach him a lesson". Add on a hint of remorse, or at least sympathy, for Tadashi, take out the part where the characters "figure out" that the villain is Cray, add in some more subtle hints to strengthen Cray's red herring qualities and some even subtler hints towards Callaghan's villainy, and you've got yourself a golden twist villain right there.
I remember hearing this about Zootopia and I think it’s quite accurate. The movie is about racism but you can’t solve racism, so they put in a twist villain to have a climax and an ending without it feeling “empty”
I'm glad that you didn't talk about Syndrome really. I've seen so many people say he's a twist villain but I don't think he is. He's a villain, with a twist, but he's not a twist villain. There is no reveal of "I was evil all along" his reveal is "I have a motivation you saw earlier" it's like calling Darth Vader a twist villain because he goes "I am your father" even though we've known he's the villain the whole time.
I think Meet the Robinsons is often forgotten when people talk about Twist Villains. Bowlet Hat Guy and DOR15 are both introduced as villains from the start of the movie, but have their own twists - With Bowler Hat Guy being sort of a reverse Twist Villain in a way since he's introduces as a villain and its later revealed he used to be friendsw ith the main character and with DOR15 being that her plans go way beyond Petty Revenge to the point of double-crossing Bowler Hat Guy.
They're not traditional Twist Villains but imo the way they're integrated into the plot works really well
So… would Bellwether have been a better twist villain if, say, she not only had more screentime, but also a bit more of a motive? I couldn’t help but notice that she was pretty supportive of Judy as she was raising up in the ranks of the police department and how everyone else seemed to belittle them both for being small and cute critters. I could easily see Bellwether’s role being more effective if she were subtly manipulating Judy’s investigation to ruin the mayor’s reputation and have her bias towards predators stem from her and Judy’s past experiences with being victims of discrimination - the difference being that Judy realizes her mistake and tries to rectify it while Bellwether chooses to cling onto her victimhood since it’s the only thing she’s known.
I ask since I’ve heard plenty of people say that the film didn’t need a villain, to which I beg to differ. The whole premise of the film was centered around a criminal master plot with coverups and everything, so there being no villain wouldn’t make sense.
I thought she had plenty of motive: political power -with which comes money and fame.
Part of the point of the movie is that predjudice against preds existed the entire time and used to be worse in the past. That's Nick's entire backstory. Bellweather is taking advantage of a preexisting problem in society to give herself an advantage. She's weaponizing her own victimhood as a small cute prey animal against other people who don't have the same privileges.
Or, broadly, Zootopia is about the intersection of racism and sexism, and Bellweather is the white lady who called the cops on a black man who asked her to leash her dog in accordance with local laws.
... She has a motive. She's a complete and utter narcissist who thrives on causing drama, acts nice, friendly and put upon in public but goes psycho behind closed doors, gets off on having people at her complete and utter mercy, and has an uncanny ability to walk away from the fireworks she set off smelling like roses instead of smelling of powder.
I mean, compare Bellwether's rant to #AmberTurd's rant. For such a "motiveless, unrealistic character", she's acting uncannily similar to a real person we have real footage of. Bellwether just happens to have a convenient berserk-inducing toxin ready to be deployed at a moment's notice, which, in the hands of a narcissist, is pretty much the equivalent of "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A".
So… judging by the comments, I’m guessing “Zootopia” is a movie that requires a twist villain and not a typical Disney villain?
@@Camphorous exactly what i thought. The whole idea of zootopia is that she is a racist in power, that the whole idea of "preds are evil and strong" is supposed to represent racism while the whole "prey are weak and cute" thing is a callback to sexism since judy also experiences it. It's a 2 in 1 basically lol and just shows the struggles people face because of stereotypes.
Racism and sexism aren't reasonable, that's the whole deal. You can have no real motive at all, no bad experience, to be racist if it was drilled into you as a kid.
For Hans #6, foreshadowing, the way he mentioned his brothers worked for me. When he and Anna were talking and he mentioned the fact that he had 12 older brothers, it seemed natural that they would be bonding over stories about their siblings since Anna and Elsa's relationship was central to the plot. When his motivation was revealed, the fact that he had 12 older brothers took on a new meaning. That's when I realized how frustrating his position could feel to a person; as the son of the king he was so close to the throne, while at the same time as brother #13 he was so far down the line that he had no hope of ever reaching it.
The idea of him letting Anna die didn't make sense to me though. He was basing his claim to the throne on everybody taking his word that he and Anna had gotten married right before she died, apparently in a ceremony with nobody else present which throws the legality of the whole thing into doubt even if everybody does believe him. Not only that, he hadn't even gotten rid of Elsa yet. Sure, he was planning on killing her soon, but he couldn't have waited until he was sure that had been taken care of first? What was the point exactly? An explanation could be that he knew the kiss wouldn't work; but if that were the case he could at least try to come up with some kind of explanation. No, he wanted her dead then and there and didn't care that he blew his cover in the process. It wasn't as if he couldn't stand the idea of being married to Anna even for a short time, since that seemed to be his original plan anyway. Even if he did want to get rid of Anna eventually, for some reason he had to do it the first chance he got, even though that meant taking her out while he was still in the middle of pulling off the plan? Why not wait few months, when everything had calmed down and he was securely on the throne? It felt so much like the only reason he turned when he did was that the movie needed him to start openly acting as the antagonist at that point.
I think its partially because the writers and animators themselves had planned for Elsa to be the villain during the creation of the film, and suddenly changed their mind when much of the movie was already made, which caused some issues.
There's also the fact that the song Anna sings with him doesn't match up (the sandwiches thing), but that only proves he was pretending in front of her. His plan was pointlessly rushed.
@@darleneandrews3030 do you have a source for that or is this an exaggeration of elsa’s very early concept art? because they released rejected song demos that were very clear about elsa not being a villain, so it can’t have been that late into production.
I think Elsa would have made a great redemption villian. Starting out cold (pun intended) but gradually warming up (2nd pun intended) revealing that her villainous acts were a result of her personal fear. Granted, that is what kind of happened in the film but by making her a good guy and the parents look horrible just made it feel rushed and Elsa kind of flat as a character. 😊
I think their song together foreshadows Hans' personality - he sings he's been looking to find his own PLACE - and that right there tells you he doesn't care much about love, only a place to rule, which as a prince he's been raised to believe is the only way to prove himself, the only proper life. Go back and listen, it's chilling.
Another pretty good twist villain that’s slept on is Rourke from Atlantis: the lost empire. He gave hints throughout the whole time, and seemed like a legitimate threat especially physically where he was basically throwing Milo around like a toy. Great video, cheers.
Atlantis is such a slept on movie cause of its rocky release being a pure action movie in the Disney age of princess movies, it my favourite classic Disney movie by leagues, and Rourke is an amazing twist villain at first you just think he is a bit of a stuck up meathead army man, with some of evilish blunt statements he makes which on re-watches you can directly tie to the twist reveal of his true nature but at first watch you attribute it to him being a soldier
Tbf if you want Routke to be here you have to give Palpatine a better ranking since their strategy of hiding is very much the same
Fred flat out saying the villain was Callaghan is actually genius. It's that obviousness that makes you think it can't be him. Prime example of reverse psychology
HOLY SHIT FINALLY SOMEONE THAT UNDERSTANDS THAT THE VILLAIN OF A STORY CAN BE A CONCEPT AS OPPOSED TO A PERSON THANK YOU
what's even better about waternoose is that he not only was designed to look more scary then sully, with him
being a literal monster spider person whilst sully is the equivalent to a cute teddy bear, but he could also easily
come off as some sort of friendly grandpa of sorts who is constantly seen as calm, collected, has fun and cares
for his employees. He's a veteran who has seen it all and relates to those under him and that's what makes him
such an unexpected twist villain even when his designs should seem absolutely obvious.
like waternoose is a literal giant, creepy looking spider monster, yet due to him being surrounded by other monsters he
never stood out and with randall being there he even looked less suspicious, to the point where everyone considered him
to be a secondary character until the moment he became the big bad all along.
Waternoose doesn’t monologue because he’s well set up enough that he doesn’t need to. You get the idea that he cares deeply about his company well before the twist. When it’s revealed, all you need is a quick two sentences about him doing whatever it takes to keep things going. He’s the anti-Bellweather in that sense.
That being said, despite the monologuing, Syndrome is my favorite twist villain. Creative and appropriate motive for the story, flashy reveal, and still fun to watch and threatening after his reveal.
Completely unrelated but bro's voice is so cute
i feel a uwu vibe with this dude voice
@@franciscoOrellana29 was thinking the same thing!
AYO
not sure how to feel about that but thanks
No homo
Ernesto De La Cruz turning out to be the murderer of Miguel’s great-great-grandpa was the most shocking twist that 11-year-old me had ever seen.
One clue that Waternoose is the villian is Randall having a secret lair in the company building. Not just some closet with folders of evil plans but a huge set up with machinery and utility access all behind a secret panel. We don't question how Randall has this big lair within the workplace because we expect every villain has an evil lair. But when you learn Waternoose is a collaborator in the plan to kidnap children, the lair makes much more sense. He probably commissioned it (off the books) and set Randall up in there as a workshop space to develop the extractor.
I think Ernesto is THE best twist villain on the list. We know of him, grow to like him, are made to think he's the grandfather. And then he betrays our feelings, and it was a DAMN good betrayal. As for the others, I haven't watched Monster's Inc or Toy Story in a while. But if I recall, I didn't take too much interest in Waternoose or Pete.
Yeah I love Waternoose as a twist villain, but I think his only flaw (at least compared to Ernesto, in this one regard) is that while Sully likes Waternoose, the audience probably doesn't care about him too much. Maybe feel sympathy for his company going down, but that's about it. His betrayal is shocking to both the characters and the audience, but he only betrays Sully, not the audience. But that's a hard thing to pull off, and not necessary for a good twist villain.
I just think it's bonus points if the twist villain is one where both the characters and the audience feel stabbed in the back, because you really felt like you liked the villain.
I mean, Waternoose already looks really scary. It works great for when he's revealed evil and chasing down Sully, but not so much for garnering appeal, especially from kids
Anyways I'm rambling but I *love* Monsters Inc, it was that one movie I constantly watched and rewatched as a kid, so I'll jump at any chance to talk about it lol
@@bigbadgammagnome I'll explain it this way. From a kid's standpoint, think of Sully as your dad. That would make Waternoose your dad's boss. I don't think kids really care who their parents work for. They just care about their parents. As such, Waternoose is already a character removed from the concern of the audience because of the role he plays. As a kid, I don't think I grasped the urgency of a company failing. I only understood that Boo had to go home. Course, I'm saying this as someone who hasn't seen the movie in a while.
As for Ernesto, he's a celebrity. You're introduced to him first. Migel loves him, emulates him, and clearly worships him. We've all had celebrities in our lives that we worshipped. For me, it was Yugi Moto. So, the audience is made to care about Ernesto because of Migel's affection towards him. Then when we think he might be the kid's great great grandfather. Then we see how many obstacles he goes on to get to the guy. I actually shed a tear seeing the kid hug the man's skull.
I'm sorry but I'm still rooting for Ernesto. I mean, imagine finding out that your hero, who you think you're related to, killed a man to get to where he is. And then he decides to kill you to keep his secret. THAT IS MESSED UP! Sure, a ceo doing illegal things to maintain their company is really bad. Ernesto's betrayal was just personal.
The interesting parts are the first hints and red flags we get about Ernesto: Miguel wanting to be just like him after saying that he got crushed by the bell.
The other part being that as an adult, you could see early enough that "do whatever it takes to seize your moment" could have dark implications too.
Then the way Frida and Hector talked about Ernesto, Frida saying that Ernesto doesn't rehearse and Hector saying that he taught him everything. The interesting part in this is that Hector was lying in various moments on screen, making him unreliable since we don't know when he actually lies (he's still surprisingly honest though, admitting to his faults)
The actual big hint was when Ernesto was confused about having descendents - if he had been the 2x great gramp, he wouldn't have been surprised that his kid had children of her own etc. It's suggested that he also had many flings, so the only reason why he would believe Miguel would be that he could have had a kid out of an affair and they continued the legacy.
And the next big and final one before the reveal was when Ernesto holds the petal and tries to send Miguel home. The petal didn't glow, while it did for Imelda and Hector later immediately.
The next ones before the reveal are smaller, Ernesto recognizing Hector and not denying that they played together confirms Hector's words and discredits him as a liar, especially when we get the reveal of Hectors reason why he wants to cross the bridge.
Also several hints at Hector being the true ancestor came in their similarities - both he and Miguel have a dimple, are scrawny and share a similar hair cut. They both tend to impulsively lie but be honest about it later on.
I actually wasn't shocked that Ernesto turned out to be a twist villain, just because of how Disney/Pixar overused them so much. The moment where Miguel thought that Ernesto was his grandpa, I thought "oh it's not going to be him, so he's the villain?", solely on the fact that these two companies can't leave this trope alone. They try to do this so the movies "aren't predictable", but they just become even more predictable.
Ernesto's reveal was really good tho, the flashback is heartbreaking, especially when you think of the effects it had on Miguel's family
Him being a murderer was honestly a really good twist, but him not being the great grandfather was painfully predictable imo
As much i enjoyed big hero six, him being the villain was seriously one of those 'oh, there was no way *ANYONE* could have seen that twist coming' because there wasnt a single clue for it. Like at all.
The twist could have worked if the story was changed. 1st have it mentioned at the start of the film that a natural disaster or some sort of accident killed many people instead of the portal one. Have Mr. Callahan's motivation not getting over the loss of his daughter to the point of wanting to bring her back just like Hiro except not except that she's gone. Finally, show that Mr. Callahan's daughter is dead and confirm it and have Mr. Callahan accept it. That way it mirrors Hiro and to a certain extent redeems him.
Me who saw it coming from the moment I saw him 😂😂
@@bugsquashinghero891 Okay, how?
@@nemtudom5074 because I watched scopy doo when I was a kid so I know that whoever they make a twist too obvious it's not right so yeah
@@bugsquashinghero891 So did i, but i tend to actually be immersed, instead of being out of the experience and evaluating it on a meta level
It's unfortunate that some writers (especially at Disney) think villains wanting power for the sake of wanting power is something that works for twist villains as well as it does for non complex super obvious villains when in reality there is a reason why it only works in the category of obvious villains
For the Bellweather thing, I think the idea was supposed to be that predators occupy many positions of authority, and she was tired of it (like what happened with Judy at her police training academy).
Thank you I will not stand for the Zootopia slander
I think there should have been more foreshadowing. It's pretty lazy to just rely on monologing to explain character motivation.
@@sallyjrwjrw6766 I agree but this was actually indicated really early on with both Judy's ordeal and the mayor clearly loading a lot of work into Bellwether. You can also tell that most of the characters met at Judy's workplace are predators. This isn't actually subtle, it's overt, it's just easy to miss if you aren't used to how systematic racism plays out in real life. POC very easily notice when a police station is almost entirely white people. The movie actually didn't need to make this that much more explicit, they needed at most one more line to point it out to viewers that weren't paying attention but other than that they were on the nose.
It's even simpler than that. Judy and Bellwether were both bullied by predators. Judy by Gideon; Bellwether by Lionheart (and probably others in her childhood). Judy chose to move past this, and went on to make the world a better place. Bellwether didn't let go of her resentment, and blamed an entire race in her society for the actions of individuals. When victims become abusers, they will not see themselves as abusers; it is always because they see the targets of their abuse as threats. For Bellwether, she's a coward, so she wanted other people to do her dirty work for her. That meant fearmongering to make the prey turn against the predators. She wanted everyone else to share her prejudice. This video is unbelievably naive in thinking her motivation is bad. Zootopia is astonishingly insightful into the nature of prejudice, resentment, and forgiveness.
The reveal of Mr Waternoose is honestly chilling but genius, how Mike says that the door he is showing is not Boo's door but then Randal comes in and Waternoose says "Its your's" is legitimately scary.
I think of Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger as an underrated twist villain. Like, I know it's obvious he was the bad guy, but I don't think anybody expected him to be a toon. That twist was pretty neat. And kind of nightmare-inducing.
Agreed. His shuffling back from the DIP was a bit of a foreshadowing on what his true self and what his final fate would be was pretty well made and clever back then
It really was cool. Terrifying also.
Christopher Lloyd is so underrated - great actor 🙂 Judge Doom is a brilliant and terrifying character 😨
Fun fact: there was a scrapped plot twist where he turned out to be "Man" from Bambi
My theory on why Hans doesn't work with most people is because...he was just damn too likeable throughout the first half of the movie, with very little foreshadowing to show to the audience that something was off. Hans was basically Prince Edward from Enchanted but more capable and was one of the old school "Prince Charming", types with an actual personality.
Bellwether, again, she was just some random "cute" sheep, during the first half with very little foreshadowing. It's very difficult to take her seriously.
Callaghan, okay, yeah he was straight up dumb.
I get what Disney is trying to do though, they're trying to show that villains don't always look and act like Jafar, Maleficent or Ursula. Sometimes they look and act your friend. But it never comes off naturally, like it does with Pixar.
Finally! Someone who actually agrees with me on Ernesto being a Good Villain.
lol, yeah Hans's villain twist just feels like Disney realized they needed some way to end the film at the last minute and just pulled it out of their ass. That or the most ham-fisted way to resolve a love triangle between Anna and her two equally charismatic suitors.
For the motivation part, I don't think you're giving bellwether enough credit, there are awful people with that exact motive irl
So Ernesto didn’t get the existing villain point despite there being the conflict between Miguel and his family but Hans gets it for the conflict between Anna and Elsa and Stinky Pete got it for Woody’s conflict?
That’s a good point actually, so maybe he gets all seven points after all
It's got antagonists in Mama Imelda and Abuela(?) so I didn't expect there would be a villain, then WHAM.
@@pistachiosforeveryone Yeah, but you make up for it by giving Ernesto the motivation point (to be famous - really?) and not giving that point to Hans. Wanting power when you've lived your whole life feeling powerless because of your older brothers seems to me a much better motivation than simply wanting to be famous.
OKay Bellweather may be a weak villain, but the fact that she's trying to start a race war despite predators not being bad or doing anything personally to her is the point. She's racist, or speciest. Racists usually don't have a rational reason why they would hate someone or spread lies about an ethnic group other than bigotry. I don't see why she needs motivation or a sob story to be a good villain for this kind of story. She needs better setup and hints for this twist to make sense on rewatch. Maybe if throughout the movie she said some off colored things about predators, yeah that would be kinda believable.
I’m gonna have to disagree with racists lacking a reason to hate people. It can be a stupid reason. It can be a valid reason for an individual or group of individuals then illogically applied to a whole ethnicity. However, there’s ALWAYS a reason (you can call it an excuse, but it’s not nothing). If there were no reason at all, the person would be indifferent.
As I said, that doesn’t mean the reason has to make much or even any real sense from an outsider’s perspective. It doesn’t even have to be the real reason for the hatred (a person might not even consciously realize the actual reason) But reducing racism (or speciesism in Zootopia’s case) to a vague declaration of “bigotry” results in a very cartoonish portrayal of the concept.
@@John-fk2ky in zootopia there is a reason for the speciesism against predator : they ate prey in the past, which is a lot more solid reason than for any form of racisme that exist in real life (even if it still isn't a good justification).
@@John-fk2ky Frankly, since Bellweather was a politician, the easiest reason they could have put would be that she herself may not have believed in the prejudice, but she knows it exists. That prey are easily scared with enough incentive and that they will rally to anyone who can provide a solution. A level head in the madness. Someone who looks out for the little guy.
What better image than someone who appears demure and little herself who can take action when she needs to?
The motives? Money and power in a fast and immediate way. Of course, that would also dip into how capitalism influences politics but I don’t think Disney of all corporations would go that far.
Nah politicians can put on a sweet face all the time for the public perception. Bellweather is just perfect, she does not need to be foreshadowed more.
@@ca-ke9493 Exactly. I think it’s just because we’re used to the politicians who do try and encourage discrimination as being loud, angry and cartoonishly evil.
I will never forgive Disney for doing Hans so dirty. He was actually really sweet and charming and a potential partner for Anna. Like, look at how he smiles when he first met her during the boat scene. No way that was a smile of a man with ill intentions. Btw, kinda surprised thar Professor Marmalade from The Bad Guys wasn;t given an honorable mention in this video
Edit: lol i forgot that the bad guys are from dreamworks nvm
Little things like that smile are why I will always stand by the 'Hans was cursed by the trolls' theory haha
@@Sovereign_Toadstool ohh if only they worked on that theory in the second movie
@@partypoison8476 I know, right? It makes his completely random "hehe I'm evil" reveal so much better
Bonus points if he knows that's not what he wants, knows he still cares for Anna, and yet is forced by some strange urge to be evil. That's the good stuff.
Eh, when it came to the Marmalade twist thing, JP Sans admit that they were kind of making it obvious from the start on Marmalade being antagonist and I thought it would've been obvious too prior to learning this.
@@Julayla Well, an obvious one is better than a not hinted twist villain for me tho
Disney actually did have one good twist villain, unfortunately it’s from one of their forgotten films. Atlantas The Lost Empire. The villain, Rourke, was a fantastic twist villain. Another TH-camr made a video about him explaining why he’s the best. You should see it.
Bro De La Cruz gave us his villain speech so early but watching everyone slowly figure it out was beautiful
As far as I know, Disney started twist villains since Atlantis: the lost empire. That movie has one of Disney’s best twist villains that they ever made. And since that was successful, they continued that formula, only to disappoint us…
Which is funny because Atlantis WASN'T successful at the box office.
Sadly the films with these poorly written twist villains ARE and they'll keep doing it.
There is one Disney movie that had a great twist villain which I really liked and that is Rourke from Atlantis: The Lost Empire voiced by the legendary James Garner. The one cool thing about him is that he starts out with a father figure persona until about at least halfway or almost close to the end where he turns around and it is found out that he was in the expedition for the money. Personally, Atlantis: The Lost Empire's been underrated by most people but, again, has a great twist villain.
3:27, 1) having an understandable motivation 2) Not being evil because of pleasure or enjoyment 3) Having the reveal be a well done scene 4) Not monologuing
Your music makes me so incredibly anxious. Lovely video!
Technically, Coco does have a preexisting villian, the family trying to force him to give up music
You edited this super well, and made some great points. You got my sub 😊
I’m actually writing a project with a planned twist villain, so this is really valuable. I’ll definitely keep these in mind during production. Thanks!
To help out aspiring writers a bit, here's a couple of simple questions you can ask yourself over and over to make sure you're hitting most of these points.
Question 1: Is your twist character's goal the exact same both before and after the twist? If done well, this should be an easy Yes. Make absolutely sure they're never working against their later-revealed plan by playing along with the heroes. They may have to make some concessions, depending on the exact circumstances, but if so, the fact that they didn't want to do that and tried their best to get around doing that should be readily apparent on reread. In fact little things like that can serve as good breadcrumb-hints, for Point 6.
Question 2: Let your twist villain be evil BEFORE the reveal. That isn't a question but good writers do it anyway. When reading through the second time around, there should really be a few moments where you realize "oh, this thing that looked innocent enough before seems really kinda bad now that I know what I know." If even on the reread your character seems innocent/heroic until the big reveal, you've failed. No matter how many of the other six points you've done right. So it is with Hans, with that little smile that has no right to be there. So it is with Dollhouse, whose twist character is so atrociously bad that I straight-up reject it.
My preferred hint style is breadcrumbs of increasing size, until such a time as it leads you to the entire loaf. From start to finish there are little details that don't add up, moments that might make you stop and wonder why, if you happen to notice something's off. These start at "virtually invisible" in the early stages of the story, and slowly scale upwards through "makes sense for a hero or a villain", "a little weird but not outright suspicious", "big hint if you think through the ramifications, otherwise easy to miss", and then save the biggest hints for within a chapter or so of the big reveal. And always, always, always, these hints all carry new meaning on the reread for those who didn't pick up on them at first. Even the "virtually invisible" ones should be little slaps in the face of "well THAT makes way more sense now."
If you REALLY wanna excel, you can go the "solvable mystery" approach. Such that if someone were to stop reading just before the actual reveal, and review everything they've learned and try putting them all together, they should be able to put together the correct conclusion on their own, and successfully answer all of the following questions:
WHO is the true villain?
WHAT have they done so far and WHAT do they plan to do next?
WHY are they doing what they're doing?
If all of those can be answered by an astute reader, and missed by those who don't give it any deliberate thought, then you've gone above and beyond in making a truly great mystery. ...Most likely, anyway. There are probably ways to get this right but fail elsewhere, but whatever, I trust you :P
The whole intro I felt like I was having a stroke until i realized the wii music was in swing tempo
I wonder how could Callaghan be written better?
I had the idea that he could be a dark mirror to Hiro
The movie already did try that. Both lost a family member close to them and their immediate reaction to the person responsible is to get revenge and kill them. The movie did want to make a statement that Hiro realized that focusing on revenge was not the solution to overcoming his grief. The problem is Callaghan is too weak of a villain for all the reasons Pistachio described that it overshadows the intended message of the story.
Suggestion: Callahan tries to bring back his daughter, rebuilding the portal and risking his life in a form of suicide mission.
When attacking the students in his kabuki mask, he never tries to kill them, but scare them off instead. He tries to frame and point towards krei being responsible.
First hints would be the gang actually capturing krei and trying to get answers, with some questions answered but the gang getting in trouble with krei and his lawyers. Then they find some docs from Callahan, realize it was his writing on previous incriminating evidence but then question how Callahan is alive
When Hiro goes all "Tadashi died because of you" rage, Callahan could look shocked because he didn't know that Tadashi would have tried to help him, when it was likely "he would die". Hiro still attacks him
There is one post that depicts Tadashi as the kabuki mask wearer - and I like that idea. Suggestion number two: Tadashi gets saved by Callahan in the fire, but has extreme burns and scars. Tadashi himself has history with krei (maybe Tadashis and Hiros parents worked for krei and invented something; krei took the credit from them and when legal issues started to get serious, krei tampered with their car which caused their deaths.)
So a younger and more agile Tadashi would be able to perform in the action, to ruin krei and help Callahan rescue his daughter. Would be also another good "bad guy doesn't attack the good guys he knows" reason.
Other than that, the only thing I would do is maybe not have the group be solo Tadashi friends who become Hiros gang with much of a connection, but some of his own friends too. Like Hiro is longer in university and we see him actually do stuff there instead of just being all over. He would start going there after finding out that the fire wasn't an accident. Would also be cool if some of his friends were still in high school, while others are in the college and therefore older
my favorite Disney twist villain is usually one that people forget about;
King Candy
the twist isn’t necessarily that he’s a villain, but that he’s MUCH more of a threat than we ever considered him to be. first we find out he literally deleted Vanelope out of the game, then that he’s Turbo, and then we even get a (kind of) fake-out death that leads to him becoming a literal boss battle!
he goes from a threat/mild annoyance to a true villain, and it’s done beautifully.
I feel like a slight fix for Callaghan's motives and overall plan could be that, instead of him wanting to just get revenge, he didn't assume his daughter was dead and was driven to get her back, even if it meant re-constructing that extremely dangerous and destructive portal (or whatever it was called) that can still cause major chaos in the city during the whole final battle and everything.
And for him 'accidentally' getting Tadashi killed, it could haven been highlighted that he did feel at least some level of guilt or remorse for Tadashi's death, but he convinced himself that it had to be done, and maybe his decision to save only himself in the fire either could be a quick rash choice, only to realize what happened after the fact, or something that he hesitated a bit doing before hardening up and going through with it.
idk, still might not have been a good twist villain, or that good of a villain overall, but maybe it wouldn't had been as lame lol
a little rainbow thingy appeared around the sub button when you said "im gonna need you to subscribe" which is so cool. i ended up subbing bc ur so underrated, only 6k subs????!!!
I agree all the way! I really hope someone (if not Disney) resurrect some of twist villains and the respect they deserved.😊
i think monsters inc worked so well because waternoose being a villain wasn't really the twist, it was more like mike and sully were twist heroes
How so?
@@bigbadgammagnome because they initially just wanted to get boo home and get back to scaring kids for energy, and might have gone along with the scream extractor plan if they hadn't gotten attached to her
@@glowstickspinalfluid yeah, I never really thought of it that way. However, considering how Waternoose and Randall did the scream extractor plan in secret, and banished Sully and Mike to keep that information from getting out, I got the impression that what they were doing was illegal.
The monster world might be scared of children touching them (mistakingly thinking they were toxic) but if they were so gung-ho on killing children then it wouldn't have needed to be a secret.
I don't think Mike and Sully would have ever been ok with the scream extractor, but I do agree that without Boo neither would've realised that human children aren't the "monsters" they were made out to be
@@glowstickspinalfluid Huh, that is a good point
Waternoose while going WAY too far is not otherwise an ass and was doing it out of desperation to solve the energy crisis, he didn't know laughter was a more powerful fuel source and was faced with a possible collapse of monster society.
Just wanna say that this video was really entertaining, plus I learned a lot about what makes twist villains good or bad and how to make better ones. Sounds like a fake ass comment but it's true, i've been interested in figuring out what makes stories good or bad and villains are definitely a big part of it. I was surprised you didn't have as much views and likes as I thought you would so here's a like cuz i genuinely really enjoyed watching this video, and i'm subscribing cuz I wanna see more from you :>
thanks so much
I tried rewriting cable's motivation and I got this.
1) Cray started the fire after failing to steal the microbots, thanks to Callaghan.
2) Callaghan uses the bots to survive, after escaping finds out about Tadashi's death.
3) Feeling responsible for Tadashi's death, he also blames Cray not only for the loss of his daughter but also for Tadashi, seeing it as Cray destroying another family.
4) Callaghan doesn't fake his death, take leave from teaching & tries reach out to Hiro, since he can relate.
5) He just uses the microbots, he get the portal in order to sell its parts, to help make more bots.
This was great, though I am disappointed the villain in The Lost City Of Atlantis wasn't mentioned. There are plenty of times where it is foreshadowed that he isn't in the adventure for knowledge, and it has a good twist. He doesn't act like a whole other character afterwards, more like he's just being more open about it, and if you watch it a second time, you can definitely catch it coming. Also, he has a good amount of time to be openly evil, which is great.
Anywho, great video!
i agree with all your points here but i feel like its also important to note that these are rules of thumb. good writing isnt as easy as a checklist, if you have "x/y things then you have a good story, the end" is sort of shallow as a statement, and you cant really judge writing based on this criteria. i think whats more important is how each individual point is handled, if the motivation is solid, if the build-up is worth it, etc.
and i think youd agree because you spent a lot of time explaining each of these things in-depth for all the villains! moreso for the audience i think its important to clarify that this isnt a numbers game, and that simply checking enough things off a list wont make something well-written, but to actually put care and thought into those things does! you get what i mean
I’d like to point out my one favorite tells that Ernesto wasn’t his great great great grandfather was that the blessing can only be given by a family member, he isn’t one. We saw earlier in the film that when a family member gives a blessing the petal glows, but when Ernesto starts to give his blessing the petal doesn’t glow at all. The first watch could be dismissed as “oh he was cut off,” but if you know the twist then you know it didn’t glow because he isn’t family.
Good video man and well put together! Loved the editing and the points for each twist villain.
I'd say if I had to put any constructive criticism, if you have any extra time you're willing to put in, (I know we all get busy, not saying it's necessary), but maybe throw in some title cards or some showable text between topics and when you name a numbered point. Not necessary but I always feel it shows more professionalism and effort put into a video. Again it's already good, just offering some criticism because would love to see you grow more!
Again good job!
That’s actually a really helpful suggestion
I'm glad waternoose is hailed as the top tier in twist villains, he's my favorite
one of the best twist villains imo is rork from atlantis the lost empire. from his first scene he tells you he's greedy in an underhanded way. the mc milo is talking to the "quest giver" about how much of a learning experience it will be for humanity as a whole and rork chimes in with "I'm sure this will be enriching for us all" and there are so many other lines or scenes that show just how self centered he is it's perfect
I always thought Hans’s twist villain reveal was less about the thrill of twist villainy and more about subverting fairytale cliches, like they subverted the true love’s kiss thing. I saw Hans being the villain as them twisting the whole Prince Charming being the hero thing and “love at first sight always works in stories”.
3:52, 1) Having an understandable motivation 2) Not being evil for the fun of it 3) a good reveal scene 4) not monologuing 5) Having a red herring
The list is at 32:50
@@sallyjrwjrw6766 Thanks.
That's a pretty good set of rules that all make sense. Watching this made me realize that Hans would have been a better villain if he had actually been more present throughout the story. Let's say instead of Kristoff existing, Hans went with Anna to go bring back Elsa. During their troubles, maybe he would check to see if Anna was physically okay, but never how she was really feeling, a more subtle way of showing that he does not really care about or love her. Perhaps when Olaf is joking around, he's more stern and focused on their mission at hand, and if Anna tells him to lighten up he'd merely brush her off.
I actually assumed that Hans was a villain from the start.
your powers are beyond mortal comprehension
@@pistachiosforeveryone he has many traits of an abuser and sociopath. Such as when Ana is complaining about Elsa during Love is and Open door, instead of comforting her, he says HE would never shut her out, HE will be there for her. This is a way to isolate her from her support. I think if he got more screentime, they could have expanded on this. Add more of this stuff. Don't monologue, but you can do the "if only there was someone who loved you" line because it's iconic. Just have him say that and leave!
Same thing they did with Eric from Kim Possible the movie.
For me it was only through meta gaming. They were setting Christoff with Anna so Hans had to either get a different girlfriend or turn evil by movie logic. Him being a decent guy but just not the right guy is just not how Disney writes their movies. I still would like a redemption arc for Hans since they messed up his character.
The movie was making such a big deal about how Anna shouldn't marry a man she just met, highlighting how she didn't know him very well and he might turn out to not be as great as he first appeared, I figured Hans would turn out to be evil just to conclude the "don't marry someone you just met" moral. Of course, they could have had him still be nice, but just not a good match with Anna, or some other nuanced situation, but him being evil seemed more likely because it seemed more consistent with Disney's style.
6:20 not only that, but ther's also another villain on top of it:"Zurg"
Hans is such a bad twist villain, that I think MatPat's film theory could actually have had weight.
Hans is such a bad twist villain, MatPat wrote him better than Disney.
underrated channel, great job!
Applying your criteria in other Disney and Pixar films then we have
Rourke from Atlantis: The Lost Empire
1) Understandable motivation. It’s about money, that’s understandable. 1/1
2) Not enjoying evil. He definitely enjoys his evil. 1/2
3) Well-done reveal scene. He has that. 2/3
4) Not monologuing. He doesn’t really tend to monologue, it’s more the heroic Thatch who does that. 3/4
5) Subtle foreshadowing. His villainy is foreshadowed but it’s not all that subtle. 3/5
6) Red herring. No he doesn’t really have that. 3/6
7) ample screen time. Yeah, he has that. 4/7
Warp Darkmatter from the Buzz Lightyear movie
1) Understandable motivation. He was paid off by Zurg. It’s about money. That works 1/1
2) Doesn’t enjoy being evil. “Evil was just more profitable. And more fun”. He definitely enjoys being evil. 1/2
3) Well-done reveal scene. “Welcome to the team partner” he has that. 2/3
4)Not monologuing. He leaves that to Zurg. 3/4
5) Subtle foreshadowing. He’s foreshadowed but not subtly. 3/5
6) Red herrings. He doesn’t have that. 3/6
7) Ample screen time. He has that in spades 4/7
Turbo from Wreck it Ralph.
1) Understandable motivation. His fifteen minutes of fame are over and he wants them back. That works. 1/1
2) Not enjoying being evil. King Candy definitely enjoys being evil. 1/2
3) Well-done reveal scene “turbo-tastic” 2/3
4) Not monologuing. King Candy does monologue to Ralph to trick him about his motivations but then he’s lying. I’ll grant him this one. 3/4
5) Subtle foreshadowing. He definitely had that. 4/5
6) Red herrings. King Candy was the red herring villain. The plot twist was that King Candy was actually Turbo. I’m not going to grant this one. 4/6
7) Ample screentime. He has that. 5/7
while Lotso in Toy Story 3
1) Understandable motivations. More or less the same as The Prospector’s. 1/1
2) Doesn’t enjoy being evil. He’s not exactly consistent with that. 1/2
3) Good reveal scene. 2/3
4) Not monologuing. I’ll grant him that. 3/4
5) Subtle foreshadowing. It’s not really foreshadowed before the scene where he reveals his true colours. 3/5
6) Red herrings. Non-existent. 3/6
7) Ample screentime. He has that. 4/7.
I was confused when you said Warp from the Buzz Lightyear Movie until i realized you were talking about the cartoon movie with the series, not the more recent movie.
@@Mabra51 Yeah. In the straight to VCR movie Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins used as the pilot for the show Warp Darkmatter is a plot twist villain
@@Mabra51 In the CGI remake (which was vastly inferior to the original cartoon) there is a plot twist that Zurg is actually Buzz making Buzz into a twist villain. And I’m willing to apply the criteria to him as well
1) Understandable motivations. Evil future Buzz wants to fix his mistakes and ease his guilt. He gets the point. 1/1
2) Not enjoying evil. He doesn’t enjoy being Zurg all that much so he gets the point there. 2/2
3) A good reveal scene. All he does is take off his mask. 2/3
4) Not monologuing. He monologues. 2/4
5) Subtle foreshadowing. As Zurg recognized Buzz by name there was an implication of prior familiarity with him and Buzz had earlier commented that what he needed was a Time Machine so it is subtly foreshadowed. 3/5
6)Red herring. There isn’t one. 3/6
7) Ample screen time. He doesn’t really have that. 3/7
Good video! I completely agree with your take on the subject especially with Ernesto
This was incredibly helpful! I'm definitely screenshotting the list at the end, and I'll keep these general guidelines in mind for my novel writing, this has already given me plenty of ideas on how to make my twist villains the best they can be.
Thank you for the great content!
0:16 I’m pretty smart man
De la Cruz is one of my favorite twist villains. Ever. Literally ever in the history of ever. The first time I watched this movie, it got me. And it made me love Hector all the more. Coco is so good please god it's so good
The villains needs
🌟 grow crazy
🌟 picked around
🌟full on cazry
Hans's motive was that, being 13th in line for the throne, there's no way he'd ever really inherit. So, he planned to marry into the throne of a separate kingdom.
but in the most stupid way ever, nothing in his plan and portrayal makes sense
but why does he care? I'd hate to be a ruler of a country... and I think most people would too
Oooooh so that's why he saved Elsa instead of killing her and being worshipped as a hero....wait what?
@@Jaredragon There already people killing their family member for the throne in the real world tho.
@@Jaredragon i think he just craves power, since as the youngest he believes he doesn’t get much
Thanks for the great analysis, I’m great to have discovered this channel
MAN, I enjoyed your video. It was authentic and yet made me laugh constantly; you made some really good points.In other words, you are cleverly witty, and great with sacrasm.
Seen this reccomended, subbed and liking, goingnto watch your other videos.
0:13 *when your technically a kid* 🥲
this is actually a really well made video, keep it up
hii, idk what to say but i've been writing a villain with a fake redemption arc and this is helping a lot honestly!! he only has like 4 and a half of the points you listed in this video so i'm working on him more!! great video it was super entertaining as well
I remember a comment from another video that provided a good element on how twist villains work.
A poor twist villain makes you say "I didn't see that coming."
A good twist villain makes you say "I should've seen that coming!"